Sins of divorce

[skeptic]

When I was first divorced, I had a terrible personal guilt, as I am from the period when "divorce" was seen as a black mark on you personally, as well as a sin within most established churches. We were fortunate to have not had kids to enter into the issues.

 

But, I was helped by my local minister who explained to me a slightly different take on "until death does us part". His view was that the death is of the love and commitment between the two people, not the physical death. God, who is love incarnate, would not expect two people who could not truly love each other, or even possibly respect them, to stay together because they made a "poor choice", especially if very young at the time.

 

That may fly in the face of many, but it still makes sense to me even today.

 

But children need to be part of the mix, and everything possible done to mitigate the negative stuff they face.

[CalicoPenn]

It seems everyone is ignoring a rather relevant point that was made about this particular study - that it doesn't measure long-term effects.

 

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a divorce will take a short term toll on a child. But we have no idea what the long-term effect is on that child.

 

Beavah points out that the loss of a parent to an accident or illness is hard on a child but the child gets through it. In the short term, the effects are likely to be similar to what was described in this study - but how long does it take for the child to get through such a trauma? 1 month? 1 year? 2 years? 5 years? If a child can get through the trauma of the loss of a parent through accident or illness, what makes folks think a child can't get through the loss of a parent through divorce?

 

What about the loss of a parent to prison? What about the child going through their own traumatic illness/injury? How long does it take to get through that?

 

Trauma of any kind like this will affect a child - it doesn't matter what the cause is, the key to getting them through it is love and support - by parents, neighbors, friends, teachers, grandparents, etc.

 

Could one of the factors be that when a parent dies, those surrounding the child are less judgemental that when parents divorce? Instead of standing at the top of a mountain declaring that divorce is a sin, how about keeping that opinion to yourself and support the child when they need it the most.

 

Parents divorce, there is no reason at all that anyone should make the children suffer because they don't like divorce.

[Engineer61]

"Divorce is too easy and simple to do."

 

Eh? I don't buy that one for a micro-second. BTDT.

 

Divorce takes a long term toll on everyone. Parents, children, grandparents, friends (of both the adults and children).

 

Anyone who believes otherwise has been reading too much "research".

 

If you want to know what divorce is like, go talk to people who have done it.

 

A day in my shoes folks ... a day in my shoes.

(This message has been edited by Engineer61)

[Engineer61]

A good friend of mine divorced 15 years ago...a devout Catholic... they were married for 25 years, they had two daughters.

 

Her husband, a salesman, had multiple affairs (sometimes affairs with two or three mistresses at the same time), was an alcoholic, used and trafficked drugs, evaded taxes, etc.

 

When the youngest daughter turned 18, he packed a suitcase and left the state. The house was foreclosed on, he filed for bankruptcy, never paid his spousal support, the creditors came after her...she ended up paying all of his debts off.

 

He blamed the divorce on her to the kids, they moved away and no longer speak to her.

 

He died a couple of months ago....deep in debt...the creditors are coming after her again.

 

Not certain what her "sin" was.

 

[Beavah]

If the children being studied "entered kindergarten in 2008" as the article says, and assuming these are kids with regular school years, they would be finishing SECOND grade right around now.

 

Yah, wondered about that so I looked it up.

 

Da actual study started with the kindergarten class of 1998-99, part of a big federal study called the Early Childhood Longitudinal study.

 

The blogger in Eagledad's article doesn't type da language very well. She meant to say that the study was published in 2008, not that the research was started in 2008. A study published in 2008 probably used data through 2006, which would fit.

 

B

 

[NJCubScouter]

Yes Beavah, that would make more sense. Of course it raises a new question, why is this person writing a news article (you call it a blog but it looks a little more official than that) about a study that was published three years ago? It's not exactly news. And if it is a blog, it's not exactly "at the speed of the Internet."

 

And as I said before, it makes one wonder what else in the article is incorrect.

[perdidochas]

I think the reporter did a poor job of figuring out the facts. I think we'll have to wait until the author publishes the data in a scientific publication (with a good description of methodology, etc.). Not to offend journalists out there, but most cannot adequately interpret and describe scientific methodology/research.

 

That said, data obtained in 2008 pretty much means it's a current study. It takes a while to get from the data stage to the publishing stage, especially for a Ph.D. candidate who is writing his dissertation based on this study he performed.

