Divorce doesn’t make one a failure

Washington Post

While I’m away, readers give the advice
On failure, shame and selfhood:

A letter-writer who was first in the family to divorce, saying, “I feel like a failure,” struck a chord with me. My favorite quote (and philosophy) is from “The Wizard of Oz”:

Dorothy: “Oh – you’re a very bad man!”

Wizard: “Oh, no, my dear. I – I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad Wizard.”

Everything is relative. Everyone is usually a success at being what he is – and often fails miserably at being what he’s not, from students at the wrong college with the wrong major to gay men trying to fit into a straight lifestyle.

As for being the first to divorce, I wonder how many weren’t, but wanted to be – and should have been.

– Arizona

On a kiss that’s just a kiss:

Our first kiss was chaste, but I was very aware that I wasn’t enjoying it. I just let it happen, feeling strangely disengaged.

He was a good man and I thought I was being kind, even generous.

Subconsciously, I think I felt that way on my wedding day, too.

Thirty years and four children later, I am much wiser. I thought I was being selfless, but I was robbing him.

I am still with that good man, that good, deserving man who, because of my “generosity,” will never know what it is to feel loved by a woman truly attracted to him.

I ultimately did find myself feeling a profound connection with another man. I didn’t act on it, but it made me realize for the first time what I might have had with someone else. I felt a real sense of loss, even more for my husband than for myself.

We should all take our time in relationships and give ourselves permission to feel what we feel without judgment. We owe it not just to ourselves, but to those who believe we might be right for them.

– Anonymous (E.)

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Divorce Rates Are Falling - But Marriage Is Still on the Rocks

Divorce Rates Are Falling—But Marriage Is Still on the Rocks

Antonio M. Rosario—Getty Images

Kay S. Hymowitz is the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She is the author of four books, including Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age and Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Is Turning Men Into Boys.

Hand-wringing is an appropriate response to the state of marriage today.

Tuesday’s New York Times’s Upshot section featured an article by Claire Cain Miller entitled “The Divorce Surge is Over, but the Myth Lives On.” The piece got a good deal of attention, but Miller manages to reinforce some myths of her own.

That’s not to say the piece is wrong in its basic facts. The divorce surge is over. (Or most people believe it is: this paper offers an alternate take.) In truth, the rise in divorce has been over for 20 years. Divorce rates peaked in the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president and the Internet was only a mite in the eye of wierdos hanging out in California garages. In fact, this “news” may well be older than many of its readers who were probably not even been born when divorce rates were already on the downswing.

It’s also the case that people remain strangely attached to the idea that half of all marriages end in divorce despite numerous stories over the years showing otherwise. Miller links to one of those stories—from 2005, that is, nine years ago. I myself published a book that took stock of the trends in 2006. Family scholars have talked about the turn-around in divorce rates repeatedly. Yet the myth lives on. If you want proof of that, check out the media reaction to the Times piece: a “fascinating story” in the words of the Clarion Ledger; “surprisingly optimistic numbers,” marveled the Huffintgton Post.

So why has this particular myth been so difficult to extract from the hive mind? Why are people so (ahem) wedded to an idea that is not only untrue but has been for almost a generation? Two reasons. The first will no doubt sound clichéd: Hollywood. In la-la land divorce is about as common as Botox. When beautiful, famous people split up, fan magazines, entertainment networks, and social media sites spring into action, making sure we see albums of photos of crying, stoic, rehabbed, and then newly partnered, actors and actresses claiming they’ve never been happier. Social psychologists refer to a cognitive bias they call the “availability heuristic.” Striking events—plane crashes, Ebola cases, the Kardashians—make the weird seem more commonplace than it is precisely because the brain is so impressed by it. Of course, the availability heuristic gets some help from the television shows and movies these same famous people write, star in, and produce about marital crackups that often bear a striking resemblance to their own.

The second reason the myth lives on is not only more troubling but exemplified by the Times article that seeks to dismantle it. The younger generation, whether they know divorce is declining or not, believes that marriage is on the rocks. From their vantage point, they’re right. While fewer American adults have been divorcing over the past decades, a growing number of people in their own cohort have grown up apart from one parent, almost always their fathers.

