"Divorce, Separation and Changing Family Practices"
21-23 September 2001

"Divorce and the increasingly fluid boundaries of childhood"
Christine Brinkgreve
(University of Utrecht)

Introduction

Divorce is not a subject that is kept silent: much is written about it, usually in a concerned tone of voice. The consequences of divorce for children have by now been studied extensively, with a primary focus on measuring school performance, mental health/well-being and delinquency (or milder forms of rule breaking). The average scores of children from 'broken' homes and children from 'normal' homes, whose parents are not divorced, are compared, and differences are frequently attributed to the divorce, although other interpretations are also possible. Furthermore, averages may conceal a wide range of scores. And, a third objection, to focus solely on 'disadvantages' or detrimental differences in scores, is a very limited perspective. If we want to know what the parents' divorce means to children, we need to talk to them: about the changes in the mutual relationships and the allocation of responsibilities between parents and children, and about the way in which experiences affect later life (especially when the children enter into relationships themselves).

One aspect that is still too much ignored in prevailing research are the changes caused by the divorce in the relationships between parents and children, the changes in tasks and responsibilities, the shifts in who takes care of whom.

Divorce brings change, individually; in the relationship between parents and children; and because the divorce figures are so high, also collectively, in the relationship between the young and adults.

A final limitation of most research, in conclusion, is the dominance of the adult perspective. How children have experienced these changes is often articulated by the parents, as if they are the interpreters of what the children go through, and as if the children have no voice of their own. Attention for the voice of women has increased over the past 25 years; attention for the perspective of children is not strongly developed. In this respect the groundbreaking work of Carol Smart and her colleagues is important.

To find out more about the consequences of divorce on family relationships, I have (so far) interviewed five young people in their early twenties, all of them university students, three young men and two young women, regarding the divorce of their parents, how it went, which arrangements were made, and how the division of tasks and responsibilities changed. In short, regarding the regulation of relationships. And the regulation of emotions, because children develop strategies to cope with the changes. And it is important to map those also.

Changing relationships: changing tasks and responsibilitiesChanging relationships: changing tasks and responsibilities

What kind of solutions do people think up when confronted with new problems where no fixed rules apply, as in the case of divorce? The divorcing of parents has far-reaching consequences for the relationships between the family members, first of all for the parents, but also, and equally drastic for the children. These relationships must be reshaped, on the practical level as well the emotional one. Practically: new arrangements are thought out to regulate mutual relationships (the so-called 'parental access') varying from co-parenting to solo parenting (depending on the degree to which parents share everyday care and parental authority). But also on the emotional level, parents and children must find a new form for their relationships: how do they interact after the divorce? Does the relationship grow more intense or does one of the parents disappear from the picture altogether? Even with an absent parent there is a relationship: ranging from longing and loss to hate and cursing, from idealization to demonization.

Are the tasks and responsibilities distributed differently, does the dependency relationship between parents and children change after divorce? This concerns essential sociological questions like: who takes care of whom? Who does what? Who belongs with whom? Questions about the division of tasks, power relationships and solidarity. It also concerns identity: how do people, in this case the interviewed young people, see themselves, how do they talk about themselves, what story do they tell about how they perceive themselves and behave?

The practical arrangements are the easiest to map.

Aris (20) was raised by his father. His mother left when he was sixteen, and moved into another house in the same city (Amsterdam). At the weekend he and his younger sister would go to his mother, they lived with his father. His father worked during the day, was self-employed, and according to his son he is 'an enterprising type', a self-made man. His mother is more restless and disorganized, and this was probably the reason that they stayed with their father. His mother, a French woman, housewife, did always make sure that she had a place where she could receive the children.

Now - after travelling for a year and a few months at university in Groningen - he is back in the same house where he used to live during his school years. But this time he lives with his uncle, his father's brother, who moved in with his partner and his two sons last year. Their mother couldn't or wouldn't take care of the children (now 12 and 16) any longer, and so their father has taken over their care. (appears to be a familial pattern).

