Marilyn Stowe Blog

Divorce and its Effects on Children

Dirk Lindner’s edgy portrait of Jean-Christophe Novelli and Novelli’s daughter Christina caught my eye as I was scanning The Sunday Times Magazine yesterday. I began to read the interview and I was soon hooked. It was a cracking piece, featuring the well-known chef and his 22-year-old daughter, an aspiring singer-songwriter.

Novelli married young, had little money and worked all hours. He pulled no punches about the fate of his first marriage, which ended in divorce when his daughter was six: “Her mum and I had absolutely nothing in common apart from this unique child”.

The interview was angled fairly sympathetically towards him, although I suspect his first wife would probably tell a different tale.

I have heard such stories many times before, of course. It isn’t my function to judge; there are many reasons why marriages don’t work.

At this point, the interview could have become yet another recitation of marital breakdown. Instead it took an interesting direction, focusing upon the effects of the divorce and the subsequent parenting arrangements upon the daughter.

Reading the daughter’s story, it seems clear that although both parents thought they were doing their best for her, she was miserable:

I can see now that part of the reason I didn’t see [my father] more was because he was working his arse off. But it was just so sad. I really needed him. When he did come, he’d be exhausted. I never complained. I’d have two hours with him and I’d cry my eyes out when he left. He never knew, but after he’d driven away I was a complete wreck. Then when he and my mum were getting on really badly, I didn’t see him at all, and that messed me up a lot.

The daughter acknowledged that her parents tried to do what they could; for example, providing her with an expensive private education. However Novelli did not always find it easy to pay the school fees – often an open sore for arguments between parents.

Christina resented her schoolmates, distinguishing herself from the other children who “turned up in their Land Rovers”. She said that she grew up into “a really angry teenager”.

For whatever reason, she didn’t see her father as often as she would have liked. When she did, she became childlike: all she wanted was to “cuddle him for ages”, like they had when she was small. But she couldn’t tell him. Why not? Was he too distant from her by then? Did she feel guilty, viewing it as disloyalty to her mother?

I noted that her anger was directed at both her parents – not just her mother, nor her father.  Worse still, she was angry at herself. She blamed her parents and herself, “for allowing myself to fall into a place I shouldn’t have”.

To me this innocent statement, from a young woman caught between two warring parents and blaming herself as well, stood out on the page. I can understand why children blame themselves for their parents’ divorce, given they may well have witnessed what happened before and afterwards. They shouldn’t. And they shouldn’t be permitted to think that it is their fault.

Christina acknowledged that by age 18, she was “in a mess”. She went to live with her father. In her words:

For a year I detoxed…..What I did was about survival. ….I don’t think I could have gone on any longer not having a dad.

Painful stuff.

The words, “I don’t think I could have gone on any longer not having a dad”, made me think of the (thankfully few) cases that I encounter in which warring parents do battle, insisting all the while that they are seeking only to get the best for their children. They rage at each other and play out their arguments in front of their frightened children, who are too young and too immature to really understand the power politics that play out. What parents can forget the next day may scar their children irreparably.

The children’s love for both their parents is overlooked, as is the need for both parents to play a role in their children’s development. Sometimes, one parent with control wishes to limit the other parent’s role and even – although this is rarely said – airbrush them out of the picture. For the other parent, it can be tempting to give in and disappear. Perhaps it just isn’t worth the constant struggle with a former spouse?

I have also encountered cases in which a departing parent puts another priority ahead of the children. This could be work, or a new relationship. The parent may try to appease his or her conscience by providing material things, such as gifts or a good education, by way of compensation.

I do not presume that this was the case with the Novellis; I am sure that, as revealing as the Sunday Times interview was, it merely pricked the surface of a complex and turbulent story. However I do believe that when a parent’s role is relegated from one of constant care to one of second fiddle, it is unfair upon the children. The effect can be deeply destabilising. The children may blame one or both parents for this situation. It isn’t the children’s fault, but they may also blame themselves for the ultimate outcome.

How can such sad situations be improved? Recently I was talking to some of the counsellors at the Oakdale Centre in Harrogate. I have a number of clients who seek therapy, counselling and practical assistance from them, to try and resolve emotional challenges linked to divorce. I have found the counsellors at Oakdale to be very helpful.

The answer, they tell me, lies in boundaries.

These counsellors try and help parents to understand that the time spent by each parent with their children should occur within agreed, solid, defined boundaries.

After these boundaries have been set they must be respected by the parents, irrespective of the animosity that the parents may feel towards one another. They must not cross one another’s boundaries; nor must they attempt to shrink them. They must not try and find out what happened when the children were within the other parent’s boundary; nor must they criticise the other parent.  (That isn’t easy, especially when the other parent has a new partner.) Respect for these boundaries translates into respect for the children.

It makes good sense to me.

Image credit: mijita.

Related posts:

1. Divorce overseas: ten steps to protect your children
2. Unmarried parents, children and chequebooks
3. Divorce and Grandparents’ Rights
4. Call a Christmas truce
5. The husband, his three children and his sex change