The whole issue is one I find fascinating. I certainly agree that at
best, children bear scars from the divorce of their parents, and at
worst, they never come close to achieving their potential because of
those scars. But what is the solution?
If one person has decided that he or she wants to leave the marriage,
what is the point in preventing them from divorcing? In the rare cases
where the leavee is ready to take the leaver back, 3 years down the road
when he/she realizes that - "hey, I only lost 50% of my problems, and
maybe the spouse wasn't so bad" - they could always remarry, as those
few do.
The rest will not voluntarily get back together. And they'll be
prevented from marrying again, should the desire arise - more people
committing adultery and living in sin.
And anecdotally - I don't know of a single person who is glad that his
or her parents stayed together "for the sake of the kids" and didn't
divorce till the kids were in their 20's. Every one of those whom I
know, say they think it would have been better if their parents had
divorced 10 years earlier, instead of staying together and fighting all
the time.
And the most recent research bears this out - it's the open and
continuous conflict that does the most damage to the kids.
Parent education could be helpful - way before the parents are divorced,
maybe when the kids are born. Some parents really do need lessons in
understanding their children. And then maybe they'll handle it better
when they do get divorced.
But if we can figure out a way to make those marriages work - we'll all
be rich and successful.
Rachel Fishman Green, Esq.
ReSolutions
Mediation Session Address:
137 Garfield Place - bottom bell
corner of Garfield Place & 6th Avenue
1st floor - professional offices
Mailing Address:
82 Garfield Place
Brooklyn, NY 11215
phone/fax: 718-965-9236
Cell: 917-270-1897
webpage: www.Mediate2Resolution.com
-----Original Message-----
----- Original Message -----
From: <brutoria@xxxxxxx>
To: <collablaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 4:24 PM
Subject: [CollabLaw] Bush's Marriage Plan
This article recently appeared in BeliefNet. What is your take as
collaborative practitioners?
Bruce Peck
Collaborative Law
9202 Tyne Lane
Inver Grove Heights, MN 55077
(651) 994-9944
(651) 994-9955 Fax
********************************************************
Fixing Marriage at the Wrong End
President Bush's proposal to make marriage easier for young, low-income
couples won't work until divorce gets harder
By Roberto Rivera
In the weeks leading up to the State of the Union address, the Bush
administration has been floating a proposal to promote marriage among
lower-income
Americans. The program would spend "at least $1.5 billion" for, in the
words
of
The New York Times, "training to help couples develop interpersonal
skills
that
sustain 'healthy marriages.'"
This kind of proposal is hard to quibble with without coming off as just
plain cranky. Who would want to come out against healthy marriages, or,
for
that
matter, better "interpersonal skills"? Representatives from the left and
right
were reduced to mouthing the usual dreary rhetoric about their pet
causes. A
lawyer from NOW's Legal Defense and Education Fund, told the Times that
programs like this one "may ignore the risk of domestic violence and may
coerce women
to marry." (Actually, women are more likely to be physically abused by a
cohabiting boyfriend than by a husband.) Social-conservatives, though
more
favorably inclined, suggest that the president strengthen marriage by
supporting a
constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. (He says he'll wait
to
see
what the courts do.)
There's little doubt that marriage is in trouble, and could use a boost
from
the White House, just as NASA might be revived by planning a mission to
Mars.
But trying to address the marriage crisis by massively funding
premarital
education makes me think that the president is looking at the issue
through
the
wrong end of a telescope.
What is society's stake in making marriages healthy? Or stated
differently,
what harm is caused by the lack of healthy marriages? The answer is the
well-being of our children. Forgive me for sounding like Whitney
Houston,
but it's
obvious that children are our future: our future leaders, producers and
defenders will come from the youngest part of society. And as a parent
of a
growing
child, I can tell you that future will be here before we turn around
twice.
Thus, anything that puts our children at risk for what social scientists
call
"adverse outcomes" adversely affects the entire society. While there are
dissenters out there, the large majority of social-science data points
to
the same
conclusion: children who are not raised in intact two-parent households
are,
in the aggregate, more at risk for these "adverse outcomes." These
include
poverty, delinquency, drug abuse, suicide, dropping out of school, and
psychiatric illness, to name but a few.
This doesn't mean that a particular child raised by a single-parent will
have
any of these problems--only that a society where children are
increasingly
raised in single-parent homes can expect, as a whole, more of these
"adverse
outcomes." (Hence, the "in the aggregate.")
As the president will likely point out in tonight's State of the Union
address, our children are more at risk today than ever before. But it's
not
because
American parents aren't getting married (although this is true in
certain
communities), but because they aren't staying married. Divorce is the
principle
reason why half of all American children can expect to spend at least
part
of
the time prior to their 18th birthday living with only one parent.
Improving "interpersonal skills" won't make a dent in this social
reality.
Such help already exists, at least for middle and upper-class couples
who
can
afford it. The helpers are called marriage counselors. Yet, as Diane
Sollee,
director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education,
observes:
"Over the past 30 years, the number of marriage therapists and
counselors
has
dramatically increased, and the divorce rate hasn't budged."
The bestperhaps the only--way President Bush can make a meaningful
difference is to make it harder for parents to get a divorce. Period. I
know
this
sounds barbaric. Some will answer that you can't force people to stay
married
anymore than you force to get married in the first place. Most
"no-fault"
divorces--as many as 80 percent--arise from unilateral decisions. As
Maggie
Gallagher,
who wrote "The End of Marriage," puts it, "divorce . . . is not usually
the
act of a couple, but of an individual." Once the individual has made the
decision to leave, the law gives them the upper hand. The other spouse,
who
is
usually open to reconciliation, can only hope to cut the possible best
deal
on the
marital property and custody of the kids.
That's why William Galston, a domestic policy advisor to President
Clinton,
wrote in The New York Times that "for couples with dependent children,
we
should eliminate unilateral no-fault--where one person can readily
obtain a
divorce
without the other's consent--and return to an updated fault-based
system,
with the alternative of a five-year waiting period. And even in cases
where
both
parties consent, there should be suitable braking mechanisms: a
mandatory
pause of at least a year for reflection, counseling and mediation."
The White House proposal does nothing to change the status quo and,
consequently, does nothing to address society's interest in the
well-being
of its
children. To be fair, divorce is a matter of state, not federal, law.
That
doesn't
mean that there's nothing the president, and his administration, can do.
At
the very least, he could use his office to begin a national conversation
about
the impact of "no fault" divorce laws on children.
Don't hold your breath. If same-sex marriage, which directly affects a
tiny
portion of our population, is too hot a political potato to handle,
imagine
the
political risk in talking about opposite-sex divorce. Just as with that
most
divisive of social issues, abortions, Americans become accustomed, and
even
dependent, on the easy availability of "no fault" divorce. Asking them
to
contemplate giving back some of that freedom, even for their children's
sake, is
risky political business.
Rather than put his re-election at risk, the president is happy to have
everyone look through the wrong end of the telescope and believe that
the
problem
lies in lower-income people not getting married or being unprepared when
they
do. After all, who doesn't want to believe that the problem lies in what
we
see
through that telescope and not ourselves?
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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