How can divorce be declining but at the same time more children growing up with single parents? Because—and this is the story that Miller underplays—so many parents never marry in the first place. A little history is in order here: When divorce rates skyrocketed in the 1970s, American were not simply suddenly looking at their spouses and deciding en masse that they couldn’t take it anymore. They were reacting to a changing understanding about what marriage meant. Instead of an arrangement largely centered around providing for and rearing the next generation, it was becoming an adult-centric union based on love and shared happiness, which as an upper middle class grew in size, became closely linked to granite countered kitchens, European and spa vacations, and weddings with 200 guests.

One big reason that divorce rates began to fall after 1980 was that people, almost always those with less education and less income for the required accouterments of marriage, took the logic of the divorce revolution and ran with it. If marriage and childbearing were no longer tightly linked but rather discreet—even unrelated—life events, and if they were not earning enough to enjoy the middle class status objects enjoyed by their more educated peers, then why marry at all? Why not just have kids without getting married? While college educated women continued to demand a ring before they became mothers, the percentage of poor women having kids outside of marriage was already on the rise; now working class women, many of them temporarily cohabiting with their child’s father, also bypassed the chapel on the way to the maternity ward. In his forthcoming book Labor’s Loves Lost, Andrew Cherlin quotes one young unmarried father this way: “You need way better reasons than having a kid to get married.”

By missing this larger picture, Miller ends up adding single parents—who after all have a null chance of divorce—to good news numbers about marital stability. Sheela Kennedy and Steven Ruggles from the Population Center at the University of Minnesota try to take into account the new reality in a recent paper. Their findings are sobering: “because cohabitation makes up a rapidly growing percentage of all unions,” they write, it has “an increasing impact on overall union instability.” And by accepting that marriage and children are unrelated, she can ignore the biggest problem with this rising instability. Experts have shown us in a virtual library of research papers that the children of single parents are at greater risk of everything from poverty to school failure to imprisonment. Their large numbers will almost surely help perpetuate inequality, poverty, and immobility.

“Despite hand-wringing about the institution of marriage, marriages in this country are stronger today than they have been in a long time,” Miller writes. As it happens, hand-wringing is an appropriate response to the state of marriage today.

That is, for anyone concerned about inequality and America’s lower income children.

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The 50% Divorce Rate Stat is a Myth, so Why Won't it Die?

We don't actually have a good handle on marriage and divorce rates. (AP Photo)

Danielle TellerPhysician and researcherAstro TellerHead of Google X

The divorce rate in America is rising. Do you think that statement is true? If you do, you’re not alone. As Claire Cain Miller recently pointed out in an article for The New York Times, we hear about the rising divorce rate in the news all of the time. This is curious, because as it happens, the divorce rate isn’t rising.

By most measures, the divorce rate in America has been declining since around 1980. You’d think that something as simple as counting the number of American marriages that end in divorce would not require the qualifier “by most measures,” but it turns out that there is no universally accepted method for doing the counting. For instance, the widely quoted 50% divorce rate in the US probably came from a best-guess prediction that has yet to come true, or from a shortcut method of comparing the number of divorces and marriages in the same year. This is not considered to be an accurate method for assessing the divorce rate because it does not compare equivalent groups. In 1980, for example, older couples may have been divorcing at a high rate because of the introduction of no-fault divorce laws, while younger couples might have been putting off marriage because more women were pursuing careers. Even if the number of marriages that year were twice the number of divorces, that is not the same thing as saying that half of all marriages end in divorce. As for the prediction model, Dr. Rose M. Kreider, a demographer in the Fertility and Family Statistics Branch of the Census Bureau, told the New York Times in 2005, “At this point, unless there’s some kind of turnaround, I wouldn’t expect any cohort to reach fifty percent, since none already has.”

Even if everyone could agree on the best way to calculate the divorce rate, complete demographic data about marriage and divorce are unfortunately no longer available for analysis. In 1996, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) stopped collecting yearly statistics on marriage and divorce due to budgetary considerations, and some states, such as California, do not report divorce rates. The Census Bureau can provide estimates based on questionnaire data, but this relies on self-report, and people are reluctant to provide information about marital status. The quality of data available for analysis is therefore weaker now than it has been in past years.

