Happy Mother’s Day, Girls
May 4, 2011
THOUGH IT IS indecent in parts and not recommended for children, this Mother’s Day video called “Dad’s New Girlfriend” is hilarious and honest. The actress is Stephanie Courtney.
— Comments —
Jill F. writes:
This video was funny but it also hit me like a sucker punch in my stomach. Did you notice the expressionless faces of those poor girls? Those are the faces of children who have lost the foundation of their existence; their family.
The study that blew apart all the theories about divorce being “better” for children resulted in the book The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce:A 25 Year Landmark Study by Judith Wallerstein, Julia Lewis and Sandra Blakeslee. I highly recommend it.
This study compared children who had parents with “friendly” divorces with children from horrific divorce situations as well as children who grew up with parents who had terrible marriages. The researchers followed the children for 25 years and found that in all cases of divorce the children struggled far more with depression, relationship problems (increased promiscuity among girls) etc.
Among those children whose parents remained together in a bad marriage (and some were really terrible and dysfunctional) the results were far better than those children whose parents divorced. Children who grew up with unhappily married parents knew that they didn’t want what their parents had but they did not fear future divorce like the children of divorced parents,ultimately believing that they could stay married in their future marriage because their parents had done so.
The book is poignantly written. I recommend it even though it was published quite a long time ago.
So, all this is to say, that as the daughter of divorced parents with a father who had many girlfriends…the video was funny but sad too. I felt so sorry for those girls.
Laura writes:
Yes, of course. And, if you actually lived through something like that, I would imagine it’s difficult to laugh. But the video is done more from a child’s perspective than many of the popular portrayals of divorce.
Wallerstein’s book is excellent. It is only nine years old. The children of divorce she interviewed over 25 years showed serious problems in adulthood. The effects of divorce are not short-lived or confined to childhood. However, Wallerstein did not call for a repeal of unilateral divorce laws. Instead, she proposed more marriage counseling – a serious weakness in the book.
