| Kalman
Heller
Elizabeth Marquardt presented her book, “Between
Two Worlds” (Crown Publishers, 2005), as based on groundbreaking
research that provides new insights to the true impact of divorce
on children. Her key conclusions are that there is no such thing
as a “good divorce”, that 75% of all divorces are
from “low-conflict” marriages where parents should
choose to stay together, and that divorce creates enduring, harmful
effects because it forces the children to navigate the separate
worlds of their parents. This allegedly leaves children feeling
alone, spiritually, morally, and religiously lost.
As a psychologist who has worked with children
and families for forty years, my reading of this book led me to
conclude that Ms. Marquardt’s research was quite flawed
and that she appeared to selectively choose results to support
her hypotheses while ignoring data that challenged her main points.
Despite being quickly ordained by the media as providing strong
evidence that divorce really is harmful to children and that it
creates a lasting anguish in their lives, I do not believe the
book actually makes such a case. In fact, I believe the book shows
there is such a thing as a better divorce and that staying together
for the sake of the children does not result in better outcomes
for the adult children of these families.
The author’s view:
Ms. Marquardt is emphatic in her belief that the
majority of divorces are unnecessary. She blames this partly on
the myth of the “good divorce” (“good”
in this case meaning having little negative impact on the children)
as the basis for those 75% of divorced couples whose marriage
is defined as having been “low conflict” (essentially
any divorce not based on a substantially abusive situation). The
author states that parents in unhappy, low conflict marriages
should have the resolve to stick it out, work harder on solving
their problems, or just delay divorce until the children leave
home. The latter is the familiar plea to “stay-together-for-the-sake-of-the-children.”
This is what I describe as the dishonest marriage
vs. the good divorce debate. Ms. Marquardt claims the myth of
the good divorce is dishonest to the children and that it fails
to appreciate their pain. But I think that making believe a marriage
is okay until the children leave is a least equally dishonest.
Unless someone can prove that divorce is inevitably
seriously harmful to most children, who has the right to tell
married adults that they don’t have a choice but to stay
in an unhappy marriage? Ms. Marquardt appears to feel she has
the right to do that. So her data must be compelling. Let us take
a close look.
Examination of the data:
Ms. Marquardt contends that “We [children
of divorce] might look fine to everyone else, but talk to us about
our inner lives and you will find, just beneath the surface, a
potent mixture of loss and confusion that haunts [emphasis mine]
us to this day.” (p.39)This very powerful statement of the
destructive impact of divorce, in my opinion, is not based on
the data but on the author’s personal experience and the
stories from the college students she interviewed in the first
phase of the research (to create the questions for the survey).
She refers to the latter as “profound and moving stories
of confusion, isolation, and suffering.”(p.32)
Such a negative view is especially striking given
that the author describes her current life in rather glowing terms:
a wonderful marriage and family and a very rewarding career. She
indicated this is also true for many of the people she interviewed.
But, in response to the question, “How satisfied are you
with your life as a whole?” 94.9% of the adults from divorced
families gave a positive response compared to 97.6% of the adults
from intact families. Not only does this fail to make the case
for a significant difference, it appears to indicate that most
of the adults from divorced families in this study are not suffering
to the significant degree that the author claims.
The book is entitled “Between Two Worlds”
because Ms. Marquardt contends that there is a harmful impact,
emotionally, morally, and spiritually, from having to move back
and forth between the homes of their parents. It is this issue
of living in two different worlds, with different rules and complex
boundaries, which the author stresses as the cause of most of
divorce’s destructive impact on children. I am not minimizing
the traumatic impact that divorce has on everyone involved but
I am going to select results from the vast array of Marquardt’s
data that does not appear to support a number of the author’s
contentions about this issue.
Ms. Marquardt concludes that divorce generates
a sense of moral confusion in the children due to the lack of
a unified parental guidance (the result of living in two homes)
as well as the negative impact divorce has on children’s
spiritual development and religious involvement. Yet, in response
to the survey item, “I think my understanding of right and
wrong is cloudy.”, there was virtually no difference in
the responses by adults from divorced families and those from
intact families. In fact, more than 95% of both groups indicated
no moral “cloudiness” at all! Thus, one central hypothesis,
that being from a divorced family undermines moral clarity, does
not appear to be supported by the data.
Another aspect of the sense of being lost and
confused that Ms. Marquardt contends to be the outcome of growing
up in a divorced family is that it results in a sense of no home
rather than a sense of two homes. Yet in response to the question,
“After the divorce, which place felt like home to you?”,
93% responded that they either felt like one parent’s house,
or both, felt like home. So this hypothesis of “no home”
is also not supported by the data.
Nearly half the questions on the survey relate
to religion and spirituality, which makes sense since this was
a research project on the “Moral and Spiritual Lives of
Children of Divorce.” But the data doesn’t Ms. Marquardt’s
contention that divorce has a negative impact on the religious
aspects of the lives of children from divorced families. A significant
percentage of the adults from divorced families rated themselves
as more religious than their fathers (47%) and mothers (31.4%).