In the case of Femke (23) also, the father stayed in the house, and the mother left after the divorce. This happened two years ago, and at the time Femke was living in Utrecht, where she attends university, in lodgings. Now she has moved back - temporarily - with her father. During the time of the divorce her sister, who is two years older, took care of her father and did the housekeeping. Not long afterwards she moved into a place of her own together with her boyfriend. In the familiar environment of the parental, now paternal home, Femke is completing her studies, and wants to move into a place of her own after that as well. She has kept in touch with her mother, seeing her once a month, at first outside the door of the house her mother then moved into with her boyfriend. The first year she "felt no need to meet that man". She wants to live on her own, because then "you decide whether or not you want to see them. Now they decide. Now you only see her for two hours a month, by appointment." This especially - meeting by appointment - bothers her.

After the divorce, three years ago, Jasper (22) stayed on in the parental home, together with his mother and his brother who is two years younger. His father moved into a place one hundred yards down the road, and Jasper walked from one to the other. Now he is living in lodgings in Utrecht, and he feels more at home there than with his parents: "this is my place, and at my parents' I am only visiting."

Pim's (21) parents divorced when he was eleven. His father took his things and went to stay with his own mother, but after talking to Pim's uncle, they decided to live together again. Separately: mother downstairs, father upstairs, with separate bedrooms, their own things, their own friends. Now they regularly have dinner together again. Pim is living on his own, in lodgings in Utrecht, where he attends university.

After the divorce of her parents - she was ten at the time - Nikki (22, student) and her two sisters lived with her mother- Nikki is the middle one. They saw their father regularly: they spent half their vacation with him, as well as a weekend every other week, including one dinner and then back home the next day before dinner. It was a strict regime, non-negotiable. She moved into a place of her own when she was eighteen.

Irrespective of the arrangements - and these can vary widely as we have seen -, the new arrangement means a drastic change in the lives of the children: the familiar environment is torn up. But not only practical things need to be settled - about where to live, money, material things - there are all sorts of adjustments to be made, also on the emotional level. A divorce of the parents entails not only a regulation of relationships, but also of emotions. Children may become more detached, more skeptical, lose their trust in the world, they may become more independent, and start looking after themselves more. They may try to bring the worlds of their parents together, or try to keep them apart. Those are the emotional strategies children use to cope with the new situation. Before I address this in more detail I want to report what the young people I interviewed have to say about the changes in tasks and responsibilities that came with their parents' divorce. For the fact that the relationship with the parents changes in several respects is obvious.

One thing that emerges in all interviews is that the children feel responsible for how the parents are doing. They feel that they have to take care of their parents. In practical terms: help in the household in the case of fathers who are left on their own, or emotionally: to give them something to hold on to, to support them or cheer them up. The children do this - feel it is their duty, although they don't use that word - but sometimes wish they were free of it. "You have to make allowances for them, because they also have problems," says Aris, "but it would be nice if you didn't have to, if the parents would be there for you and you don't have to think about them." His mother's restless behaviour in particular annoys him: "Just make a decision", and: "some people you just shouldn't want to help anymore". The dilemma is clear: wanting to help is the first impulse, but he also recognizes the futility of it: a grown-up consideration about a mother who is perceived as immature.

The change in the care relationship - the question: who takes care of whom? - is presented most clearly in the case of Femke, that is, in a practical sense: after the divorce she and her sister had to help him with the housekeeping. "Father couldn't do anything, didn't know how to operate the washing machine. But he is a fast learner." At first her sister took care of the household and Femke took over at the weekends. "In the beginning you take into account that he is sitting at home alone." Now she feels more freedom again to spend less time at home. In the relationship with her mother she sometimes behaves as the adult. At the time of the divorce she called her mother to account and said: "you simply can't do this." Her mother was always running her father down. "Everything was always father's fault. He was such a difficult man", but in the meantime her mother had been having an affair with another man for some time. During the interview, she regularly says she feels her mother is 'foolish'. She thought it an "unwise decision" to move in with the boyfriend right away, "you should live on your own for a while and see if you can cope."