[NJCubScouter]

Oh, I based "2008" on what Beavah said. But here it is: http://www.asanet.org/images/journals/docs/pdf/asr/Jun11ASRFeature.pdf

It is from the June 2011 edition of the American Sociological Review. It looks very scientific with a lot of equations and stuff, so I am going to let those of you who read that sort of thing read it and tell the rest of us what it really says.

 

I did, however, read the last sentence: "These

observations preclude unwarranted generalization

of the current results and call for an

extension of the analytic framework to

improve scholarly understanding of divorce

and the development of affected children."

 

It sounds like something a scientist might say. As opposed to someone writing an article about an article on "Yahoo news", who did exactly what the article author said NOT to do, draw unwarranted generalizations. Not to mention, I doubt there is anything about "sin" in the article.

[packsaddle]

I didn't see mockery in the post by CCbytrickery, sorry.

I AM reminded of the families next door when I was a very young boy. The first family had an abusive father. I could hear him beating his wife and slapping his boys around. The sound of the impact of fist on head is one that I will never forget. Nor the sight of those bruises. One of those boys learned well and took to beating on me. They eventually moved. The next family had a father with an alcohol problem and several beautiful little girls. He would come home drunk and then the fights would begin. It got so that people from all around the neighborhood would gather at our back steps to listen and snicker at the private hell unfolding for that family. One evening, when all of us children were playing in the yard, the mother started up again with a shriek. The girls were mortified and I will always remember the terrible look of shame on their faces as they attempted to laugh it off.

I do know the outcome of those families. I hardly think that those children were better off living in those private hells than they would have been living with a divorced parent. The boys of whom I first wrote at least would have stopped being beaten and they wouldn't have had to endure that physical abuse to their mother.

The girls were terribly scarred from all of it. Those scars have lasted a lifetime. I doubt that divorce could have done worse.

[Scoutfish]

Personally, I'd rather see a child living in a single parent home full of love than a married house of anguish and fighting.

[packsaddle]

OK, those were some negatives. Now the positives: this unit has about 50% of its boys from single-parent families. Some of the parents have admitted that they like scouting for the positive male role models (why can't my wife see this in me? Oops, they must be thinking about the OTHER leaders)

Anyway, without exception, those boys with single parents are doing just as well and from my view are indistinguishable from those from two-parent homes except that their 'dads' are not as omni-present as the others. The father of one died. Another dad abandoned the family early on. One had a mid-life crisis and the parents just split recently. Pretty much all manner of divorce or separation and the boys seem to be doing ok in spite of it all. I mention these things not to 'disprove' anything but to merely note that sometimes youth are far more resilient than we give them credit for.

[Scoutfish]

Pack, I agree. Some kids have issued wether there are two parents or just one. Some kids are just fine haviong one parent instead of two.

 

Plus, like you said, what about death? What about military where dads ( or moms) are away for a few years at a time ( war going on right now)?

 

Then you also have married parents whop kinda sorta go through the motions. Maybe mom or dad is a workaholic and never spends time with Jr anyways.

 

Some kids need attention, others just want to be part of a crowd, other wish people would kepp their distance, and then you have those who just go with the flow no matter what the flow is.

 

 

[qwazse]

NJ It looks very scientific with a lot of equations and stuff, so I am going to let those of you who read that sort of thing read it and tell the rest of us what it really says.

 

Well, I usually charge big bucks for this sort of thing but for you guys ...

 

The study is as much about applying the "latest-and-greatest" innovations in statistics as it is about the impact of divorce. You see, there are plenty of projects looking at larger #s of kids that show divorce puts kids at a unique disadvantage (more than other causes of single parenthood), but each of those have disadvantages. Probably the most striking, is that they observe kids at a single point in time -- usually after the divorce has occurred. This means you don't know if anything that distinguishes children of divorce reflects the impact of the divorce itself, or something that was going prior to the divorce. (As distasteful as it would be to blame child traits for parents' decisions, if you don't work to rule out that possibility, the science is incomplete.)

 

As you already noted, gathering data over time is, well, time consuming and laborious. What most folks don't realize is that the math required to interpret that kind of data is fairly new. Slicing it one way may tell you one thing; another way, something completely different. If you slice it every way possible, the math may work out by pure dumb luck. SO this guy sliced it several ways but was very specific in his choice of "slices". Thus all the verbage about the math.

