“THE CHILD-FOCUSED DIVORCE” is the arresting title of an article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal that unabashedly promotes divorce. Illustrated with smiley family photos, a picture of a contented divorcée outside her home, and cartoon-like graphics of cuddly children, the piece by Elizabeth Bernstein is nauseatingly unsympathetic to the young while all the time appearing to champion their interests. Here is one more entry in the ideological contest to wreck as many homes as possible.

Child-focused divorce? Isn’t that like, say, “homeowner-focused burglary” or “teller-focused bank robbery?” In other words, there is no such thing as child-focused divorce in any meaningful sense of the term. That parents may mitigate the damage wrought by divorce does not make it child-focused. A divorce is only child-focused in the sense that all the damage is focused on the children.

Here is most of the article, with my comments in brackets:

 When Brian Sibley and Rachael Brownell sat down at their kitchen table to discuss getting a divorce, they agreed on one thing: They wanted to minimize the damage the split would do to their daughters. [ How many couples sit down at their kitchen table to discuss their pending split-up in a reasonable fashion? And, if they can manage calm agreement, why are they divorcing at all?]

Mr. Sibley and Ms. Brownell, who had been married for six years, each went through their own parents’ divorces at the age of 10 and had felt torn between two parents. The two agreed to spare the girls that experience by focusing on their needs. [This is the cherished fantasy of every divorcing couple. There is no couple that hasn’t said this in the event of divorce. And yet Mr. Sibley and Ms. Brownell think they have discovered something entirely new.] They told the 4-year-old and the 7-year-old twins that they would all still be a family but that families don’t always live together. [To the child, families cease being families when they choose not to live together.]

“We wanted to acknowledge this is a heartbreak, and this is not how we saw things going, but we still love you,” says Ms. Brownell, a 43-year-old author from Bellingham, Wash. [They say they love their children and yet openly deny them love.] She recalls feeling lonely and embarrassed and never discussing her parents’ divorce with them—feelings she didn’t want her own daughters to have to repeat. [A child who has been wounded by a parent’s actions typically does not feel comfortable talking about it with the parent, and may be completely unable to articulate his feelings anyway.]

“Children can absolutely thrive after a divorce, but it takes work” on the parents’ part, says Christy Buchanan, professor of psychology at Wake Forest University and co-author of “Adolescents After Divorce.” [Children can thrive after death of a parent or kidnapping. Children can thrive while undergoing chemotherapy. But usually they don’t thrive in these circumstances. In the case of divorce, the negative consequences have been overwhelmingly documented.]

The divorce of parents has been blamed for children’s behavior problems, poor grades in school and even trouble in their own romantic relationships as adults. One study says the intensity of conflict between parents is one of the best predictors of how kids will do after a divorce.[The divorce of parents has been blamed? No, the divorce of parents is the proven cause of behavior problems, poor grades and trouble in romantic relationships for many children and adults.]

There is some good news: The divorce rate, which peaked around 1980, is at its lowest level since 1970. Still, some 1.1 million U.S. children, or 1.5%, lived with a parent who had divorced in the previous year, according to the Census Bureau’s Marital Events of Americans: 2009 survey. [There is no good news. More people than ever are not marrying at all. And the divorce rate, as measured by the number of divorces per the number of marriages every year, has remained steady at about 50 percent. Cohabitation has risen remarkably and we have the divorce culture to thank for that.]

… Kevin Lee, a social worker in Dartmouth, Mass., runs support groups [How much do they cost?] for children of divorce called the Banana Splits [How sweet!], one for kids in second and third grades, one for fourth and fifth grades. Each group meets for 90 minutes every other week for two 12-week sessions; high school kids who also are children of divorce help out. Children are referred from local schools and area therapists.

“Children come into the room and hear other kids talking and realize they are not alone,” Mr. Lee says. [The children of divorced parents have lost their own parents’ marriage, not someone else’s.]

