Divorce and Generation-X
As I mentioned in my last post, I am in Prague. To get here, I had to take one flight from Detroit to JFK and another from there to Prague, and I had to leave my obsession with Herodotus behind. I need a library if I am to do much on Sparta. This extended period of involuntary confinement I used to read something like two weeks of back issues of The Wall Street Journal. One consequence is that, in the Review section for 9 July I came across a long piece excerpted from a new book by Susan Gregory Thomas. Its title was The Divorce Generation. I found it intriguing, and I recommend that you read the whole thing.
In this post, I want to concentrate on a single one of the claims advanced by Ms. Thomas, and to this end I want to quote a few paragraphs from the beginning. I may in a later post return to the larger questions she raises about marriage. Here I want to focus on Generation-X. Here is what Ms. Thomas has to say:
Every generation has its life-defining moments. If you want to find out what it was for a member of the Greatest Generation, you ask: "Where were you on D-Day?" For baby boomers, the questions are: "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" or "What were you doing when Nixon resigned?"
For much of my generation—Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980—there is only one question: "When did your parents get divorced?" Our lives have been framed by the answer. Ask us. We remember everything.
When my dad left in the spring of 1981 and moved five states away with his executive assistant and her four kids, the world as I had known it came to an end. In my 12-year-old eyes, my mother, formerly a regal, erudite figure, was transformed into a phantom in a sweaty nightgown and matted hair, howling on the floor of our gray-carpeted playroom. My brother, a sweet, goofy boy, grew into a sad, glowering giant, barricaded in his room with dark graphic novels and computer games.
I spent the rest of middle and high school getting into trouble in suburban Philadelphia: chain-smoking, doing drugs, getting kicked out of schools, spending a good part of my senior year in a psychiatric ward. Whenever I saw my father, which was rarely, he grew more and more to embody Darth Vader: a brutal machine encasing raw human guts.
Growing up, my brother and I were often left to our own devices, members of the giant flock of migrant latchkey kids in the 1970s and '80s. Our suburb was littered with sad-eyed, bruised nomads, who wandered back and forth between used-record shops to the sheds behind the train station where they got high and then trudged off, back and forth from their mothers' houses during the week to their fathers' apartments every other weekend.
The divorced parents of a boy I knew in high school installed him in his own apartment because neither of them wanted him at home. Naturally, we all descended on his place after school—sometimes during school—to drink and do drugs. He was always wasted, no matter what time we arrived. A few years ago, a friend told me that she had learned that he had drunk himself to death by age 30.
My initial reaction, upon reading these paragraphs, was that Thomas captures rather well the horror of divorce – both from the perspective of her mother and from the perspective of the children left behind by one parent or another (the father's story is left untold). Am I right about the piece's accuracy?
My second thought was that she is correct that, at least some of the time, it makes sense to think in generational terms. Where there is a searing experience common to a generation, that experience shapes the generation – and one sign is that one can pose the sort of questions that she poses. Those who lived through World War II will remember where they were and what they were doing when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died. We baby boomers all remember where we were and what we were doing when John F. Kennedy was killed and when Richard M. Nixon resigned. My bet is that 9/11 marks those of us who were fully cognizant at the time. And here is my question. Is Thomas right that for Generation-X the defining experience was the divorce of their parents?
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Re: Divorce and Generation-X
I think Thomas may be correct. Divorce was extremely common in Peoria Illinois when I was growing up (I was born in 1970).
Those born between 1965 and 1980 were also too young to have experienced the turmoil of the 60's or the war in Vietnam (no experience of the draft). The military conflicts of the post-Vietnam era have been fought by a small, all-volunteer force. Generation X tended to live in a very private world.
One other observation--I worked for many years in student affairs and I saw many students who came from broken homes. The ones who were most traumatized by the experience tended to be older. I saw a number of students simply come apart when their parents divorced after the student left to go to college. The parents thought that was a safe time for the student to hear the news--in my experience they were much mistaken.
Aug '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
Short answer...No. Long answer...Yes, but only in that it was part of a greater problem. My parents never divorced, but they shared a lack of consideration for the importance of family as an institution. They separated us from other family members, fractured deep family relations, and didn't take their role as parents seriously.
I think that some combination of divorce or complete lack of consideration for social institutions and their value by Baby Boomers did define Gen X.
Jun '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
I think Pope Paul VI had it right back in 1968. Once you separate sex from procreation, in your mind and in practice, what's the point of staying faithful? Sex without risk of parenthood becomes just one more harmless recreation. And if you aren't staying faithful anymore, why stay married? People ridiculed "Humanae Vitae" in 1968, but its warnings were right on the money. The pill redefined sex, and that changed the definition of family. It was all downhill from there.
--"Crazy" Catholic
Jan '11
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
No, she is wrong, because the majority of Gen-Xers didn't grow up in households of divorce.
May '11
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
"For much of my generation—Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980—there is only one question: "When did your parents get divorced?" Our lives have been framed by the answer. Ask us. We remember everything."
That is devastating. Maybe it is an overstatement but it reads true and is sad beyond words.