 

The upshot of it all?

- The 146 children of divorce were worse off than kids whose bio parents stuck together.

- The "lower scores" (and the author looked at several) were not a factor of anything pre-divorce.

- Things did not get worse and worse for the kids with divorce. However far "behind" they fell during the year of the divorce, they stayed that distance behind for the remainder of the study.

 

What about that "unwarranted generalization" caveat? Well it's partly because the author is only talking about a small number of kids relative to the number of variables being examined. But it's also a self-serving statement that we all throw in to justify our jobs. (Translate: "This paper hasn't answered all the questions, so please fund us so we can keep working.")

 

Bottom line, unless spouses are abusive or promiscuous (bringing violence or disease into the family), divorce hurts kids. It seems to be a single hit that puts them behind other folks (even the kids with "married parents whop kinda sorta go through the motions" Scoutfish mentioned). Kids don't exactly catch up right away from it, but whatever problems arise aren't compounded over the years.

 

It's sort of a bad-news/good-news scenario much like it seems most of us have observed in practice.

[CCbytrickery]

The problem with studies like this is that they cannot determine exactly what caused the final results of the study. It only shows that divorce MAY play a part in a child's behavior. Some children are going to be behind in school, withdrawn, angry--whether the parents are married or divorced has no bearing on the matter. Some children will excel in school, be outgoing and cheerful--whether the parents are married or divorced.

 

The study cannot show that little Suzy would have grown up to be a lawyer, with a house in the suburbs, married to her childhood sweetheart and has 3 children and a dog and a cat, had her parents not divorced. The study can only show what that little Suzy has grown up to be a drug addict, living in squalor, with 5 kids that she has lost to the system and no clue who the fathers could be, because her parents divorced.

 

If you could take little Suzy and put her in two different scenarios, THEN you could tell exactly what factors come into play in changing her life. Unless you do so, you have a biased study.

 

I was raised in a 2 parent home, until my mother died when I was 8; before she died I was withdrawn and had few friends--that did not change or get worse after she died--that is just the way I was. My father remarried, a few years later, to a woman that was incredibly vicious to me. He divorced her 2 years later, not because of what she did to me, but because she cheated on him. I was happier after they divorced, although he could have cared less about my feelings.

 

Does divorce hurt kids? Yes. Sometimes, though, it is better for the long term.

 

But it is still not on you or anyone else to judge this sin--doesn't Christianity preach love and forgiveness and helping one another? Or is that only if you fit into that rigid mold of perfectness, that so many avid churchgoers seem to hold as the only way to be?

 

[Beavah]

Actually, CCbytrickery, what I think qwazse was sayin' about the study was that it did adjust for prior school ability and socioeconomics and all da rest so as to isolate the effect of divorce. That is to say, they took every effort to avoid selection bias. And when yeh do that, divorce has a substantial negative effect. It puts kids behind where they would have been, and that behind-ness is persistent. If yeh end up a grade level behind your peers, yeh aren't goin' to "catch up" because they are continuing to move forward, too. On the upside, da study suggested divorce was a one-time hit, so while yeh end up behind, you don't end up getting further and further behind.

 

Unless of course divorce triggers da other emotional effects it often does, like depression, drug use, etc.

 

I think yeh misunderstand Christianity, too. Christians have values, eh? We believe in right and wrong. Murder is wrong. Murder should be condemned as a choice. Murder should be punished. At the same time, it is an act of love and charity to visit the murderer in prison and care for his needs and try to change his heart. Yeh condemn the choice, but not the person. Similarly there is nothing inconsistent about considering divorce wrong, of condemning divorce as a choice. Divorce hurts people. At the same time, it is an act of love and charity to help a family goin' through a divorce, to care for their needs and try to change their heart. Yeh never condemn the individual person, even though their choices have hurt people. Yeh do what you can to help 'em make reparations and do better.

 

We all make poor choices that hurt ourselves and others at times. That's what sin is, eh? Poor choices that hurt ourselves and others. We respond to others as we would want them to respond to us - to try to stop us from making a bad choice where they can; and if they can't, to offer us support to grow and learn and make reparations and do better next time.

 

Beavah