The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism

by Carrie L. Lukas

  Like life itself, marriages tend to swing between happiness and unhappiness. Many marriages that had been unhappy during the initial national survey had improved dramatically five years later; while many couples in stable, happy marriages either had divorced or become unhappy during the intervening years. In fact, nearly three out of four divorces that occurred between the interviews happened to adults who had reported being happily married five years earlier. Many of the unhappy marriages had seen just as dramatic turnarounds: The researchers estimate that two out of three unhappily married adults who avoided divorce or separation reported being happily married during the five years follow up interview. 9

  Similarly, Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher report in The Case for Marriage that 86 percent of married people who said they were unhappy in their marriage, but who stayed together, reported higher levels of marital happiness five years later. Some of the worst marriages showed the most dramatic turnarounds, leading the authors to conclude: “Permanent marital unhappiness is surprisingly rare among the couples who stick it out.”10

  How did these unhappy couples turn their marriages around? Researchers set out to answer that question and conducted focus group interviews with fifty-five formerly unhappy husbands and wives whose relationships had dramatically improved. They found that many of the currently happily married spouses had endured periods of significant problems—infidelity, verbal abuse, emotional neglect, and alcoholism—but that these couples had simply outlasted those problems. The couples explained that with time “many of the sources of conflict and distress ease.”11

  None of these researchers condemns divorce or fails to acknowledge the very poor state of many marriages. However, they caution that with divorce, individuals are often trading one set of causes for unhappiness with another set of equally serious problems. Those who divorce have to face many new challenges, including the response of their spouse and children to the divorce, potential custody battles, worries about child support and complying with visitation orders, new financial stresses, a potential move, and creating and maintaining new adult relationships.12

  Contrary to what Applewhite’s interviews suggest, many women do experience regret after divorce and wish they had given their marriages another chance. One survey of those who had divorced in New Jersey found that nearly half wished they and their spouse had tried harder to work through their difference. Four in ten divorced people in Minnesota said they had at least some regrets about their divorce and two in three wished they and their spouses had tried harder to work through their differences. 13

  One of the great hopes of many of those who divorce is that they will go on to find a new, committed relationship that will be more satisfying. In fact, most divorcees do go on to marry again. The rates of remarriage vary by age: about three quarters of women in their twenties who divorce will remarry; a little over half of those in their thirties will remarry; less than a third of those in their forties and just over one in ten of those over fifty. Age doesn’t have the same impact on men’s remarriage rates; men in their low forties are twice as likely to remarry as are women that age.14

  While these numbers fit the general perception that there are fewer men available for older divorced woman to marry, there are many potential explanations beyond the availability of partners. Women beyond child bearing age or who have already had children may be less interested in marriage than younger divorcees who are still hoping to build a family. Older divorcees may be more financially stable and so may not be seeking a partner who can help provide financial stability.

  A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read

  The Case against Divorce, Diane Medved, PhD; New York, Ivy Books, 1989.

  If rates of remarriage suggest that finding true love after divorce is common, the rates of divorce for second marriages shatter that fantasy. Roughly a quarter of all second marriages end within five years and between 60 to 85 percent of remarriages end within ten years.15 Even Applewhite, who is relatively bullish on single life, admits that most women find it a mixed bag. She begins by describing single life as “exhilarating” and says that many women thrive in the freedom.16 Yet she ultimately acknowledges that many divorced women are lonely and long for a male companion.

  Many women and men who exit unhappy marriage do go on to find love and happiness in their new lives. But so will many married couples who forgo divorce and instead stick out the rocky times. Women contemplating divorce should do so with their eyes wide open, aware that there are risks to leaving an unhappy marriage, just as there are risks to staying in one.

  The kids are all right

  Spouses who decide to divorce aren’t the only ones affected by the dissolution of their marriage. Divorce also has a profound impact on the children of that marriage.

  There often is a disconnect in discussions about the effects of divorce on children. One poll found that nearly two in three Americans agreed that divorce “almost always or frequently harms children,” but the same poll found that just one in three thought that parents should stay together and not get a divorce if the marriage isn’t working.17

  Most of the time, we take very seriously research that suggests a certain behavior could adversely affect kids. Even before a baby is born, prospective mothers are pouring over books and magazines on how best to increase her child’s future health and happiness, from avoiding a long list of foods—including sushi, tuna fish, soft cheeses, and caffeine—to sleeping on her left side and playing classical music to her growing belly. The chances of complications being caused by a cup of regular coffee or blue cheese dressing may be miniscule, but many mothers want to err on the side of safety.