Nov '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
The only event I can think of that would be bigger than going through a divorce would be the death of a parent. Thankfully, although I am a "Generation Xer", I didn't have to suffer through either of these events. For us lucky few, our "Kennedy" moment is the destruction of the Challenger.
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
I'm sure it's true for those of the generation whose parents divorced—it was epidemic and devastating. You couldn't miss it, even from the largely Catholic community I grew up in. And those kids, now middle-aged, often have problems with their own marriages to which you can draw a straight line from their parents' divorce.
But, overall, no, she's wrong. The equivalent “where were you when?” for Generation X would probably be the Challenger’s exploding, in terms of a shocking national event.
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
Aha! Great minds, Mr. Nordmark!
Jul '11
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
Born in 66 my folks split in 75. Somehow it was destined anyway with a conservative redneck physician father still enduring PTSD from Vietnam and a Ted Kennedy loving liberal environmental activist mother. Nonetheless, the divorce was the defining moment in my youth as I went from a great school system to one where you were beat up just for raising your hand in class. My saviors were a love of nature and literature but I can confidently say I suffered greatly from the divorce. Pleasantly enough these are all distant memories and a happy faith based family awaits me at the end of every workday, a family that will never be broken through selfish choices.
Jun '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
I think she is right. Even if a majority of that generation didn't experience divorce in their own nuclear family, they were absolutely surrounded by it. It is an unimaginable self-inflicted tragedy -- and the weight of that tragedy lay most heavily on the children.
The description above is so apt:
"...members of the giant flock of migrant latchkey kids in the 1970s and '80s. Our suburb was littered with sad-eyed, bruised nomads, who wandered back and forth between used-record shops to the sheds behind the train station where they got high and then trudged off, back and forth from their mothers' houses during the week to their fathers' apartments every other weekend."
As a grandfather now I feel so strongly every pain of my grandchildren -- just in their everyday life of coming to terms with life. Growing up is hard enough -- how could we compound it by inflicting this calamity on so many children? And -- also, many of the parents involved did not want the divorce.
WFB, Jr. commented that he started his conservative commentating on the subject of trying to stop no-fault divorce -- he lamented that his generation failed to stop this psychological horror.
Jun '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
My wife and I are certainly rare birds in that both her parents and mine have married for 40 years. None of our friends or business acquaintances come from intact homes.
Feb '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
http://www.generationaldynamics.com.
Read the online book ("Generational Dynamics for Historians") before you start reading the day-to-day blog. It will open your mind to a whole new understanding of generational patterns and give you a better understanding of where we are headed.
May '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
The wholesale destruction of our social capital is the far greater debt that we have, as a society, passed on to our children.
This is far worse than the fiscal debt we are also passing on.
Dec '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
I think the damage is caused by much more than just the divorce. For children, especially prior to the self-discovery teen years, a great deal of personal identity is established in the family. When such a large portion of one's identity is dissolved much of the self dissolves as well. To make matters worse, enter the step-family. This is no anchor for a child's identity either since there is no aspect of an organic wholeness. No matter how close the step family becomes the children are always in some way apart from them rather a part of them. It is no surprise at that kids from the 70s and 80s spent the decades in a drunken and drugged haze. I quit drinking when I was fifteen (five years after my parents divorce) because I needed to. No, divorce is probably not the single defining event of Gen-Xers, but it is on the very select list of events.
May '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
I'm with you, Etoile. This is the great severing at the root of the rest.
Jun '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
I was born in 1957. Graduated high school in '75 from a class 650 strong where I knew exactly one kid from a broken household.
I taught high school from 2002 to 2010 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I know by survey that 50% of my kids were living in single parent households or shared custody situations (aka ping-pong kids). And I was teaching in a school that drew its students from a solid middle-class community.
As goes the family so goes the nation. God help us.
May '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
Although with the death of a parent, it's and event that passes and you move on. With divorce there is the dreary lifetime of squabbles: custody, visitation, where to go on the holidays, how to arrange the extended family at a wedding, &tc.
May '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
I'm too old to speak for Gen X (born in '56) but I fear that there is much truth in Ms. Thomas' thesis. Both my wife and I experienced our parent's divorce in our teens, and it was very much a shaping event for both. Things ended well for both families, but those were difficult times, sometimes in subtle ways.
Amongst the younger generations this is much more common, it seems. I see it in the classmates of my own children, some of whom prefer to spend their time and meals at our house because it feels so "normal". What a sad burden to place on such young shoulders.
Sep '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
Wah wah wah.
In the end you can only change things about you. You can look after your family. The rest of society must look after themselves. It would be best if divorce were rare and illegetimacy even more so, but until someone creates a better way look after your own interest.
Edited on July 27, 2011 at 1:51amMay '10
Re: Divorce and Generation-X
Nick Stuart
Although with the death of a parent, it's and event that passes and you move on. With divorce there is the dreary lifetime of squabbles: custody, visitation, where to go on the holidays, how to arrange the extended family at a wedding, &tc. · Jul 26 at 4:45pm
Not only that, but there is the interior earthquake of the divorce itself--the way it shatters the sense of self from within. A child knows she is the fruit of her parents' loving union. If they hate each other, is her existence is a mistake?