Mind Moves: What would ease the experience of separation and divorce for children? Ask them and most children will respond "don't do it". Therein lies the disparity, outlined in last week's column, between the parental solution and the child's experience.
Research is unequivocal about the painful imprint of divorce on the fabric of adolescents' lives. Therefore, knowing how to ease the experience is important in situations where adults find themselves with no alternative to their marriages but to end them.
Divorce in the lifespan of adulthood may be a relatively short time. Even acute acrimony often abates within a few years and recovery occurs if legal agreements are fair and honoured. But a few years pre and post divorce during childhood consumes childhood. Teenage years last seven years. Years from youth are young years lost.
That is what makes claims that "children are resilient" dismissive and incorrect. Teens need to be informed carefully, listened to attentively and reassured profusely about the future when divorce is planned. They need assurances that they are not responsible and that there was nothing they should or could have done to prevent this adult decision, made for adult reasons, which they may understand in time.
Teens appreciate it if both parents tell them about the divorce together, do not provide accusatory details, nor feign unreal consensus, but express regret that it is happening and awareness of the difficulties the decision will bring for everyone. They need reassurance that their parents will continue to love, to parent and protect them, retain interest in every aspect of their lives, school, friends, their activities and aspirations.
Because many parents feel guilty about divorce they may suppress expressions of grief in their children whose sadness is hard to witness. But the emotional needs of teens are met best when parents acknowledge the adolescent's grief for the loss of the family and allow them to talk about it if they wish.
Teens are helped when they are allowed to say they are angry; what their fears are; when they are not exposed to parental neediness, financial concerns, legal tussles, disconnection from extended family, parental acrimony or the sudden insensitive introduction of new partners. They are devastated if a parent neglects, deprives them or disappears from their lives.
Teens are acutely aware of parental unhappiness but grateful if the burden does not fall on them. They are relieved if parents receive support from family, friends or professional help. Adolescence contains the complex tasks of "separation" and "individuation" involving increased independence from parents. It is thwarted if teens have to revert to age-inappropriate emotionally intense role-reversal with either parent during divorce.
Adolescents wish to be protected from financial disagreements. Many are acutely embarrassed if parents use finances as weapons against each other, if school fees are unpaid, if doctor visits cause dispute about who will pay; if a parent demands money at the start or end of visits to the other parent or if normal teen requests for money are met with "ask your father, he has plenty of money" or "ask your mother, I give her enough".
Teens say it stresses them if outings with parents are cancelled, if parents are unpunctual in collecting, meeting or driving them home, if they do not have easy access to both parents or feel they could not call on one parent to support the other should a crisis for either arise.
Teens feel particularly caught between parents who speak negatively about each other, who seek alliances with the teen against the other, who hurt each other by reneging on arrangements, by withholding money or by competing for the teen's favour by lavishing gifts. They reject legal tussles about custody and access but welcome time with both parents compatible with adolescent arrangements for school, sport, activities and time with their friends. Teens are angry if they see disparity in the lifestyle of one parent over the other, if one parent treats the other unfairly or if they feel they are pawns in parental disputes. It is confusing for them if parents have different discipline codes and even more difficult, if no controls are set by either.
In the teen transition from childhood to adulthood, when adolescents seek their own social and sexual identities, they say they hate if their parents behave like adolescents. Daughters are sensitive if their fathers' new partners are not much older than they. They are fearful that maternal partners might show interest in them. Sons are equally uncomfortable if close in age to parental partners. Most teens will say they hate situations that highlight their parents as sexual beings. It helps if parents do not expect any enthusiasm about the new people in their lives. Where new families are formed, there are major adjustments to stepsibs and new sibs that require especial sensitivity to teenage sensibilities.
Awareness, understanding and sensitivity to all these factors reduce the pain of parental divorce for teens. Research shows that the families who do best are those who attend sympathetically to the needs of their children and who seek professional family support during the highest risk times of dissolution and reconfiguration of family forms.
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital, Fairview, in Dublin.