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Should we trust what we read about divorce? I’m writing a book on the topic, so clearly I believe in the power of the written word. But whatever the source, you have to think critically about pieces you see—and hear—and judge for yourself whether it makes sense generally, and in your specific situation. Because this still-incendiary, visceral topic can lead even the most well-meaning journalists and scholars to make mistakes, sometimes due to their own, unrecognized bias.
Take an article in Newsweek magazine last month that purported to expose insidious new attempts to make divorce more difficult. I share the author’s concerns about a punitive mindset toward divorce, including proposed waiting periods as long as 18 months between filing and divorce, an attempt to keep people wed through legislated moralizing and red tape. It’s a movement out of sync with the today’s realities, especially in Arkansas—one state cited—which has one of the highest divorce rates in the country.
But the author goes on to decry other enforced “curbs” on divorce that actually are hugely helpful services created by divorce innovators, legal and psychological. Such as parenting classes, mentioned in the piece as an insulting intrusion on personal freedom. Massachusetts, for example, has a mandatory six-hour parenting education course for divorcing parents.
I’d love to take a free six-hour parenting course. A parenting class is not an attempt to make divorce harder. Parenting classes are an example of the new resources available today to help people better protect themselves and their children in the process of divorce. Parenting classes began appearing in the 1980s and ‘90s as family activists fought to replace the old law-oriented, adversarial, punitive approach to divorce with a more collaborative, interdisciplinary process. This transition dovetails with seeing divorce as a potential public health crisis—with risks that can be mitigated through support—rather than a punishment for the morally corrupt. Early surveys of parenting classes show that they are widely effective and popular.
People I’ve spoken to who’ve taken mandatory parenting classes said they benefited from the time spent with other parents going through the same thing. They genuinely appreciated the information provided. Even when it felt obvious, it was good to hear.
The Newsweek article also points to psychological counseling as a problem. Counseling does not make divorce harder. Counseling makes divorce easier. Divorce is a legal and emotional issue and the one affects the other. Counseling is a tremendous aid to couples not only in the moment of divorce but also in their attempt to craft a positive relationship moving forward. At the Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families in Denver, the nation’s first one-stop divorce and separation shop, counseling is an important part of helping people move past anger and craft parenting plans and separation agreements that last. The new-ish form of divorce law, collaborative counsel, also includes counseling as an important part of the process, for couples who need it.
The flip side of assuming every divorcing couple is ruining their lives through an irresponsible quest for the next shiny thing is viewing every effort to integrate support into the divorce process as an attempt to keep people wed.
The Newsweek article certainly points out some of the legal and ideological problems still dogging divorce— unfair welfare policies that punish poor parents, and a crazy-making notion, cited by New York attorney Matthew Reischer, that divorce should be more difficult. As if divorce isn’t difficult enough? The article quotes Reischer as saying he wants divorce to be more “arduous and cumbersome” so people will think twice before marrying. As a nation, we are thinking twice about marriage. Marriage rates are dropping, enlightened divorce laws not withstanding. People do not divorce because the process is insufficiently arduous. They divorce because they are devastatingly unhappy while wed.
When they divorce, they need policies and practices that make the process as painless and easy as possible, so that their lives and their second marriages have a chance of working, rather than being destroyed by resentment and ongoing fights leftover from the first. Easy means emotionally bolstered. Easy means classes and counseling, financial education and anger management tools. Easy does not necessarily mean fast, I’m sorry to say.
An easy divorce—one that’s educational, supported, intelligent—creates stronger families, safer children, and healthier adults, post-marriage.
Read about how to have an easier divorce on my blog at wendparis.com.
