Book Review: Between Two Worlds by Elizabeth Marquardt
This book was really informative. It’s essentially a compilation of a survey of adult children of divorce and adult children of intact marriages. For this particular survey, the researchers limited their data of divorced families to those who continued to be in relationship with both parents after the divorce. There is a great deal of statistical data and interpretation, but it really is informative and helpful.I’ve been formulating my own “theory” that perhaps children from divorced families are not able to articulate their feelings about their parents divorce until they are much older (perhaps adults). I would say the same is true for children in intact families … as a child, we simply don’t have the emotional IQ (and language to go with it) to articulate our present-tense emotions.
I suppose more than anything, this book gave me a small glimpse into the stresses a child must endure when faced with a divorce. As the author describes her own experience, she felt like a football, tossed between parents, spending more time in the air, than in either place. Having not faced this experience as a child, I’m not familiar with this, but am seeing it up close from a different vantage point now. It’s interesting how hard parents work to provided safety and stability, yet how the ideal was never experienced or reached for those participating in the survey.
I did appreciate the author’s challenge that as a society, we’re doing everyone a disservice to consider even the possibility of the “good divorce.” (Between Two Worlds seems to be in direct competition with the findings from The Good Divorce, and refers to that data quite frequently). That term is simply not something the author or survey participants have experienced. There are some really interesting comparisons between those from “good divorces” and “bad, but low conflict” marriages.
For some additional web articles on the idea of “staying together for the sake of the kids” versus “the good divorce,” here are some links:
Any thoughts?