She spends a lot of time thinking about how her parents are. "It's nice that mother is happy, but there is someone else involved as well" (her father). She hopes he will find someone, but "he will have to do it himself". He is 'beginning to feel better about himself. That's good." This is the way parents talk about their children.

Jasper feels his mother burdens him with responsibilities he does not want. She confides her conflicts with his father to him, shows him his letters, for example. He has the feeling that he is the only one who can say to his father that he needs to stop (pestering his mother). He feels that he should do this, but holds back, is afraid of his father's reaction, and doesn't want "to hear the other side". He clearly does not want to get caught in conflicts of loyalty; deep down takes his mother's side, but he doesn't want to take any side. His father is not a "sociable" man, he has problems with his isolated existence, is wasting away. Jasper feels he should visit, do more, but it is no fun: "I prefer to do other things". He feels burdened with tasks and responsibilities he does not want, but is unable to ignore.

Nikki regards herself as the responsible child, who had to take care of her mother. After the divorce her mother had been scornful and resentful about her father, her parents fought a lot, and it was a difficult transition from affluence to poverty. It was a hard time, her mother clung to her work, and demanded unconditional loyalty and support from her daughters. Gradually Nikki's contact with her father increased; he regarded her as a chum, confided in her a lot and interacted with her as an adult discussion partner. Her father's attitude of 'you're strong' felt like a moral obligation to her. She very much tried to live up to her parents' expectations, first her mother's and then later (also) her father's, and was sometimes put in the classic role of mediator. She was busier meeting the needs of her parents, than they were meeting hers, which is a reversal of roles. And brought new responsibilities that weighed heavily upon her.

It has taken a big effort to break free of this, to break free of parental expectations and develop a sense of who she was, as an individual. In short: identity problems, and she was supported by a psychotherapist, who clearly left her mark on the way Nikki perceives herself, the vocabulary she uses to describe this, and the direction in which she is trying to solve her problems.

The divorce of its parents leaves no child untouched. It means a loss of naturalness, familiarity and security. For children it can mean a fall from an existence in which they were the centre, to the sideline of parent decisions, which means a sensitive shift in position. "Used as a pawn in the fight between my parents", as Nikki formulated it. Children react to this differently, and develop their own coping strategies.

Nikki, as we saw earlier, started trying very hard to please her parents, to be a good child. But the price can be that you 'lose' yourself, and that is something our individualistic culture views as problematical.

Aris, on the other hand, became the difficult child, according to him; he brought the problems into the home, his sister was 'the good one', a division of roles that still annoys him. He wanted to be 'tough', especially towards his father, with whom he now has a good relationship. He has a kind of lassitude about him, that he himself relates to the divorce. "you don't simply respond to things anymore". He considers himself "forewarned". He longs for passion, but is also afraid of it. He wished he "could let it go", describes himself as having 'a broken spirit', wants to free himself of his own dullness, but feels trapped in it. Whether or not this self-experience is a result of the divorce is difficult to say, but he experiences it this way. What we can say is that it is a way of standing up to painful and disruptive experiences, the strategy of detachment, a way of regulating the personal emotions. A way that has a clear function, but can also be oppressive. Food for psychotherapy.

Femke has a more business-like, less tormented way of talking about herself and her experiences. She admits she does not know how she got through the first year, and that she went through life not noticing much. She visited her father frequently then, "enjoyed being in a familiar environment, also to get a better understanding." She felt that was better than "running away from it". But she also emphasizes the positive aspects: "When you think about it this is better for everyone, for all of us. Parents who don't love each other aren't much of an example." "All those things make you stronger. At that moment (of the divorce) you don't understand anything. I kept everything inside then, I don't anymore." Her story is more about the inconveniences and complexities than about drama. How her father doesn't like it when her mother phones her at his house; how she has to ask him to put oil on her back when she is sunning in the garden, those are the kinds of things her mother used to do. And how she always has to take the bus to go and see her mother "and then she says on the phone: 'we went to see Bert's (her boyfriend) children, in the car", and then she thinks: 'and I always have to take the bus.