Despite the paucity of good data and arguments over statistical calculations, most social scientists and demographers would agree that divorce rates are declining or stable, that a 50% divorce rate has not yet come to pass, and that young couples today are so far on a course to have fewer divorces than their parents’ generation. Why, then, do we keep hearing about rising divorce rates in America?

One of the reasons is that a rising divorce rate fits the world view and agenda of some segments of our society, whereas a falling divorce rate doesn’t fit as neatly into anyone’s agenda. If you self-identify as conservative, you may have had a negative reaction to this article so far, because it seems to be saying, “High divorce rates are no big deal, and reports of the marriage crisis in America are overblown.” On the other hand, if you consider yourself to be liberal, you may be thinking, “Some couples need to get divorced. Should that be half the number of couples who are divorcing now or twice that number? I don’t know.” In other words, people who see divorce as a social scourge want to emphasize how dire the situation has become in America, and people who see divorce as a necessary evil don’t worry too much about the divorce rate.

1

This dynamic plays out in the popular press, where much of the news about marriage and divorce is derived from the National Marriage Project, founded at Rutgers University in 1997 and now based at the University of Virginia. A core mission of this organization is to “identify strategies to increase marital quality and stability.” In support of its mission, the National Marriage Project creates a sense of crisis around marriage and divorce rates and promotes marriage as a solution to a range of social problems (pdf).

According to Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, the media have become hooked on publications from the National Marriage Project as a quick and cheap sources of easily digested print. This would not be a problem if media outlets disclosed the biases of their source, but as noted in our book Sacred Cows, that doesn’t usually happen. For instance, between 2009 and 2012, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, USA Today and the New York Times all published articles originating from a report by the National Marriage Project claiming that the economic recession was saving marriages.

The evidence provided was that divorce rates fell between 2007 and 2008 after rising from 2005 levels. We have graphed the crude national divorce rate, or the number of divorces per 1000 members of the US population, for those years. Note that this measure of the divorce rate, like all measures, is flawed. Because it uses the total population as the base, it includes children and unmarried adults, which confuses interpretation; a lower divorce rate could result from a baby boom, or more pertinent to the current situation in the US, a lower marriage rate. The other problem is that several states have discontinued reporting divorces, and missing state numbers could distort the overall national profile.

Bearing in mind these limitations, our chart does indeed demonstrate that the divorce rate declined after the great recession began in 2007. However, when taken in context of overall trends and year-to-year variability, this change in divorce rate does not seem significant enough to warrant multiple stories in major national newspapers

(California, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota and Oregon have data missing from some of the years in the chart.)

Based upon rather odd logic, the director of the National Marriage Project, W. Bradford Wilcox, stated that thrift and meals at home were the cause of recession-strengthened marriages. It may well be that fewer people divorce during economic recessions; the data on that subject are murky and conflicting. However, a one-year blip in the divorce rate should not be used as evidence that the divorce rate is rising any more than a subsequent blip should be used as evidence that economic hardship makes marriages stronger.

Promoting marriage is not a bad goal. Most people would like to be happily married. It is also completely reasonable to worry about so many American marriages ending in divorce. No matter what the circumstances, divorce is painful for families and communities. The problem is that social and political agendas have muddied the water so much that we can’t have reasonable discussions based on rational facts. We are all being misled, not just about the trajectory of divorce rates in America, but about every aspect of our lives that powerful special interest groups care to manipulate. In the words of sportscaster Vin Scully, statistics get used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

In an ideal world, we could rely on a free press to present unbiased information in a thoughtful and measured fashion. We don’t live in that ideal world, but perhaps we can start by requesting improved transparency and disclosure by popular media about the biases of its sources. To that end, here is our disclosure: This article represents the opinions of two left-leaning egghead authors of a book about society’s attitudes surrounding marriage and divorce. Our goal is to promote rational discussion about marriage and family life in our country. Unfortunately, we can’t provide a single definitive statistical analysis of divorce, because none exists. But hopefully we have helped to clear up a small, persistent misapprehension: The divorce rate in America isn’t as high as 50%, and at least for the moment, it isn’t rising.