  When it comes to divorce, however, society is more willing to sacrifice kids’ interests for the sake of parents. One explanation for why individuals may discount the experience of children in divorce is the ambiguity of the word “harm.” If the harm children experience is akin to getting a tetanus shot—a temporary pain that quickly recedes from memory while the protection it affords last for years—then it’s altogether appropriate to discount that harm. But if the harm is severe, long-lasting, and with effects that resonate for years, many parents may seriously consider maintaining a less than happy marriage in order to spare children that experience.

  In many discussions about divorce, the underlying assumption is that children may have short term problems, but if the parents are happier after the breakup, then ultimately the children will also be happier. This is Applewhite’s take on how to put children’s experience with divorce in perspective. The women she interviewed, while recognizing the immediate pain experienced by the children, felt that, if anything, the children’s long-term prospects were bolstered by divorce.

  Though full of remorse for the suffering it caused their families, especially in the immediate aftermath of the divorce, with only one exception the mothers interviewed for this book do not feel that the experience ultimately harmed their children. In fact, the majority feel their children actually benefited from the change, in ways both predictable and unexpected. Their experiences reflect what studies—including a twenty-year survey of twenty thousand families—have shown but what nevertheless is still not common knowledge: that divorce need not damage children.18

  Applewhite goes farther to describe her own children’s experience with her divorce, noting that “though their grief is real and ongoing, my children are better off because their father and I are no longer together.”19

  Divorce’s kid-lateral damage

  While Applewhite may be correct that research shows that divorce need not damage children, the weight of the evidence suggests that most divorces in fact do leave a lasting negative impact.

  Surveys regularly show that children of divorce are more likely to suffer from pathologies and exhibit antisocial behaviors. Adolescents in divorced families are more likely than peers from intact families to be depressed, get expelled from school, have to repeat a grade, be involved in behavioral problems such as stealing, vandalism,
or truancy, use marijuana, cocaine, and cigarettes, and become sexually active.20 Children raised in stepfamilies are three times more likely to be incarcerated as adults than are those from intact married families.21

  Some of the most interesting evidence on the long-term effects of divorce comes from Judith Wallerstein, who, along with Julia Lewis and Sandra Blakeslee, wrote the book The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Landmark Study. Wallerstein began studying a group of 131 children and families who were going through divorce in 1971. She continued to reevaluate them eighteen-months, five, ten, fifteen, and finally twenty-five years later. In the last interview, she was able to locate close to 80 percent of her subjects, now adults. She also interviewed a “control group” of children from intact families with similar backgrounds to her original subjects, whose family life ranged from “harmonious to wretched.”22

  Wallerstein’s research shatters what she calls the “cherished myths” about divorce—that happier parents necessarily lead to happier kids and that the trauma kids experienced at the time of divorce is temporary. Her work indicates that many children suffer after a divorce even if their parents are better off and that the effects of divorce continue to materialize years and even decades after the break up. She points to national studies that support her observations, and finds that children of divorce are more likely to exhibit a host of pathologies, from depression and learning disabilities to earlier sexual activity and more unplanned pregnancy, than their peers.

  This aggregate data needs to be viewed with caution. It’s no surprise that children are better off in a stable, loving home than in a violent marriage that ends in divorce. For a woman in a troubled marriage contemplating divorce, the option of a stable, loving home isn’t available. She’s already in a troubled marriage, and if she has come to the point of contemplating divorce, she isn’t optimistic that the marriage will improve. She has two options: stay in the troubled marriage or divorce. The information she needs is how her children will fair under these two scenarios.

  Wallerstein attempts to answer that question and to address bias in the data by comparing children with similar backgrounds. She interviewed control groups of children from intact families, some of whom were as violent and dysfunctional as any divorcing family she encountered, and others in which the parents were moderately unhappy throughout their marriage but choose to stay together. By comparing the children of divorce to these children who had similar upbringings and even similar family lives, she was better able to isolate how divorce itself affected the children:One in four of the children in this study started using drugs and alcohol before their fourteenth birthdays. By the time they were seventeen years old, over half of the teenagers were drinking or taking drugs. This number compares with almost 40 percent of all teenagers nationwide....

  Early sex was very common among girls in the divorced families .... In our study, one in five had her first sexual experience before the age of fourteen. Over half were sexually active with multiple partners during their high school years. In the comparison group, the great majority of girls postponed sex until the last year of high school or their early years in college. Those who engaged in sexual activity did so as part of an ongoing relationship that lasted an average of a year.23

  Wallerstein describes the many roles that children take on post-divorce, from acting as a caretaker to younger siblings or a grieving parent to adopting behaviors associated with the absent parent. She highlights how divorce reduces the amount of time that the child typically spends with the parent no longer living in the same residence, and at the same time often results in less access to their primary care-giving parent who is taking on new responsibilities and attempting to rebuild a life of her (or his) own.