According to her the divorce has made her a bit more distrustful in relationships: "you never know how things will go. But you have to try not to fuss too much. That doesn't work. You live in the moment."

She thinks and talks quite pragmatically. "There are always moments when you think: why did it go like this? But life just goes on." It did lead her to her current studies (social sciences): "having become curious about how it works by the whole thing."

Jasper finds it hard to accept how his parents treat each other: "one plays nasty tricks (father), the other is vulnerable (mother)." He feels he should do more - stand up for his mother more - but recoils. He feels very much involved with his parents and has the feeling that he has to solve things for them. In his own place in Utrecht he feels good, he has his own world there, "nothing can happen to me here". In that way he can withdraw from his parents, from his parents and the pressure he feels to do more for them.

In relationships he is fairly reserved: "I prefer to want and see which way the wind blows". He feels he must be careful that what happened to his parents won't happen to him. He feels forewarned, but - unlike in the case of Aris - this is not an attitude that bothers him, something he wishes he were free of. In that sense he doesn't think that what he has experienced was a bad thing: he can learn from it.

Shame about the divorce is most clearly present in the case of Pim. Where he was living at that time (province of Brabant), nobody divorced "it simply was not done". Only later did he find out how much it had affected him. It raised his interest in psychology. He put the pieces together by himself. It did knock him down for quite a while. He turned to the alternative circuit briefly, and then started a psychotherapy study. He wants to become a therapist, and this is related to the divorce: he has learned from his own pain. Pim wants to experience life in a positive way: "without the divorce I wouldn't be who I am now. It has given me more depth."

He doesn't hide the fact that it is a difficult road, but he has progressed. The one thing he has problems with, and he calls it the thread in his life, is intimacy. "If I show myself I'm afraid the whole thing will explode." Especially with girls: he is afraid to open up: "you'll get hurt". Afraid that he will lose someone again. He considers his parents a bad example in this respect: he has never seen them touch each other. He has had to learn all that by himself.

Striking in his story is the role of others, of outsiders: his friend and his friend's parents were very helpful, they were there for him, he felt safe there. He has a high degree of what Lilian Rubin calls 'adoptibility': the ability to bind others to him, who take pity on him.

How Nikki experienced the divorce of her parents was already discussed. She has the most to say about how it affected her and how she tried to solve the issues (emotional strategies). She felt she was the responsible child, took care of everybody, was cheerful, got everything done: she was the competent child that could handle anything, but that - as she tells it now - was also self-effacing and primarily concerned with meeting the needs of others. She had a severe breakdown at age 19, when she was living in a student flat in London. She collapsed, suffered severe tension headaches. Her doctor there was a woman, who understood her, which was an overwhelming experience. And the start of a laborious effort to break free of the expectations and approval of others, especially her mother; a painful and confusing process. She is supported in all this by her boyfriend, and - for a time - also by a psychotherapist. She was always someone who was good, but now experiences this as a mask, "I don't want to be like that anymore". And: "So who is this Nikki?" Difficult identity questions.

It is a story about emotions: about how she did not feel much for a long time, always busy trying to please others, to meet other people's needs. 'Feel nothing, keep a low profile' as a way to survive, to not be there. Now she tries to let her feelings get through, but it happens 'in bangs', she still has a hard time getting angry.

There is strong solidarity between the sisters, irrespective of the large differences between them in terms of how they coped with the divorce: the oldest one was more angry, the youngest is more skillful, stable, independent. She is not afraid to say: "Mother, you are being mean."