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5 Common Myths of Divorce

When love and respect no longer thrive in your marriage, and you have exhausted every possible option to save your marriage, then divorce is the next step. But when the time comes to divorce, work towards a mature and respectful agreement. Try not to believe in the myths.

You hear various types of divorce stories. Some divorces end amicably and some end dreadfully. Along with the stories come myths that are not necessarily true in all divorces. Each couple who has divorced or is in the process does not go through the same emotions.
I divorced my first husband many years ago because love no longer existed. The blame was not put on one person; we were both to blame. Marriage was just not for us. But, our divorce was respectful. Nevertheless, not every divorce ends the same way.
Though each divorce ends differently, here are five common myths of divorce:

• Having children will prevent divorce. It is never a wise decision to have a child as a way to prevent a divorce from happening. Two things can occur: there is no divorce but both parties are noticeably unhappy or the divorce takes place anyway. When a married couple has exhausted all options to save their marriage and divorce is the only way out, then let it take its course. Having a child to hold onto a spouse is irresponsible and selfish. Children are a blessing, not a game.

• Disagreements always lead to divorce. Most couples argue. My husband and I argue, but it doesn’t mean we have divorce in mind. Having disagreements once in a while is only natural. Couples share differences of opinions and have every right to express them. Opinions may lead to an argument. However, when couples truly love each other and respect one another, they pull back from the disagreement. Many people fail to understand marriages are not always a fairytale, though there are many fairytale moments. Disagreements are inevitable, but not always the reason for divorce.

• Divorce is always expensive. Not all divorces are expensive. Many couples choose to handle their divorce outside of court. They hire lawyers that will help them set up a mutual agreement. That approach reduces the costs of divorce.

• Children will always stay with the mother. For the most part, children do stay with the mother. But this is not always the case. A mother doesn’t have to be unstable or incapable to handle her child to lose custody. If the judge handling the divorce case decides the child is in better hands with the father, the mother will lose custody. Moreover, once a child is of a certain age (each state has a specific age), he or she can decide who he or she wants to live with. It’s best when a couple makes all divorce decisions between them as a way to avoid risking losing full custody of the child.

• Divorce is always one person’s fault. No, divorce is not always one person’s fault. Most divorces are the result of both people. For example, if the man cheats on his wife, the wife is immediately blamed for his infidelity. She does not keep him happy. That's an unfair statement. Sometimes a couple just outgrow each other, and they understand they cannot live together.

When love and respect no longer thrive in your marriage, and you have exhausted every possible option to save your marriage, then divorce is the next step. But when the time comes to divorce, work towards a mature and respectful agreement. Try not to believe in the myths.

Article source: heraldtimesonline.com

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How Our Schools Can Better Serve Children of Divorce

What did you do over your summer vacation?

As the new school year gets underway across the country, it's time once again for students to take out paper and pencil and explain to their teachers all that's happened in their lives since the end of June. For many kids, this is an assignment filled with stories about Fourth of July cookouts, family vacations, and having fun with friends.

But what about children whose parents decided to separate or divorce sometime over the past two and half months? For these children, summer vacation was probably spent feeling worry, anxiety and even anger as they dealt with some pretty heavy topics... Is my parents' divorce my fault? Where am I going to live? Does my mom or dad (whoever moved out) still love me? Why do I have to move? Why can't I go to the same school?

With the hustle and bustle that comes with the beginning of the school year, I know that it can often go unnoticed that a new or current student is experiencing the transition of their parents' separation or divorce. Generally, school district student information forms do provide room for general custody information, but the information sought tends to be limited to providing a second address if parents do not reside together, or information pertaining to any situation in which a parent is not allowed to pick up or visit a child at school. I have never seen a school form that asks something as basic as, "Is this a new arrangement?"

