Two new books written by Catholic authors—”Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak” by Leila Miller, and “Marriage and Equality: How Natural Marriage Upholds the Ideal of Equality for Children” by Jennifer Johnson—explore the inner turmoil of children of divorce, the lifetime consequences of divorce, and the unique pastoral challenges divorce presents for children, whether young or adult.

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CWR: What surprised you most about the book contributors’ answers? Are there any unintended threads running through the book?

Leila Miller: What surprised me most was the raw pain, even and especially after so many years, and the fear of their true feelings being discovered. It was shocking to me! The pattern of the children protecting the feelings of the adults, sticking to the narrative they’d been given, and then acting out (or inward) in destructive ways as a way of coping with the explosion of their families—it was repeated again and again in their stories. Several of the contributors, upon reading the finished book, expressed shock that they were not the only ones who experienced the same feelings and patterns of behavior. In fact, some of them were surprised to see that certain entries were not their own! That is how similar many of their interior stories are.

Another surprising thing was that the devastation did not depend on the age of the child at the time of the divorce. Whether contributors’ parents had split when they were infants, small children, teens, or adults (even in their 30s!), the devastation, confusion, and sense of upheaval was profound. Also, whether the parents’ marriage had been abusive or low-conflict had no real bearing on their pain. We are told that “good divorce” is not damaging to children, and yet my contributors say otherwise.

The victims of divorce speak

“Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak,” by Leila Miller

This is the great paradox of our time: In 2017, it has never been easier for us to satisfy our wants, but we seldom have been more dissatisfied. In the United States, in Europe, in Latin America, and even (more quietly) in parts of Asia and in Australia, there is a sense that things are not going quite right, that the old order — not only in politics but also in commercial and religious life — is dead on its feet. People have turned to leaders and movements of very different kinds — Hugo Chávez, Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, black-mask anarchism — in search of alternatives. In a sense, they are all the same: Those who had felt themselves to be on the outside looking in are now on the outside looking out.

Once, the question the ambitious and dissatisfied asked themselves was: “How do I climb that ladder?” Current tastes run more toward smashing the ladder and the hierarchies for which it stands in the name of . . . whatever: feminism or anti-feminism, black liberation or white nationalism, global justice or national sovereignty.

We spend our days surrounded by great miracles and minor irritations.

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We do not have a problem of privation in the United States. Not really. What we have is something related to what Arthur Brooks (“the most interesting man in Washington,” Tim Alberta calls him) describes as the need for earned success. We are not happy with mere material abundance. We — and not to go all Iron John on you, but I think “we” here applies especially to men — need to feel that we have earned our keep, that we have established a place for ourselves in the world by our labor or by other virtues, especially such masculine virtues as physical courage and endurance. I suspect that is a big part of the reason for the exaggeratedly reverential, practically sacramental attitude we current express toward soldiers, police officers, and firemen.

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The newly unemployed man of 40 seeking to reinvent himself is not in the most promising position.

Two things are going on here related to American unhappiness: The first is that as our economy becomes less physical and more intellectual, success in life is less like war and more like chess, and extraordinary success in life — i.e., being part of the founding of a successful new company — is a lot like being a grandmaster: It is an avenue that simply is not open to everyone. It requires talents that are not distributed with any sense of fairness and that are not earnable: Hard work is not enough.

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But the marriage and family that once was a source of security is today a source of insecurity, an unstable and uncertain thing scarcely defended by the law (it is far, far easier to walk away from a marriage than from a student loan) and held in low regard by much of society. Again, this works differently for men than for women: A single mother is still a mother, but a father who lives apart from his children and their mother is not a father in full. If he is not fixed in this world by being a father and a husband, and if he has only ordinary, unexceptional employment, what, exactly, is he? Self-sufficient, perhaps, and that isn’t nothing. But how does he stand in relation to other men, to his neighbors, and to those who came before him and will come after him? His status is vague, and it is precarious.

