Between Two Worlds

This month’s Reader’s Digest has an article by Elizabeth Marquardt entitled “New Reasons to Stay Together.” The article is from her book Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce. In her study, Marquardt surveyed 1500 young men and women between the ages of 18 and 35. Half experienced their parents divorce before the age of 14; the rest had grown up in intact families. The results of her research suggest that there really is no such thing as a good divorce, at least from the perspective of children.

Marquardt uses the analogy of a dividing to create two new cells, each with its own nucleus. When a family splits, it creates two new families and each of these has its own nucleus or center. In intact families, the nucleus is the children; parents focus much of the attention of the family on the protection and nurturing of the children. When divorce divides the family into two new cells, each parent becomes the nucleus of their new world. Two-thirds of those surveyed who grew up in intact families said that they as children were the center of the family; only one-third of those in divorced families felt the same way. Rather than the nucleus of the family, the children of divorce grow up as the only link between their parent’s new worlds, and that can be a lonely place.

Unfortunately, divorce is sometimes a necessary reality. If that were not the case, then neither Jesus not Paul would have held it our as a possibility for disciples. The church must get better at ministering to the divorced, or else large portions of the population will have no place in our churches. Divorce is not an unpardonable sin, rather it provides us an opportunity to minister God’s grace and love to people who need it. But above all, the church must teach the truth. And the truth is that divorce is never the will of God, and it is always the product of hardened human hearts (Jesus’ words in Matt 19:8).

Part of the church telling the truth is to say that divorce is bad for kids. We may convince ourselves that as long as we are amicable, adult and unselfish, then we can get through a divorce without it negatively impacting our children. Well, marriages fail because spouses have a hard time being amicable, adult and unselfish; do we get better at these things after divorce? Marquardt’s study reminds us that even when divorcing parents come close to being amicable, adult and unselfish, their children will suffer to some degree. What divorce robs children of is their God-intended place of being the center of their parent’s world rather than bouncing back and forth between two worlds.