No matter what grade they are in, children whose parents are recently divorced or separated need extra support, whether it's in the form of handing out an extra textbook because the child has two homes, providing a time to meet with the guidance counselor, or helping the student feel included in their new school. Are we doing all that we can? Here are some basic tips we and our school communities can take to keep them from falling through the cracks:

School Forms: In the thick pile of school paperwork required at the beginning of the school year, it would be beneficial to have a box that asks something along the lines of, "How long has the two-home arrangement been in place?" whenever separate parental addresses are given. This is so simple, but also gets right to the heart of the matter. For example, an answer of five years probably means something very different than five weeks in terms of what kind of support a child needs.

Guidance Counselor Assistance: As a divorce attorney, I am asked all the time by my clients for referrals to mental health counselors and family therapists who specialize in working with children of divorce. It would be beneficial for this kind of information to be available from other sources, such as a school guidance counselor. A list of local therapists that could be easily emailed to the parent would be ideal. Likewise, as the first layer of outside support that many children come in contact with, are the school guidance counselors trained and experienced in working with divorced families? As part of school district in-service trainings, this would be a worthy topic to explore.

The Role of Teachers: When it is learned that a child's parents separated or divorced over the summer, reaching out to the child's parents now can be a helpful way to start a more positive dialogue. On the part of the teacher, asking, "How can I help?" can open new doors for parents struggling to come up with effective co-parenting strategies concerning school. Even if it is just making sure both parents are invited to school events and receive school notices, or setting up an appointment for the parents to meet with the guidance counselor, these basic steps may do more than the teacher will ever realize to reduce stress and tension between parents.

Parents: Even if you live two towns over and have parenting time with your child over the weekends and not on school nights, consider yourself part of your child's school community. One of the easiest and most powerful ways to show your child that you are still a part of their life is to show that you care about their experience at school. In other words, attend back-to-school night, look over their school work or help out with homework when your child is in your care, and watch your child in their school sporting event. If possible, combining co-parenting and school obligations can be much more successful for children of divorce if it's a team effort. Open up about your recent divorce to other school parents; there can be a lot of useful tips that might come from others that have already gone through this. A recent Huffington Post article has added comments from divorced readers on tips for making the school season less stressful.

Are you taking these steps? And what about your child's school district? Have you told them about your divorce?

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Article source: suntimes.com 

Answering Your Kids' Hardest Divorce Questions

By: Jackie Pilossoph | For Sun-Times Media | @divorcedgirljp

There is nothing more gut-wrenchingly sad than when your child, wide-eyed and hopeful, asks you this question: “Are you and dad ever going to get back together?”

These and other divorce questions from kids can feel like a punch in the stomach, causing anxiety, guilt and sorrow. There are no magical answers to your kids’ questions because a divorce is undoubtedly very difficult for any child. But the silver lining is, if you put some thought into how you answer these difficult questions, if you have an unselfish attitude by filtering your answers, and if you end every answer with “We both love you,” it makes the sting a lot more manageable.

Here are six common questions kids ask after a divorce, and suggestions on how to answer them.
1. Why did you and mom/dad get divorced?
Because your dad was cheating on me. Because your mom drinks too much. Because dad and I can’t stand each other and we don’t want to live together anymore. This is what you are probably feeling and what you’d like to scream at the top of your lungs. The fact is, you can’t. A better way to answer this very difficult question is by saying something like this: “Your dad/mom and I once loved each other very much, but people change and people grow apart. Neither of us wanted that to happen, but it did. We tried very hard to work things out, but in the end, we both felt it was better. What hasn’t changed is that your dad and I still love you, and both of us will always be here for you.”

2. Do you still love mommy/daddy?
You might and you might not. If you do still love your ex, you might want to say, “There is a part of me that will always love your mom/dad. We share so much history, and most importantly, we share you. I will always love him/her for giving me you.” If you don’t feel like you can honestly say something like that, you could answer, “I don’t love your mom/dad in the same way I used to. I respect him/her and I think he/she is a good mother/father. But now we are just going to be partners in parenting and hopefully good friends, some day.”

3. Why do we have to be the only kids who have two houses?
Kids often feel like they don’t know any other kids whose parents are divorced, which we all know isn’t the case. The best answer makes it clear that they aren’t alone, and that there are lots of other kids in their same situation. Make sure to tell them, “We are still a family. We might not be the traditional family, but we have love and warmth and security in our home, and you have those same things in your mom’s/dad’s home. You aren’t ‘different.’”

