Feature Article
Book Review
For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered
by E. Mavis Hetherington & John Kelly
Robert Hughes, Jr., Ph.D., Former Professor, Department of Human Development & Family Studies, College of Human Environmental Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia
For the past 30 years family scientists and
practitioners have been able to rely on Professor Mavis
Hetherington to provide new insights and analysis about
the process of divorce and remarriage. For the first
time her work is now available to the general public in
a new book, For Better or For Worse: Divorce
Reconsidered (2002; New York: Norton & Co.). The
central theme of this book is that there are no simple
answers to the questions that have vexed families,
scholars and politicians such as: What is the affect of
divorce on children? Is it better to stay married rather
than get divorced? Should we make rules that make it
harder or easier to get divorced? Who should get
custody? And how can we create a strong stepfamily?
The key difference between this book and most other
advice books is that the recommendations are based on
many years of research. It is also important to note
that when Professor Hetherington is describing children
and adults who have dealt with divorce she is comparing
them with other families so that we can maintain
perspective about the challenges and outcomes of all
kinds of families. Despite the fact that Hetherington
provides no simple answers, it does not mean that
scientists have learned nothing during the past 30
years. Indeed, Professor Hetherington tells us much
about divorce and remarriage that is important for us to
hear. Based on a series of studies involving over 1400
families and 2500 children, Hetherington tackles the
tough questions and provides some powerful insights into
how we can deal with the complexity of family life in
the 21st century. Hetherington concludes that adults who
go through divorce fit into five groups. There is an
important group of people whose lives are greatly
improved. In her work she found that about 20 percent
fell into this group. These are people who met the
challenges that resulted from divorce and single
parenthood and emerged stronger and more competent.
Another 10 percent of the adults were competent loners,
similar to the first group in that they had meaningful
and fulfilling lives, but they had decided to live life
without a partner and were more emotionally
self-sustaining. The largest group of divorced people
(40%) fit a category Hetherington labeled, "good
enough." For this group divorce was a difficult moment,
but their lives were neither substantially more positive
or negative following divorce. These three groups
account for 70% of the adults going through divorce. The
remaining 30% all had various kinds of difficulties -
those who quickly remarried but seemed to change little,
those who sought freedom from all restrictions and those
who seemed completely overwhelmed by the divorce and
unable to find purpose and hope. In her portrait of
divorce, Hetherington does not gloss over the
difficulties or the ways in which lives can be utterly
destroyed, but she also repeatedly illustrates the ways
in which people re-built meaningful lives and the degree
to which the outcomes of divorce were not determined by
fate.
The outcomes for children are painted in an equally
complex fashion. She states, "Divorce is usually
brutally painful to a child." Then adds "But [divorce's]
negative long-term effects have been exaggerated to the
point where we now have created a self-fulfilling
prophecy" (p. 7). Her findings indicate that about 25%
of children of divorce have serious social, emotional or
psychological problems compared to 10% of children
living in her comparison two-parent families. But twenty
years later she found that children from divorced and
never divorced families were much more similar than
different. An especially important fact to note is that
there is a group of children emerging from divorced
families who she describes as "uncommonly resilient,
mature, responsible, and focused, these children of
divorce blossomed…"
The book concludes with a series of important lessons
for all of us about family life in our times:
- there is great variability in how adults and children deal with family relationships and the consequences of divorce and remarriage,
- despite more equal opportunity among men and women, they still express closeness and deal with conflict in very different ways,
- people and relationships can change for better or worse, they are not fixed forever in time;
- people actively shape their relationships and their life course;
- many difficulties that are blamed on divorce are present in problematic two-parent families before the divorce;
- how people handle divorce depends on factors that pose challenges and those that sustain them in difficult moments. Positive relationships with friends and family can help ease difficult family transitions;
- there is at least some genetic component to personality characteristics such as impulsivity, antisocial behavior, and neuroticism that can be destructive to intimate relationships;
- close, supportive relationships can buffer difficulties in life;
- in general there is a tendency toward resiliency in people, that is, they strive to cope and adapt to life situations and most succeed.
Hetherington concludes her book with a reminder that
75-80% of the children and adults she studied do not
show long-term serious problems. She states that by
emphasizing the negative outcomes for people, we do a
"disservice to the majority of those individuals who,
often with heroic effort, are leading constructive
lives." Anyone interested in the well-being of families,
both their own and those around them, needs to read this
book.
Last Updated 05/06/2008
 |
Site Administrator: |
|
|
|