And there is the paradox within our paradox: The world is wondrous and beautiful and exciting and rich, and many of us have trouble finding our place in it, in part, because it is wondrous and beautiful and exciting and rich, so much so that we have lost touch with certain older realities. One of those realities is that children need fathers. Another is that fathers need children.

But these are what my colleague David French calls the “wounds that public policy will not heal.” Our churches are full of people who would love to talk to you about healing, but many have lost interest in that sort of thing, too. And so they turn to Trump, to Le Pen, to Chavismo (which is what Bernie Sanders is peddling), and, perhaps, to opiate-induced oblivion. Where will they turn when they figure out — and they will figure it out — that there are no answers in these, either?

And what will we offer them?

On the Outside, Looking Out

Forthcoming book, Philip Greenspun is a co-author.

“When young people ask me about the law as a career,” said one litigator, “I tell them that in this country whom they choose to have sex with and where they have sex will have a bigger effect on their income than whether they attend college and what they choose as a career.”

After you read this book you will have a practical understanding of the divorce, child custody, and child support laws in all 50 states of the U.S. (plus D.C.). You’ll be learning from the top divorce litigators in those jurisdictions about how concrete scenarios are likely to be resolved by courts.

“Before you can get a driver’s license, they make you read a booklet with all of the laws,” noted a consumer. “Why don’t they make people applying for a marriage license read about how the divorce system works in that state?”

“Real World Divorce: Custody, Child Support, and Alimony in the 50 States”

• Do economists lie more? – “Yes. And it seems the effect is causal: studying business and economics makes you more likely to lie”
• Who Needs a Warrant? Florida Cop Dresses As Power Company Repairman to Gain Access to Home
• Election hacked, drunken robot elected to DC school board

• Change of Habit – “Humility. Lent. The Red Carpet. Hollywood just cannot get nuns right.” (See Dolores Hart.)
• Sandra Fluke Does Not Speak for Me – “[Sandra Fluke’s] one claim to fame in the reproductive health care debate is…drumroll, please…being a student club leader! You go, Sandra! Hang those posters girl. Wear out those Sharpies. Me? I love me some extracurricular involvement. The difference between Sandra and me is that I don’t think it qualifies me to speak in front of Congress. ‘The Chair calls to the stand the captains of the intramural ultimate frisbee team!’ … Sandra Fluke doesn’t speak for me. Or for Georgetown.”
• Candidate Putin on The State of The World – “Victory in this week’s Presidential election is almost certain, but the Prime Minister is no longer the absolute master of Russian politics. Not only does he face a protest movement that includes some of the most thoughtful and creative people in his country; the old techniques don’t seem to be working anymore. As a recent German documentary shows, Putin’s old routine of judo, swimming, and hunting polar bears ‘no longer comes across as virile but, rather, as exhausting and joyless.'” Hmmm, “exhausting and joyless” describes a lot of political behavior….
• Geithner’s Latest Alibi – “In Ron Suskind’s [Confidence Men], on how Geithner, Larry Summers, and company protected Wall Street, Suskind quotes an appalled Senator Byron Dorgan telling President-elect Obama in December 2008, ‘You’ve picked the wrong people!’ Did he ever. Geithner keeps proving that over and over again.”

• The Gray Divorcés – “The divorce rate for people 50 and over has doubled in the past two decades. Baby boomers are breaking up late in life like no generation before.”
• What body language signals motivation, social skills and conscientiousness in a job applicant? – “talking, gesturing, and dress were indeed valid cues for social skills, but only the formality of dress predicted the applicant’s work motivation”
• People Aren’t Smart Enough for Democracy – “It is interesting that progressives think citizens are much too stupid to make their own choices in the grocery store.”
• It’s time to fix the Bill of Rights – “I propose that we have a meeting of all the great minds (college professors, A-list Hollywood actors, people who watch ‘Downton Abbey’) to list everything people need — basics like food, transportation, and smart phones.”
• Bill of Rights Card, from Two Seas Media