Raise your hand if someone close to you – friend, relative, co-worker – has been personally touched by divorce. Sadly, I’ve been able to raise my hand for all three at certain points of my life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you can as well. Perhaps you’ve even been divorced yourself.
The prevalence of divorce in our culture is likely why so few say anything against it. Afraid of stepping on toes, we dance around the topic, telling divorcees that they’re “so brave” for separating from their partner, or that they did the right thing to get out and “find themselves.”
Allow me to say what everyone else is scared to say: Such sweet nothings are plain hogwash. In reality, divorce – particularly the easy, no-fault divorce of which so many couples have taken advantage in the last several decades – is likely at the root of many of the societal ills we are dealing with today, particularly those which affect today’s children – children who will become tomorrow’s adults.
“Divorce introduces instability, confusion, and questions of loyalty into the already complex nature of childhood,” Katy Faust and Stacy Manning write in “Them Before Us.” They go on to mention at least four major issues our culture deals with today that have a logical connection to the prevalence of divorce in American families.
Cancel Culture
Can’t deal with the opinion a friend holds? Cancel him. Can’t maneuver the quirks and disagreements of extended family members? Cut them off. Don’t want to come up with rational arguments for an online debate? Block the account. All these are forms of the cancel culture which has spread across our country like a rash in the last 10 years or so.
But is it possible that cancel culture is so prevalent because many in our society learned from their parents’ example that cancelation is the easiest way to deal with problems?
One child of divorce interviewed for Faust and Manning’s book thinks the answer is yes. She recounts how her father disappeared for several weeks, then returned for a brief time, only to leave again, sitting in the car sobbing as he left his family behind, presumably forced out by his wife. “Mom never acknowledged what her decisions caused,” this woman writes. “We learned ‘cancel culture’ at home, and it’s all we know how to do.”
Healthcare Problems
Many of our wallets took a hit earlier this year when higher insurance costs kicked in. Those same high costs are often what drive people to say that healthcare is a right which the government should provide.
Surprisingly, there may be a connection between the high costs of healthcare and divorce. According to Faust and Manning, “Parental divorce has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and asthma. It’s also been shown to double the likelihood kids will have trouble with their gut, skin, nervous system, genitals, and urinary organs.” Such statistics lead them to conclude, “The correlation between divorced parents and their children’s compromised health are so direct, any serious plan to reduce the cost of healthcare should begin with reducing the divorce rate.”
A novel idea? Yes. But does it make sense? Absolutely. And perhaps the only reason we haven’t acknowledged or thought about this sooner is because too many adults would rather put their own feelings over the physical health and wellbeing of their children.
Falling Test Scores
It’s no secret that American academics are abysmal. According to the most recent Nation’s Report Card, only 35% of 12th-graders are proficient in reading and only 22% are proficient in math. Poor standards and other weak education policies deserve partial blame for such scores, but does home environment impact more than we realize?
“Ask any educator to identify the common factor among kids who struggle in school, and most would agree: It’s a broken home,” Faust and Manning write. “Navigating the transition between two houses, an exhausted single parent, or the merry-go-round of cohabiting parental partners and/or stepfamilies leaves kids with little time or mental energy to memorize multiplication tables.”
Teachers continually say that classroom behavior problems prevent them from teaching. But consider that the instability of broken homes can cause children to act up. Perhaps if we had fewer broken homes, we’d have more orderly classrooms, which in turn would allow teachers to focus on teaching rather than wasting time on discipline, leading to more knowledgeable graduates who can later contribute to the economic and entrepreneurial growth of the nation.
Family Formation
Late last year, Pew Research revealed that only 67% of 12th-graders say they’ll likely choose to get married, down from 80% in 1993. One can only surmise that if these declining marriage rates hold, birthrates will decline also – dangerous territory considering that the “U.S. fertility rate … reached a record low in 2024.”
Researchers have long connected the hesitation to marry and have kids with those whose own parents divorced when they were children. What many may not realize, however, is how high the likelihood of divorce actually is for these kids. Faust and Manning write:
Children of divorce whose parents never remarried are 45 percent more likely to divorce, and those whose divorced parents married stepparents were 91 percent more likely to divorce compared with adults raised in intact biological families. … [O]ne and done ought to be your mantra because the second time is no charm.
If we really want to change culture, then we must confront the uncomfortable realities that are causing problems in that same culture. Just from these few examples alone, it seems divorce is a major root of many of our issues. Is it time we swallow our pride and our own emotional comfort as adults and do away with no-fault divorce?
—
This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
Image Credit: Pexels