4. Will you and mom/dad ever get remarried?
Be firm on this one. No need to give a child false hope. “No. Your mom/dad and I will never be remarried. But we both love you very, very much and we will both always be here for you.”

5. Why does mom/dad hate you?
Because he/she is a bitter, unhappy person who can’t let go of the past! Sound like something you want to say? Don’t! Instead, go with, “Mom/dad is very angry right now, mostly at the situation, not at me. Give him/her some time and hopefully he/she will act a little friendlier towards me. The most important thing for you to focus on is that mom/dad loves you.

6. Did you love mommy/daddy when you had me?
This is perhaps one of the most important pieces of information you can share with your child. I think it’s wonderful to tell your children stories of how you felt when you first met their mom/dad, how and why you fell in love, funny stories that happened when the two of you were dating, how he proposed, and my favorite, the story of your child’s birth. Kids love this so much, and it helps build self-esteem and self worth. The knowledge that you and your child’s mom/dad loved each other at one time is the biggest gift you can give them.

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Article source: suntimes.com 

Crazy Divorce Stories!

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9 Divorce Stories Too Ridiculous To Make Up

There's nothing like divorce to bring out the crazy in people.

Need proof? Below, we've assembled some of the most ridiculous responses to a Reddit thread asking divorce lawyers to reveal the craziest demands and antics they've had to deal with. Read what they had to say -- and try not to weep too hard for the sad, sorry state of humanity.

1. "I had a couple arguing for three hours over who got the kids on Christmas day, only to discover at the end that they were both Jewish." -msc2436

2. "Our case fell apart over a massage chair. They had two kids, but they couldn't let go of the damn chair." -lawschoollorax

(Image credit: Shin Taro via Getty Images)

3. "Took the couple two hours to decide who would get the groceries left in the fridge. Estimated value of the groceries was around $40. Two hours of my time, opposing counsel time, and mediator time added up to about $1,000. It all came down to a Costco/Sam's Club-sized jar of peanut butter. (Who keeps peanut butter in the fridge?!)" -ammjh

4. "I was in a mediation where it took the couple an hour and a half to split their personal property, retirement accounts, real property, and custody of their six-month-old son. The rest of the day, about four hours, was spent arguing about how to split the time with the dog. For the kid they just put, 'as agreed upon by the parties' but the dog had a strict calendered schedule working out holidays and strict pickup/drop-off times. I was ashamed to be a part of that unbelievable display." -FattyBinz

(Image credit: Tim Kitchen via Getty Images)

5. "My dad was a divorce attorney for some time. He said people would argue over $150 patio furniture for hours on end at a $300/hour rate (each side). It's not about the patio furniture, it's about sending a message to your b*tch of an ex-husband/wife." -spaceflunky

6. "I had a case where the estranged wife was calling my client's employer repeatedly, accusing him of theft and other white-collar crimes, [in an attempt] to get my client fired. The thing is, the children were with her, and she was also demanding child support. Which is based on his income. For the job from which she was trying to get him fired. (Fortunately, the employer was onto her BS and my client wasn't let go.)" -JournalofFailure

7."Marriage proposal from wife's new boyfriend while he was being questioned during her divorce proceedings. Classy." -KnowsTheLaw

(via Fuse via Getty Images)

8. "I dated a divorce lawyer and my favorite story from his work was the man who was super pissed that the division of assets was 50/50 and that his wife's lawyer had a forensic accountant who found his multiple offshore money stashes. In retaliation, he demanded half the dog. Not joint custody. Half of the dog, who was his wife's much beloved, very spoiled little buddy. He burned through thousands of dollars of legal fees just to make her cry, by demanding that the dog be put to sleep and its ashes split, 50/50. People are delightful!" -TheNightWitch

9. "I had a client completely sandpaper/key the finish off a brand new Maserati that was given to the wife pursuant to settlement agreement because he hated his ex so much. He also took off the tires. I also had a guy who funneled money over to his girlfriend, thinking he was slick hiding it from his wife. Girlfriend broke up with him and kept it." -RuskayaPrincesa

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Article source: Huffingtonpost.com