Categories: uncategorized
Date: 26 September 2011 13:01:49
The Children of Divorce: The Loss of Family as the Loss of Being by Andrew Root is an exploration about the impact of divorce on the very being of “children of divorce”. It’s a book which I read as a last minute thing in case it was useful for the research, having found it in the Durham Cathedral Bookshop but which I found didn’t connect directly in with what I was doing. It did prove a really interesting book to read, though. According to the blurb Root gained his PhD at Princeton Theological Seminary and is assistant professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary; he is I guess then an authorative voice. This is not simply a piece of research by an academic working within his field though. It’s deeper than that, containing a level of reflexivity which at times makes the book very autobiographical and exposing a deep level of pain concerning the divorce of both his own and his wife’s parents. Reading this then I was struck at times by the paradoxical truth within research like this. There is a danger that the writer may be too close personally to distance themselves in the way which research needs if it is to have any objective power. On the other hand as David Martin once said, in a guest lecture to our MA group at Kent which was to change my life, the best research is always about subjects which we have encountered firstly through our own experiences or non-academic interests. The central argument of the book which Root uses the Sociology of Giddens and Philosophy of Heidegger to support is that the ontological being of a person comes from the relationship their biological parents have. He therefore concludes that children of divorce, (but also adopted children and children who have been conceived via artificial insemination) suffer from a fragmentation of their being and a resulting sense of brokenness. They are, he argues, on a constant search for meaning and affirmation/ confirmation of who they are. This in turn leads them into a state of anxiety. The book continues that contrary to what people like Constance Ahrons claims in her book “The Good Divorce” there can be no “positive” divorce when children are involved. Additionally, because of the ontological element Root also claims that the negative effects of divorce cannot simply be looked at in terms of a lack of social capital as theorists such as Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur claimed in their study Growing Up With A Single Parent. Finally, Root looks at how parents, congregations and friends can support “children” of divorce. The focus within this section is on giving young people, particularly, space to express their feelings and listening to them. He also talks of the importance of getting young people into routine in order to enable them to find ontological security. As somebody whose own studies have focused on the experiences of single parents, often divorced, and as the divorced mother of a teenager, as I say, I found the book interesting. The first thing I want to say is that I do not dispute that divorce of parents is something which touches the core of a person’s being whether it occurs when the person is a child, young person or adult. I agree that the disruption and subsequent questions and “otherness” which arise do raise questions of an ontological nature about being. However, I do question whether Root over-emphasises the negative impact and whether he simplifies the situation by not looking at the way the “who am I?” questions relate to a much wider set of relationships than purely the biological one or ones which relate from experiencing being part of a step-family. Divorce of parents most commonly occurs when people are children or young adults. This is a stage when those young people are seeking to form their identities and answer “who am I?” questions in relation to the vocations and career paths they should follow, their sexual orientations and a host of other aspects of their personalities. For an increasing number of people in our late or post-modern societies these are ongoing questions which they may struggle with long into adulthood. They are often questions which can lead people into feeling that they are “the other” or “different because...” in part because of the questions they raise within the individual to do with their own being but also because of the way others interact with them and strengthen or challenge the conclusions they are coming to. When they are challenged the feelings of “not fitting in” or of dissonance when what they feel they are and what they think they should be are so different that it becomes overwhelming. The result is the epidemic of young people we have who are on the “happy pills” to try and overcome the feelings of hopelessness or lack of self-esteem they have. Being the child of divorce can be one aspect of this, but it cannot be looked at in isolation as the over-riding reason for this questioning of the self for these people. It is, I think, far more complex than Root presents. Also, I am concerned that Root suggests that brokenness remains the overarching view of the self. Just as with their parents I would want to suggest that it is part of a cycle of being which often moves onto something more positive. In struggling to make sense of this extra aspect of their experience I want to suggest that these young people might actually, if given access to the right social capital, become stronger as a result. That is not to say divorce is “right” or “to be encouraged” but it is to say that there is a much wider story than Root puts forward and as with all things related to single parenthood and religion a huge opportunity for further study in this subject, not least the impact on the religiosity of these children. *tried to sort the paragraphing when it went funny after I cut and pasted this from the Word document I originally wrote it in, not sure the issue hope it hasn't detracted too much*.