any parent who says divorce doesn’t harm children is deluded
SOME time ago, I was asked to see a sevenyear-old girl who was exhibiting signs of extreme anxiety. She had taken to wetting the bed and pulling out clumps of her hair.
Her parents were baffled as to why this had started happening, assuring me that although they had just divorced, it hadn’t affected their daughter at all.
But it took only a few minutes of us all being in the same room before they started bickering, making snide comments to one another.
Was it any wonder that their daughter — caught in the middle of this and feeling torn and confused — felt overwhelmed and unable to cope? That sort of psychological turmoil has to manifest itself in some way.
That little girl came to my mind this week when I read about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Already, their impending divorce has turned ugly, with allegations about drink, drug-taking and physical violence being thrown around.
The question that interests and worries me, though, is what effect such a public separation will have on their six children, some of whom are biological, some adopted.
Separation for anyone is a process of practical decisions and stressful ‘he/she said this’, ‘he/she did that’ conversations in solicitors’ offices.
But among the legal and the verbal battles, the emotional fallout for the families involved is routinely underestimated. The psychological effects are brutal because it’s no exaggeration to say that divorce is like a bereavement.
Even where it is clear that separation is the best option, people still feel a profound sense of loss.
Partly it’s a lament for the days when the relationship was happy; partly it is a grieving process for the loss of a future that might have been but now never will.
Yet many people feel unable to express this. Often, sadness is eclipsed by anger instead. The mourning, sometimes unspoken and unacknowledged, happens later. Then as the dust settles, bitterness can also set in. And it’s this resentment, I think, that is so toxic not just for the adults involved but for any children, too.
aS A doctor, I am tired of seeing the collateral damage of feuding parents. In the worst cases, the adults use their innocent children as pawns in the battle and make no efforts to disguise their ill-will towards their ex-partners.
Of course, I completely accept that sometimes relationships don’t work. Even those couples who do stay together can often be unhappy. A study this week showed that the number of people living in deeply troubled relationships has doubled in five years.
I also know that it is often better for children’s mental health to be brought up by separated parents rather than endure a tempestuous home life with two warring adults.
Even so, the potential for damage to the children in acrimonious divorces is considerable.
Teachers regularly say that they can immediately tell if a pupil’s parents are divorcing: the child begins behaving badly, or their school work suddenly suffers, or both.
But it is not just the actual process of divorce that impacts negatively on children.
It’s also long after the divorce, when the parents are faced with the vista of time stretching out before them as single people, and they attempt to assemble a new life for themselves. All too often, it seems that divorced parents have a capacity to act with staggering selfishness.
‘I’ve given the best years of my life to my kids — now it’s my time,’ seems to be the overriding mantra as people seek exciting new relationships to make them feel better or distract from their sudden loneliness.
I do not doubt that divorce can make individuals feel fragile and alone, and that setting up another stable home with someone else can be good for children. Indeed, the evidence supports this.
BUT time and again, I have seen parents of both sexes ignore the instability that they bring into their children’s lives in their own desperate bid to find a new partner.
Even worse are fathers — and it does tend to be men — who set up home with another woman with children, find themselves with a ready-made second family and cut their own offspring adrift.
Research shows that the sense of rejection this inflicts triples the risk of emotional problems in the children, who are already at increased danger of behavioural problems, anxiety and depression as a result of having divorced parents.
So, what’s the solution? It sounds obvious, but it is crucial for divorcing parents to understand that despite their complex and often furious feelings towards their former partner, for their children that person is still a parent.
Speak to a therapist, let off steam to your friends, but don’t drag the children into it.
It sounds easy, but it’s incredibly hard to consistently protect your children from the emotional turmoil of divorce and life as a divorcee.
It takes a lot of hard work to have a good marriage. It takes just as much to have a good divorce.