…Mary Ann Aronsohn, a Los Angeles marriage and family therapist, says parents should think of co-parenting as a business venture and treat their ex-spouse as they would a colleague or a client. Would you yell at a client, denigrate him to others or call him at home at all hours? Don’t do it to your ex, either. [If one can treat divorce like a business, why not treat marriage like a business? Clearly, those who possess the skill to detach themselves and deal unemotionally with a spouse don’t really need to get divorced and those who don’t possess that skill are not going to enter this fantasyland of easily resolved conflict. This advice is worthless to the mass of humanity.]

…. Since their separation two years ago, Ms. Brownell and Mr. Sibley have worked together. During a weekend when their 6-year-old daughter was staying with Mr. Sibley, Ms. Brownell got a text from her ex saying a children’s parade in town was starting soon, and the little girl wanted to dress up as either a dinosaur or a ballerina.

Ms. Brownell rummaged through her house looking for the costumes, then rushed downtown. She found her ex and her daughter just as the parade was receding down the block. Both parents helped their daughter put on the dinosaur costume, then ran with her to catch up with the others. They walked in the parade, all three together. “You could see her little, sunny face lit up with joy,” says Ms. Brownell. “That was one of the best moments of my life.” [If it is this much work to be divorced, why not stay married? Also, how will future spouses fit into this scenario?]

In the sidebar, a psychology professor tells us about the “five C’s.”  This is the sort of cutesy list of priorities one might leave for the petsitter. Divorcing parents must pay attention to: Closeness, Conflict, Change, Care-giving and – here’s the important one – Cash. Cash. Pay your children off. Maybe this is what Ms. Brownell’s own divorcing parents didn’t know. 

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                                                                                        — Comments —

Jesse Powell writes:

From the article: 

“There is some good news: The divorce rate, which peaked around 1980, is at its lowest level since 1970. Still, some 1.1 million U.S. children, or 1.5%, lived with a parent who had divorced in the previous year, according to the Census Bureau’s Marital Events of Americans: 2009 survey.” 

When they say the divorce rate peaked around 1980 and that today it is at its lowest level since 1970 they are referring to the number of divorces per 1,000 married women Age 15 and older. According to that measure this claim is indeed true. In 1980, the rate was 22.6 divorces per 1,000 marriages per year; in 2009 the rate was 16.4 per 1,000; in 1970 it was 14.9 per 1,000. However, the divorce rate as measured by the number of divorces compared to the number of marriages in a given year has remained at about 50 percent.

The figure of 1.1 million U.S. children, or 1.5% (which appears to be an error), living with a parent who divorced in the last year comes directly from the “Marital Events of Americans: 2009” report by the American Community Survey. The exact numbers in the report estimate that 1,100,401 children experienced divorce in the past year and that there are a total of 65,927,475 children living in households. 1,100,401 divided by 65,927,475 equals 1.669%; it does not equal 1.5%. Rounding to one digit would give 1.7%. It seems the reporter made an error in giving the “1.5%” figure or else they are doing very sloppy rounding not following conventions. 

Another thing that bugs me about the presentation is that an ordinary person would assume that being told that 1.7% of children experienced divorce in the past year would mean that 1.7% of children with married parents saw their parents divorce in the past year. However, this is not how the data is given. The universe under consideration is all children, not just children with married parents. 

The Marital Events report estimates that 46,218,990 children live with married parents meaning that 2.38% (1,100,401 / 46,218,990) of children with married parents saw their parents divorce last year. Of course, none of the children without married parents went through divorce.

Michael S. writes:

The article says they had been married for six years, but they were concerned about their four-year-old and their seven-year-old twins.

Married six years, with seven-year-old twins. Were they seven at the time? Seems that way. If not, then the writing was sloppy.

Also, that phrase “children of divorce” is just plain creepy. Children are supposed to be the fruit of holy matrimony. I suppose the phrase “children of divorce” must be some sort of shorthand, conscious or not, for the phrase “children [who are trying to cope with the fallout] of divorce.”

Laura writes:

You’re right. The phrase “children of divorce” is chilling. 

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