In Massachusetts: "Divorced Kids"

By Jane O'Reilly

American Scene

Lexington, Mass., is nearly country, nearly rich and near enough to Boston to attract a more or less upwardly mobile mix of residents: native Yankees, middle-management families from companies such as Raytheon and Polaroid, intellectuals from M.I.T. and Harvard. "You have the impression that everyone in Lexington has a fireplace in his bedroom," says one high school senior. The corollary illusion is that every house contains a happy, intact family. Yet an estimated 30% (no one knows for sure) of the students in Lexington's school system have suffered the effects of divorce. Despite the fact that divorce is now regarded as part of the American way of life, they feel they are aliens in their own culture.

On this wet afternoon, 16 students, ten to twelve years of age, are sitting in a circle at the Bridge Elementary School. They are all children of divorce. "It's just called a support group," says Frank Nelligan, the elementary school counselor who meets with this and similar groups once a week. Today one question before the group is whether a film on divorce that it has just seen should be shown to children whose parents are not divorced.

A girl says, "The kids whose parents are together will just say, 'Nah, my parents aren't like that.' Those kids aren't the kind who will listen. They will just tease and look at you funny." A boy earnestly explains: "Sometimes you are too scared to tell your friends. You might be ashamed." "Ashamed?" a counselor asks. A girl called Flora (the names of students are fictitious) stares at the floor and says, "Sometimes they say they are just going on a trip. I was upset. They lied." The point of this support group, the real usefulness of a school's becoming involved, is made clear when the counselor asks if there are any adults the kids feel they can talk to. He is answered by silence.

Helen, an older girl, is there to share her experience with divorce. She is a member of a group--three years old and mostly girls, so far--at Lexington Senior High1 School. There are many services for divorced parents now, but so far only some two dozen such groups throughout the country for kids. The one in Lexington is known as the Divorced Kids Group, a name with more zest than, say, Children of Broken Homes Group, but not entirely satisfactory. Why should children define themselves by their parents' behavior? Howard Schofield, the counselor who started the group, feels the children's acknowledgment of their predicament is the first step toward feeling less helpless about it. Says Helen: "After all, the divorce is as much ours as our parents'."

The Lexington High group, led by a few Divorced Kids who have taken a credit course on peer group counseling, meets at lunch period. It is small--only about 30 interested students and nine really involved members, far less than the actual number of children whose parents are divorced. "Most won't join such groups," says Robert S. Weiss, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts. "They are afraid people will gossip about them." Boys, in particular. "It's feminine for girls to be sensitive," says Helen. "For guys, it's sissy." At today's meeting a couple of seniors are groaning over a corny ballot for "senior superlatives"--Most Studious, Class Sweetie, Nicest Smile. These students maintain that drugs are not a problem; even drinking is now illegal under the age of 20 in Massachusetts. Sports and proms are the compelling interests. The '60s might never have been.

"Shall we tell you our situation?" asks Lorraine, who will be a group leader next year. They explain, carefully organizing their experiences into topics: new spouse, dealing with siblings, parental dating, blended families, role reversal, legal problems. Tentatively, painfully, they are learning to describe the terrible, familiar ambivalence of teen-agers who are getting ready to leave home, in their cases, infinitely complicated by the fact that home has, in a sense, left them first.

Roles reverse. Even mothers who have reorganized their lives (and may be a little too evidently eager to get on with them) are seen by their old-fashioned children as needing protection. Julie, a senior caught up in the delicious dilemma of choosing between two Ivy League schools, says: "I had to take care of my mommy. We all get responsibility and grow up a lot quicker. We have to think and deal with the issues." "Really," agrees the group, using the word as a flat affirmative, this year's version of "Right on."

Over and over, the Divorced Kids complain, "We don't know what's going on." It is hard to figure it out when the logical person to ask--a parent--responds by crying or throwing things. "It helps to talk to kids who understand," the group agrees. Any adult who has tried to explain a divorce to a happily married friend will understand what the kids call "the brick-wall effect." Happy people do not know, and will not believe, that the phrase "They fight" can mean a father who says, "If I see your mother I'll kill her"--and means it. Having to carry messages can mean being used as cannon fodder in support-check battles. College these days can cost $8,000 a year, and the Divorced Kids urge each other to hire their own lawyer, if necessary, to make sure that tacit agreements are written down. Even as they protest, "My parents would never do that to me," they've all heard of the kid whose father cashed in her college savings account to support his new family. Even when parents show the most exquisite consideration, children feel betrayed.

When the talk gets too difficult, they protect themselves by glazing over. No one picks it up when Simone says, "My mom keeps telling me to go ahead and live with my father. She couldn't insult me more." When a new girl explains that she learned of "her" divorce when her father put a debt-disclaiming ad in the paper, they all chorus: "Oh." "Ugh." "Yuck." "But so typical." Julie says, "My mother had this man living in the house. I felt as if I was in the way. She would agree with him about things she would object to if it were just us. Mothers don't want to rock the boat with men." "Really." Everybody agrees on that one.

Two boys, both named Paul, both juniors, come in. One admits his parents have separated only this week. "Isn't it a wonderful feeling, alone and left out?" laughs Martha, immediately sobering and repeating sympathetically, "Are you alone and left out?" "Yeah," says Paul.

The other Paul's parents were divorced some years ago. "I wish I had had a group like this then. My sister and I were the ones who stopped the rights. Now I get along with my stepmother better than my father. She's a lot younger." Lorraine exclaims, "Oh, that's excellent. She remembers what it's like to be young." His father, Paul reports, is "sliding toward middle age, about 42."

Money is a big topic. "My father sends $50 a month, and I never get to see any of it." "Oh yeah, money is such a bitch. I couldn't believe it; last night my father came over to pick up a table and my mother said, 'Children, your father has just stolen a table.' "

Fathers are all perceived as lonely. "Christmas, that's always a problem. You feel so guilty about the one you're not with." Fathers who in fact are not lonely are also a problem. "My father wants to marry this woman, and he takes her kids out for doughnuts on Sunday mornings. It really upsets my younger sister; he never did that with her."

The long divorced Paul wonders if anyone knows what causes divorce. They all do. Lorraine says, "The whole purpose in life for our mothers, even going to college, was to be married. I couldn't imagine getting married so soon." She demands to know why you should get married anyway. Just to have kids? Why not adopt? It might be unfair to the kid, someone suggests. Probably, kids need both parents, they agree, both role models, to learn about relationships. They concur, tentatively, that parents themselves might need both parents to raise kids.

But, presses Lorraine, "how could you ever live with someone for 20, 30, 50 years? How boring. How dull." Paul adds: "Like being in a cage." Yet not one of the Divorced Kids seems to agree with something that Helen said during her visit with the elementary school children: that sometimes "divorce can be a good thing." They are learning to live with it, but they will never learn to like it. Really.

-- Jane O'Reilly

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