Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [69]
Julia said, “For a long time I wished my parents would get back together. Now I just wish that Reynold and I could live alone with Mom. I don’t like all the noise and mess at Al’s.”
Jean touched her daughter’s arm. “You’re not home very much.”
“I try not to be,” Julia said.
Jean said, “Last week Julia was busted at a party. Afterwards one of the mothers suggested we parents get together and make rules. We all work and no one is home after school to supervise. There are always empty houses available.”
Julia said, “Mrs. Snyder’s a creep. Don’t you dare get involved in that. Everyone drinks. You don’t know anything about it.”
Jean sighed. “Kids are different now. I had a roller-skating party for Julia’s eighth-grade birthday and it was an eye-opener. The kids talked filth. The rink had security people to check for drugs. Believe me, the rinks were different when I was a kid.”
Julia said, “Of course things are different. Why do you treat me like they aren’t? You have the same stupid rules for me that your mother had for you. Don’t you understand that I can’t live by those rules and have any friends?”
Jean looked hopelessly at me. “I want her to be safe.”
Clearly Julia had too much to handle—her parents’ divorce, the loss of her father, the new house, the new schools and the new stepfather and stepbrothers. Plus, she had all the issues that hit girls with puberty. Like many adolescent girls whose parents divorce, she turned to friends. She found a crowd who kept her away from home and gave her a sense of belonging. She used alcohol to forget.
Julia needed a place to talk about all of her losses. She needed to reconnect with her father. I suspected that she needed some guidance about sexuality, a drug and alcohol evaluation and maybe a support group for teen users. If she could sort through the pain she wouldn’t need to medicate it away.
I recommended family therapy. The rules regarding housework should be fair. Al’s boys could use more discipline. Jean agreed to discuss this with Al.
I asked Julia if she would like to come in alone. Julia uncurled her legs and looked hard at me. “Yes, as long as you don’t lecture me.”
I promised I wouldn’t.
My own thinking about divorce has changed in the twenty years I’ve been a therapist. In the late 1970s I believed that children were better off with happy single parents rather than unhappy married parents. I thought divorce was a better option than struggling with a bad marriage. Now I realize that, in many families, children may not notice if their parents are unhappy or happy. On the other hand, divorce shatters many children. As one girl said when I asked her how she felt living with her dad and seeing her mother once a month, “I try not to think of it; it hurts too much. I try not to feel anything.”
A Peruvian friend of mine who is studying in the United States commented on the number of children she knew in America whose parents were divorced. She said, “They are needier than Peruvian children. They have more material goods, but they all cry out for adult touch and attention.”
Of course, some marriages are unworkable. Especially if there is abuse or addiction involved, sometimes the best way out of an impossible situation is the door. Adults have rights, and sometimes they must take care of themselves, even when it hurts their children. Living in homes with unhappy parents who have stayed together for the sake of the children is by no means ideal for anyone. But divorce often doesn’t make parents happier. Certainly it overwhelms mothers and fathers, and it cuts many parents off from relationships with their children.
Many times marriages don’t work because people lack relationship skills. Partners need lessons in negotiating, communicating, expressing affection and doing their share. With these lessons many marriages can be saved. And if these lessons aren’t learned in the first marriage, they will have to be learned later or the next marriage will be doomed as well. So in the 1990s I try harder than I did in the 1970s to keep couples together