Divorced Kid > Comments > "a thought about "making divorce easier""
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Commenter Profile
- Helen Shultz-Kamadulski
- Username: helenstrees
- Location: Auburn, Washington
- Joined PRX: Dec 26, 2009
Piece Information
- "Divorced Kid"
- Summary: America's divorce rate soared in the 1970s. Thirty years later, kids who grew up in the divorce revolution look back at that experience, and describe how it shaped them as adults. The 1970s also offered some lessons on how to improve divorce for kids today.
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a thought about "making divorce easier"
Helen Shultz-Kamadulski
Posted on December 26, 2009 at 06:00 PM
This was a great piece, very thought-provoking.
My parents divorced in 1976. By the time it happened I was quite relieved. I'm sure living with the dysfunction of my parents' bad marriage and my father's constant straying, was harder on me than the actual divorce. I think most of the damage was done before they finally divorced.
Now at almost 50 years of age, in an unhappy marriage, with an 11year old daughter, I listened to this piece with an ear to what my daughter's experience could be if my husband and I divorce while she is still living at home.
With this thought in mind, I found myself becoming a bit irritated with what seemed to be the expectation that the loss could be alleviated by doing the divorce better. Despite all the best efforts made over the years, experts found that divorce is still hard on the children, maybe to the point of damaging some of them. Well of course it is!! It is a huge, life-altering, loss!! It is a death of a loved thing and like the death of any loved one, parent or siblings, especially, it wounds one to the core. Wounds and loss are part of life. We try to avoid those losses, to protect our children from having to experiencing them, but sometimes that is just not possible or advisable. When contemplating taking such an action as ending a marriage, I think the other question that must be asked is "What am I modeling for my child(ren,)about being in a relationship, by staying in this unhappy marriage?
Thanks for this piece.