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Changing Landscapes of Family Life: Parents and Divorce
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Professor Carol Smart, Professor Of Sociology, University of Leeds
I. Overview
The main theme of this paper is a positive one, using data from a study of six families, conducted by the University of Leeds. People are managing their lives differently and with success in the face of the rising divorce rate.
There is a shift in thought from fault to misfortune in assessing divorce, from parental status to parental role and from distribution of assets to child support. The idea of the total breakdown of the family is losing currency. Similarly the clean break from the ex-partner is unrealistic.
II. Parenthood Post-Divorce
1. Fault-based Approach
The classic stance is of excluding the other parent as they have 'sacrificed' their right of access to their children. Many feel this way initially, though often their position becomes more sophisticated over time.
2. Misfortune-based Approach
Children should not lose contact with one of their parents simply because the parents no longer wish to remain in a relationship.
3. Shared Parenting
Shared parenting post-divorce is difficult; there are emotional as well as logistic problems. Mothers are primary carers in most cases; this gender contract is broken by divorce.
The problems of a bad relationship continue, and sometimes increase, with divorce. Roles defined over the course of lengthy relationships are difficult to break with. Children are often fully aware of these issues.
The relationship continues after divorce. Courts procedures cannot replace this relationship. Looking after children requires each parent to consider the other parent's feelings.
4. Parents Pressurising Children
Parents over-invest in children during the primary stages of divorce. Children require space to live and develop. Shared residency is considered a bonus, yet it requires children to make an emotional, as well as physical, journey. They must psychologically and emotionally adjust on a weekly basis.
Parents can make this process easier or harder for children, for example by allowing or forbidding telephone contact with the other parent. Fairness towards both parents is the key issue for children. They are sensitive to avoid giving the advantage to either parent.
III. Children's Response to Shared Residency
Children's enthusiasm for and satisfaction with shared residency deteriorate with age. Children in puberty are perhaps spending too much time with their parents. They feel obliged to do so, yet they are under pressure from the demands of a normal social life for a child.
IV. The Changing Role of Step-Parents
1. The Child's Perspective
The term and the role are both problematic. When a child is in contact with both parents, there is often no gap to be filled. Children question the role of the step-parent. They are more often viewed as a parent's partner and not as an additional parent. It is not a direct relationship and children establish these boundaries very early and clearly.
Children feel an emotional burden is lifted when parents acquire new partners, and are, on reflection, keen for them to exist.
2. The Parent's Perspective
There is less of a social need for a new partner. Often parents, especially women, felt there was not sufficient room for another man. This has given rise to 'living apart together' (LATs).
Parents form relationships with new partners based on a degree of physical separation, and it helps keep their lives compartmentalised. The partners are unwilling to live with the single parents' children. It is perhaps easier on children if new partners do not live in.
V. Grandparents
Grandparents frequently provide support and stability. However, they may have the same faults as the parents. Grandparents can contribute to the pressure on children. They do form a part of the development of the family. Parents should, and often do, aim to cultivate relationships between children and grandparents. This is achieved by being attentive to the grandparents' feelings.
VI. Conclusion
Family links can and, if worth preserving, ought to be maintained post-divorce. Children should not be expected to carry the whole emotional burden. More parents are rising to this moral challenge. Relationship practice is altering to accommodate this aim.
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