  Wallerstein cautions those contemplating divorce to recognize that it will not eliminate the problems that previously haunted the couple. Presumably both parents will continue to be involved in raising their children, and they’ll interact and have a relationship post-divorce. This often means that problems prevalent during the marriage remain a significant factor in the relationship after the marriage is dissolved. Wallerstein highlights the case of one youngster with a father emotionally abusive to his sister and mother, but who continued that abuse in his post-divorce relationship with his children. Wallerstein concludes: “Larry’s experiences reveal that divorce is not the quick solution to a bad marriage that many people understand it to be. High-conflict marriages often lead to high-conflict families after divorce.”24

  A Book You’re Not Supposed to Read

  The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Landmark Study, by Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee; New York, Hyperion, 2000.

  Wallerstein’s interviews with the children revealed that while often aware that their parents aren’t entirely happy or at times fight they valued having the family intact. Even children whose parents were clearly in unhappy marriages were often shocked at the time of divorce and continued afterwards to long for their parents to get back together:When one looks at the thousands of children that my colleagues and I have interviewed at our center since 1980, most of whom were from moderately unhappy marriages that ended in divorce, one message is clear: the children do not say they are happier. Rather, they say flatly, “The day my parents divorced is the day my childhood ended.”25

  Perhaps the most interestingly aspect of Wallerstein’s research is her finding that the problems of divorce during childhood are not the end of the trail, but a prelude to what children will face as adults, when Wallerstein sees the most severe impact.26 She describes the effect of divorce on children as a “cumulative experience” that affects each developmental stage, but most profoundly, when children grow up and seek to create loving, lasting relationships of their own: “Their lack of inner images of a man and a woman in a stable relationship and their memories of their parents’ failure to sustain the marriage badly hobbles their search, leading them to heartbreak and even despair.”27

  It’s not that children of divorce are less committed to the idea of marriage, but unlike their peers raised in intact marriages, children of divorce have lower expectations and fewer role models for how to make a marriage work. Indeed, without the positive role model of parents married to each other, children often go on to repeat many of their parent’s mistakes and end up getting divorced themselves, even if they have a strong desire for a stable marriage.

  Wallerstein remains cautious in her advice to parents, providing the disclaimer that “I don’t know of any research, mine included, that says divorce is universally detrimental to children.”28 She also points out that some children describe benefits from the experience, such as becoming more independent and self-sufficient: “Finally, we see that many children of divorce are stronger for their struggles. They think of themselves as survivors who have learned to rely on their own judgment and to take responsibility for themselves and others at a young age.”29

  In the end, she urges parents to consider carefully the decision to divorce and to see it as a last resort. She describes some of the children who were raised in unhappy but intact families. Their parents had very real complaints about their marriage and could have considered divorce, but choose not to:Their marriages were not so explosive or chaotic or unsafe that husband and wife felt living together was intolerable. What can we learn from them? ... If this describes you, I think you should seriously consider staying together for the sake of your children.30

  This isn’t politically correct advice—it certainly isn’t what many men and women want to hear—but it’s sound counsel nevertheless.

  Conclusion

  Women contemplating divorce—and even young women contemplating marriage—should be aware of the problems commonly associated with divorce for children and the divorcees themselves.

  This does not mean that women should avoid divorce at all costs. Undoubtedly, there are cases when the benefits to the woman and her children of leaving a troubled relationship outweigh the drawbacks
. But it’s important for women to be cognizant of the potential problems that she and her children may experience when making that calculated decision of whether to end a marriage that may not be as hopeless as it seems.

  Chapter Nine

  FERTILITY FACTS

  Infertility affects more than six million Americans or about 10 percent of the reproductive-age population. While many factors affect an individual’s reproductive health, age plays a major role in a woman’s ability to get pregnant.

  Knowing the facts about your health and body is universally recognized as basic common sense. But when it comes to reproduction, politics can override common sense.

  Fertility and aging: off-limits in our politically correct culture

  In 2001, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine—the largest professional U.S. organization of fertility specialists—launched an ad campaign designed to raise awareness about factors that affect women’s fertility. The ads focused on four issues: smoking, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), being overweight, and age, all of which affect women’s ability to conceive.

  No one objected to highlighting problems associated with smoking, obesity, and STDs. Age set off a firestorm.

  Guess what?

  Many women have been led to believe that they can postpone childbearing without consequence.

  The organized feminist movement and women’s studies programs do next to nothing to address the lack of information about age-related infertility.