Perhaps even more striking is that 79.1% of those adults describe
God as caring (versus 82.3% from intact family group) and 78.8%
describe God as loving them unconditionally (versus 79.7% from
the intact group). Thus the data does not support the idea that
divorce results in the children becoming less religious adults.
Now comes the real stunner. In response to the
statement, “My spirituality has been strengthened by adversity
in my life.” 43.7% of the adults from divorced families
strongly agree! If you add in” Somewhat Agree” (30.5%),
the message is that nearly three-fourths of adults whose parents
divorced describe their spirituality as having been strengthened!
This data is so powerful that the author does report it in the
text (p.153) in a one sentence comment yet says nothing about
the incredible implications of this exceptional statement of spiritual
resilience. Why? Where does it come from? Perhaps this is a critical
factor in understanding why most of the children from divorced
families turn out okay. It deserves discussion and a recommendation
for further research, but the author virtually ignores it. I see
this as a particularly strong example of the author’s anti-divorce
bias.
Thus the author’s own data does not appear
to support her conclusions that adults from divorced families
are emotionally distraught, morally lost, less spiritual and less
religious than adults from intact families.
These more positive results around spirituality,
religion, feeling understood and having a home are very consistent
with the research by Dr. Mavis Hetherington. Her research is longitudinal,
not retrospective. She has followed hundreds of families of divorce,
many for as long as three decades, periodically re-evaluating
the impact of divorce on children and their parents. Data obtained
at each stage of life is much more compelling than data obtained
in a retrospective survey. Also, the research was extensively
published in peer-reviewed professional journals over a period
of years before the author summarized her findings in a book.
Dr. Heatherington concludes that 75% of the children from divorce
do not develop any serious psychological problems (compared to
about 90% of the non-divorced groups). In addition, she reports
that six years post-divorce most children have adjusted to the
changes in their lives imposed by their parents’ divorce
and are more concerned with typical developmental issues in their
daily lives. This is in stark contrast to Ms. Marquardt’s
much more negative conclusions but is consistent with the positive
results of her own data that she chooses to ignore.
Finally, I want to address what in many ways is
the true core issue of this book, that there is no such thing
as a “good” divorce and that it is better for parents
to stay married even if there is conflict (low as opposed to high).
Appendix A presents the results of 33 questions
for the five subject groups (the identifiers refer to the parents
of the adults interviewed). Three subgroups are from Intact Marriages:
Very Happy/Low Conflict; Not Happy/Low Conflict; Not Happy/High
Conflict. The final two groups are from Divorced Marriages: “Good
Divorce” and “Bad” Divorce. The data clearly
shows that children/adults are very negatively impacted by high
conflict divorces (scores are nearly all far worse than any other
category) and that children/adults from happy, intact marriages
have the best lives. I’m sure most everyone knew this without
reading the book.
But it is critical to emphasize that on 29 of
the 33 statements summarized in Appendix A, the “Good Divorce”
group has more positive results than the “Bad Divorce”
group and the majority of those differences are quite substantial.
What this implies very clearly is that what is being done to teach
parents how to divorce in a more child-sensitive way is actually
helpful. Children of these “Good Divorces” end up
in a much more positive place, suggesting all those books, workshops,
and therapies which the author belittles as creating a false myth
that the “good divorce” may have real value.
What does the data say about the author’s
primary thesis that it is better for parents who are in unhappy,
low-conflict marriages to stay married rather than try to have
a “Good Divorce”? Most dramatically, on what I consider
the two most critical statements, the results strongly suggest
a more positive outcome for the “Good Divorce” group!
57.1% of the adults from that group describe themselves as “very
happy” compared to 47.8% from the unhappy marriage, low
conflict group. Similarly, 62.3% of the adults from the “Good
Divorce” group describe themselves as “very satisfied
with life as whole.” compared to 56.2% from the unhappy
marriage, low conflict group. In the face of just these two items,
how can the author conclude that it is better for unhappy, low
conflict couples, after having tried their best to resolve their
differences, to stay together instead of working out a healthier
divorce?
I am not trying to deny that there is nothing
to be gained from low conflict couples trying to work out their
problems and stay together. The main point here is that I do not
believe the author has the data to make her case that when these
unhappy, low conflict couples decide to divorce they are being
selfish, putting their own needs ahead of their children’s
needs, and condemning their children to a life of profound confusion,
isolation, and suffering. Such a contemptuous attitude toward
couples who choose to divorce is not disserved.
Article Source: http://www.article-matrix.com Dr. Heller is a
clinical psychologist, now retired, who specialized in providing
services to children, families, and couples since 1968. He has
written over 150 columns about parenting and marriage which are
available on his website, www.drheller.com. He is a frequent media
resoure.
| 
Overview
