Joel Schwartzberg says it’s not fair for kid flicks to make divorce the ultimate tragedy.
When my kids stay with me as part of their weekly custody arrangement, we usually spend Saturday mornings eating my wife’s homemade pancakes and watching a taped movie. (My 12-year-old son handles DVR remote control duties with the dexterity of Liberace on the piano.) Recent viewings include The Shaggy Dog, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl, The Incredibles, and—last night—the seemingly innocuous Ramona and Beezus.
I picked up on two themes:
- In the first two films at least, the willingness of Sex and the City‘s Kristin Davis to play a suburban housewife under any circumstances.
- The leveraging a child’s worst nightmare—divorce—for gratuitous dramatic effect.
In these and other “family-friendly” kid films, the parents’ marriage is often in some state of jeopardy, and the kids perceive a role in saving it … or else! Even in the wonderful The Incredibles, Violet warns her brother Dashiell: “Mom and Dad’s life could be in danger. Or worse, their marriage!”
Typically—if not universally in kids’ films—these parents avert tragedy and ultimately fall lovingly into each other’s arms. (Though Davis should consider parting with her agent.) Said a friend of mine recently, “I remember, as a kid of divorce, being deeply offended by The Parent Trap for its premise that a marriage could be fixed just by sticking the parents in a room together!”
What’s the takeaway for spongy young minds other than defining divorce as a fate worse than death?
I’m all for positive nuclear family images in kid films, even the “hit-you-over-the head-with-a-mallet” kind (see: Spy Kids). What makes me uncomfortable is when divorce is superfluously depicted to kids as the end of the world. The obvious inference to real-life children of divorce (of which there are roughly one million a year): Your family is broken. Happy ending for us; stinks to be you.
In reality, while divorce is an unfortunate outcome, these children are not necessarily wounded for life. A comprehensive 2002 study of more than 1,400 families and 2,500 children by a professor emeritus in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia found the negative impact of divorce on both children and parents has been “exaggerated.” Roughly 20-25% of youngsters experience long-term damage after their parents break up, but the large majority end up coping comfortably.
The difference between coping with upheaval and being deeply scarred by it seems to hinge more on good parenting—as well as what was going on before the divorce—than on family definition.
Yet watching with my kids as Ramona and Beezus celebrated joyously that their family will stay exactly as it is—presumably forever and ever—was as awkward as it was sticky-sweet. This subliminal message stands in direct contradiction to mine: that family love can remain intact even when the family unit does not. That divorce is not the end of the world. That dads can be good dads whether they live with their kids, live in another home, spend years fighting a foreign war, wait in jail, or work late every night at the office.
Divorce is clearly not the psychological terminal sentence for children it’s sometimes made out to be. Knowing this alone, Hollywood writers looking to put their kid protagonists in jeopardy should stick to the safe slate of aliens and demons, and avoid the all-too-easy and alienating road of demonizing divorce.
—Photo easylocum/Flickr
About Joel Schwartzberg
You make a very good point. Incidentally, you could also argue that divorce is always portrayed negatively in all films.
I can appreciate that the main purpose of these texts is entertainment and that every divorce comes with some drama no matter how amicable it may be, but the manner in which it is represented is always contrived and glib.
Thanks for these observations. I agree with your points and want to emphasize that it’s the way parents handle the divorce that truly impacts the children — both positively or negatively. I’m recognized as The Voice of Child-Centered Divorce and founder of the Child-Centered Divorce Network — a support system for parents. Our goal is to alert parents to the emotional and psychological effects of divorce on children and guide parents into making the best decisions on behalf of their kids.
If parents refrain from making the biggest divorce mistakes: fighting in front of the kids, bad-mouthing their EX to the kids, making the kids spies between the homes or using the kids as their confidants, the children have a real chance to enjoy their childhood and move ahead in life without serious scars.
My free weekly ezine, free ebook on Post-Divorce Parenting, loads of articles, coaching services, advice and other valuable resources for parents are all at http://www.childcentereddivorce.com.
Best regards,
Rosalind Sedacca
I agree that children should not be made to feel that they can save their parent’s marriage or that there’s a possibility their parents will get back together. But to say that divorce is not bad for children is reading too much into the existing evidence. The most recent research indicates that even children who did not exhibit obvious adjustment problems as youngsters suffer from feelings of loss and helplessness as adults. Rates of depression, anxiety and self esteem disorders among the adult children of divorced parents are markedly higher than their intact family counterparts. Even the study you cite says that 25% of children suffer long term damage from a parent’s divorce. That’s high enough to give any person considering divorce pause.
And while there’s no doubt that parents behaving badly only makes things worse, to say that an amicable divorce makes everything okay is also going a step too far. No matter how friendly the parents are, children of divorce have to ping pong between two houses and two families, are torn during the holidays, and lack the most basic model for a loving, constructive, sustainable adult relationship. They (actually “we”, since I am the child of divorce and an extremely amicable one I might add) learn that commitment means nothing and that problems should be solved by walking away.
Regardless of the circumstances, divorce sucks for everyone involved.
Is this worse than staying in a marriage that makes the parents miserable? Honestly I dont know but to say that you can divorce without it having an impact on children smacks of rationalization.
Your points are well-taken and should be very seriously considered before parents move ahead into divorce. No one advocates divorce as good for any family. However, when the home-life is toxic for the children, staying together can be just as harmful, maybe even more, than divorcing and creating a more peaceful outcome.
I am a product of parents who stayed together for the sake of the kids. I suffered all the negative psychological outcomes that children of divorce experience because my parents made every mistake we now warn against.
