WORLD | Sins of their fathers & mothers | Mary Jackson | June 11, 2016

This article hits home. My first wife served no-contact orders on me while I had my first heart catheterization in may 1995 and divorced me and married two men in succession afterwards. My sons [adopted and natural] are now 25 and older and have good relations with me as I was the stable and mature one. I waited until I was almost 31 to marry. Two of my sons are also have no desire to get married at this point. The other two have been burned by their spouses who preferred the excitement of the drug life in one case or exploited servicemen in the other first a marine and then my son who was an Army ranger at the time.
"Sins of their fathers & mothers
DIVORCE | The divorce revolution is now affecting a third generation, as children and grandchildren of divorced couples carry scars of the past into relationships
By MARY JACKSON
Issue: "Clinton, Inc.," June 11, 2016
Posted May 27, 2016, 01:00 a.m.
At 22, Dawn Holiday had spent the previous two years getting to know her father. He was now remarried with children and planned to attend her college graduation, making it the first time in 20 years her divorced parents, along with their separate families and friends, would be in the same place. During the ceremony, Holiday consciously divided her time between the two groups, grateful they were unlikely to meet at the large event.
Afterward, Holiday went to eat with her father. But out of the hundreds of restaurants in Waco, Texas, her mother’s family happened upon the same one and sat only tables away. Awkward introductions and an uncomfortable lunch ensued. Holiday could hardly wait for it to end. She was overwhelmed by unresolved questions, confusion, and guilt: “I wanted to feel free to love them both. But love has a spoken or unspoken aspect of loyalty, creating a double-bind reality for children of divorce.”
June, marriage month, also brings sad realizations: Millions of Americans have experiences like Holiday’s, and the sting of divorce is now generations deep. As divorce permeates American culture, its ripple effects are felt in normally joyous occasions like weddings, graduations, children’s births, and holidays. Some children of divorce enter marriage with more resolve, but many others are cynical of marriage and prefer cohabitation, leading to more broken relationships.
‘You think as an adult you have moved on, but the tension never fully goes away.’ —Dawn Holiday
The sexual revolution and women’s rights movement of the 1960s shifted American views of marriage from happiness achieved through duty and sacrifice to an ephemeral individual happiness and “fulfillment.” In 1969, California passed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law, allowing one spouse to dissolve a marriage for any reason and gutting marriage of its legal power. No-fault laws quickly swept the nation: By 1980, the divorce rate had more than doubled, spawning what many call the “divorce revolution.”
Psychologist and researcher Judith Wallerstein aptly asked, “But what about the children?” Her 25-year investigation followed children of divorce into adulthood, documenting their struggles, particularly in forming romantic relationships and starting families of their own.
Wallerstein died in 2012, but a body of research now supports her findings and reveals in more detail the long-term effects for adult children of divorce: less education, lower income, poorer mental and physical health, more suicide, weakened parent-child relationships (particularly with fathers), more cohabitation, more problematic marriages, and more likelihood of divorce.
Fourteen years into marriage, Zeke Sevier, 41, of Santa Rosa, Calif., says, “We realize there’s a target on us.” He and his wife, Lisa, 40, are both grandchildren of divorce. Zeke’s parents’ divorce left him afraid of marriage—he dated a girl for eight years with no intention to marry her. At a friend’s engagement party, he met Lisa, who had been in and out of relationships since her parents’ divorce and had only recently broken up with her live-in boyfriend.
The two entered marriage idealistic, and Zeke wrote in a premarital counseling notebook, “I hate divorce … for me it is unacceptable.” For Lisa, saying their vows “was like nothing I had ever experienced. All I knew were broken relationships.”
Cleveland, Ohio, wedding planner Amy Hissa, 37, says, “It’s rare to see a couple who both come from still-married parents.” She’s been in the planning business for 10 years and says mitigating family tension by working through details—seating arrangements, reception speeches, and whether to allow an expectant stepmother into the bride’s dressing room—is one of her chief tasks. When interviewing a couple, Hissa tries to figure out, “Are they all amicable or do they hate each other?”
At one rehearsal dinner, a bride asked Hissa to tell her dad she planned to walk down the aisle with her stepfather: “He blew up and stormed out.” Napa and Sonoma wedding planner Brooke Menconi, 36, recalls a bride’s father showing up at a traditional, $100,000-plus wedding with his 30-years-younger mistress-turned-wife. The bride and her mother, his ex-wife, watched as the woman danced provocatively at the reception in a short, body-hugging dress. Menconi says, “It was one of those times you want to tell everyone to look away.”
Many who have experienced these realities are delaying or rejecting marriage, choosing instead to cohabit. Over 6 in 10 adult children of divorce think cohabitation before marriage is a good idea, and they are more likely to be living with their partner than those from intact, married families, according to W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project. These trends are worrisome, as cohabitation leads to more breakups, divorce, and economic instability, creating a complex web that increasingly involves children." COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Capt Christopher Mueller Capt Seid Waddell SMSgt Minister Gerald A. Thomas SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4" SSG Steven E. SSG Leo Bell PO2 Ed C. SP5 Mark Kuzinski SGT Forrest Stewart SGT John " Mac " McConnell SGT Robert Hawks SGT Robert George SrA Christopher Wright SPC Corbin Sayi Kim Bolen RN CCM ACM