In her opinion she has also benefited: the experience has provided her with a better understanding of relationships. She has had to take care of herself, which is also an advantage. She works in an advertising company, between a creative team and an accountant's team. The fact that she has had to compromise and was a messenger between two parties comes in handy now: she has developed diplomatic skills, gathered a 'personality capital' (adapted from Bourdieu), that is of use to her in her present job.

To all the young people I interviewed the divorce of the parents has been a disruptive experience in their lives, but none of them describes him/herself as a passive victim: they do something with it, struggle with it, try to find a way to cope; in different manners and with varying results. And with varying accents: some stories emphasize the burden, the problems, the pressure, the oppression, and others are in a more positive vein, or show the wish to be positive: how they have learned from the experience, how they have become wiser and stronger for it. They were all keen to talk about it, and had all formed a story for themselves, sometimes influenced by a psychotherapist, partner or friend. Those stories help them organize the confusing experiences and provide a handhold: a biographical line that is sorely needed in a fragmented existence.

More fluid boundaries

As stated before, a lot of research has been done by now into the consequences of divorce for children, and especially with a focus on their school performance, health and well-being. But the divorce of the parents also affects the relationship between parents and children, and between the world of adults and the world of children.

In a divorce situation children are frequently burdened with adult responsibilities at an early age, and in that sense they are taken from the child's world when they are young. A potential consequence is that they become precocious, or formulated in more concerned terms: that there is a loss of innocence and trust. Some of the young people interviewed refer to themselves as 'forewarned', which they themselves say may bother them when they enter into relationships.

The separate, free, protected child's world has not disappeared completely, but the boundaries have become more fluid: in some ways children are more involved in the adult world, whereas young adults are having trouble becoming adults, want to stay young, try to avoid too much commitment and obligation.

This is the proposition I want to develop in my next book: that the boundaries between the adult world and the child's world have become more fluid over the past few decades. I intend to do this by elaborating three examples, of which divorce is one. The other two examples are the media and child labour.

Through the media children see images from the adult world that are not intended for children (of sex and agression), and that - it is feared - they are not able to understand and cope with. The fear of the parents is that they can no longer control what their children see, that their children are participating in an adult world, without them being able to protect their children sufficiently. This means a loss of control in a vital area: that which the children are presented with visually.

The second example is child labour, the fact that more and more young people have jobs, in addition to school or studies. Whereas the decades following World War II showed a shift from labour to school, the past years (in the Netherlands at least, I don't yet have a complete picture of the situation elsewhere), a new situation has emerged of labour in addition to school. Half of the Dutch pupils and students have a job on the side presently, varying from 22% of twelve-year olds to 68% of seventeen-year olds. This means a turn a process in which children from all sections of the population went to school for increasingly long periods, and it became part of the distinction between child and adult that children went to school and adults worked. To learn, to prepare for adult life, but clearly separated from it. This clear boundary has become fluid: children - adolescents - start working in addition to their education. The fact that this happens in all sections of the population is new, and this may be viewed as a democratization of child labour (after the democratization of education: a trend in the reverse direction). Also new is that work and education take place side by side. For adults this boundary has also become more fluid: increasing numbers of adults need extra training or retraining, start studies or take courses in addition to their work. For them also, the boundary between a time of learning and a time of working has become less strict.

The separate childhood has not disappeared, but children have increasingly become part of the adult world, which changes the relationships between parents and children, changes their positions towards one another.

Finally, from an historical point of view, the protective childhood is quite recent. There used to be great class differences in this respect: children from higher classes had the time for school and education, children from the lower classes worked and did not have as much of a separate childhood world. In the course of the twentieth century education has become compulsory, and its duration has gradually increased. Thanks to this development, a separate childhood, a protected child's world, also became possible for the children from the lower classes, with a peak in the 1950s. Only in the last decades a change has occurred in this development, and a number of protective and shielding measures are beginning to disappear. Due in part to the media, an area in which the parents no longer control what the children see, in part to the fact that more and more pupils in secondary school are working. And also due to the high divorce rate.

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