The reality is that parents need to be extremely diligent about the emotional environment they raise their kids in. If there’s strong parental discord, protect your children in every possible way from feeling the impact, blaming themselves and trying to put your marriage together. There is no “best” answer to a toxic marriage unless the parents take responsibility for healing the pain and resolving the issues. Seek professional help — and keep your kids out of the middle.
If you really believe your own stated point #2–”leveraging a child’s worst nightmare”, you contradict your premise. Children don’t want their family split apart and most children of divorce secretly wish on some level for their parents to reunite. That’s because it’s about the children and their desire to have both parents all the time. Most children have no interest in seeing their parents in a romantic, man/woman way.
Unfortunately, many adults do not handle their divorce well and the children end up in the middle. There is some evidence that the reason many young people today think marriage doesn’t work or is obsolete is because of their experiences with their parents divorces. Divorce, like marriage, is a serious choice and should be viewed that way. Sometimes it is the best choice; many times it is not. No one comes through a divorce unscathed–it changes everyone who experiences it. Whether one can eventually overcome that pain doesn’t diminish its initial impact.
Loved this piece. Breath of fresh air. Not only are there too many treacly all-will-be-perfect-if-the-parents-stay-together messages in films, but there is a divorce backlash in this country that is almost fundamentalist in its tone. I think much of the presumption that divorce is what screws up kids is naive and doesn’t take into account that the factors that led to divorce — mental illness, abuse, personality disorders, extreme dysfunction — are the bigger problem and can still exist in an in tact marriage.
Beautiful and true!
I was always grateful for my parents’ divorce. I got to be raised by a very present stepdad (whom I always say is my “daddy”) while my father got himself back into a place to be a real, present father. Then I got a great stepmother, two sisters and two more brothers from the whole deal.
On top of that, I was raised in a home where love was the major emotion, not tension, hatred or fighting. I felt the same as your friend about The Parent Trap — like, I’m supposed to want them to be together? That seems weird and wrong.
How about some beautiful representations of happy families and happy kids in functional separate households? Maybe I’ll have to write that one
.
I always thought that the way divorce was portrayed in the film Definitely, Maybe (not a kids’ movie of course) was brilliant and so accurate. Don’t know of another film that achieved that goal so effectively.
Hi Joel,
Good piece! I think you’ve brought up some really worthwhile points there. Not sure if I agree with this part though – “that dads can be good dads whether they…….spend years fighting a foreign war, wait in jail, or work late every night at the office”.
Regards,
Andy.
Divorce is certainly not the worst thing in the world but, all things being equal, keeping the kids living under the same roof as their biological mother and father is way better than shuttling them back and forth.
Whenever I read this sort of well-meaning attempt to assuage the guilt of divorced parents, I wonder if the author went through divorce as a child. I did, and it sucked.
In the early ’70s, in the wake of liberalized divorce laws and serious cultural changes, divorce was everywhere. Nobody seemed to have a recipe for a “good” divorce, and factoring in my parents’ human foibles made for a rough road – alcoholism, depression, non-emotional “children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard” parenting styles, and a Knight in Shining armor mentality that led to my mom’s hasty second marriage to my stepfather, a complete jerk.
Nowadays you hear a lot more stuff about people are pals with their ex or whatever, but I really don’t think people are any better than they were a few decades ago. If anything, the internet makes it possible to take a pretty good marriage and wreck it with infidelity in just a few hours. Perhaps because it takes a different kind of movie to get under the hood of why a marriage didn’t work we don’t see a very sophisticated take on the subject in “family” films.
I have often wondered if we removed the current incentive of “Winner takes all” divorce and started from a position of fully shared custody if a fair amount of the problems would be removed.
I thought about this the other day, if my husband and I were to get divorced he would pay more (Much more) in child support than we currently pay to maintain the kids (i.e. food, clothes etc).
To some this is no longer child support but rather hidden spousal support and quite frankly I can see why people say that. If you look at people like Heather Mills (Paul Mcartneys ex), she gets $22,000 a month in CS, no way in hell it costs that much to raise a child. This IMHO causes a fair amount of animosity in divorce and leads to way more problems than it solves.
Great comments Janet,
From the studies I have read shared custody reduces resentment and anger from the sole custody (winner takes all) model.
It allows children to continue having both parents in their life, which (the vast majority of the time) leads to happier well-adjusted kids.
This is one of the reasons I support fathersandfamilies.org
Why Do Family Films Demonize Divorce?
Isn’t that rather obvious? Their target market is familes, and divorce destroys families. It even shortens the lifespan of the kids affected, according to the Terman longevity study.
The long-term health effects of parental divorce were often devastating–it was a risky circumstance that changed the pathways of many of the young Terman participants. Children from divorced families died almost five years earlier on average than children from intact families. Parental divorce, not parental death, was the risk.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/marry-divorce-reconcile/201105/connection-between-parental-divorce-and-death
The message in the movies that kids can keep their parents together puts a lot of unfair pressure on the kids, because the flip side is that if their parents split up, it must be the child’s fault. Children often blame themselves for their parents’ divorce already, so these movies are hardly going to make that better.
To be fair, maybe the anti-divorce message is not primarily intended for the younger audience members. Don’t forget that “family” films are often written with multiple audiences in mind. The “saving the marriage” trope may actually be there more as a message to the parents watching than to the kids watching. It could be more about tapping into parents’ feelings of guilt than tapping into children’s feelings of fear. If you want to be successful in producing a kids’ film, there better be material in there for adults as well, and there usually is.