I've been a separated parent for 36 years. In 1977, two years after my separation, a family therapy journal asked well-respected professionals how to advise separating parents. Few professionals favored continuing involvement between ex-spouses. Most saw it as an unconscious wish to "hang on" to the marriage and confusing for the children.
Somehow my former husband and I knew better. We had struggled with the idea of separation and the impact on our kids. Right from the beginning we wanted a new space around the kids. We didn't want to be a "broken family." We "untangled" our adult relationship and "rearranged" our parenting relationship. We worked on our adult hurt, sadness and anger and kept our children out of it. Today, we feel like successful parents -- and now grandparents. Our children are not remnants of something broken but the center of an ever-expanding family full of stepparents and their relatives, in-laws and grandchildren. We know that we are, in fact, kin.
In my practice as a family therapist I help separating parents create this new benign emotional space for parenting. Not a space for a cozy relationship, but space for parenting without continued tension or iciness. Having parents who speak respectfully to one another is good for all children whether their parents are together or apart. But cordial relationships between former partners don't happen quickly or easily -- and it has not always been supported in our culture.
In my book "Wisdom for Separated Parents: Rearranging Around the Children to Keep Kinship Strong," I share the stories of parents who have been separated for decades. They found ways to create benign spaces around their kids. Some found that space right away, some renewed connection as the children grew and changed.
I interviewed parents, both gay and straight, who lived through the social, legal and religious changes of the late 20th century. Their journeys mirror those larger societal shifts that shaped all of us. Professional understanding of divorce between parents shifted too. We now understand and acknowledge that separating parents have connections with their kids and therefore with each other -- forever. Sometimes those connections are sticky and confusing. Sometimes they are very distant. "We are not friends, but we aren't strangers" said a woman of her former partner. "And we know each other well. I guess we're all learning."
In many ways, change has been driven by divorced parents themselves. By 1980, as the divorce wave peaked, parents wanted a different model. They saw the "broken" label as unhelpful and not accurate. Most of these parents separated because they wished to end the hurt or draining anger of their adult relationship. They did not want to give up the right to co-parent. Parents pushed for a pioneering California child custody law in 1980 which directed courts to make it a legal priority for children to have contact with both parents. Parents led the way in demonstrating how to care for their children together. Professionals followed.
In my book, separated parents reveal how they watched the benign emotional space grow. By maintaining custody and visitation agreements, parents became predictable to each other again. A new, and perhaps more fragile, trust was built. Old feelings of hurt and anger were contained. Parents and kids became less edgy about family gatherings. Being in a room together, in safety and comfort, became possible for parents, for kids, and for the whole extended family. There was great relief in letting go of the tensions. Some separated parents were able to achieve this safe space right from the beginning but for most, it took time. The wisdom of these long-separated parents will, I hope, provide comfort and helpful guidance to today's separating parents.
"I did want him to fall off the edge of the earth at first," says Nan, separated in 1987. "It was going to be much easier if he just disappeared. Now there's really great tenderness around our parenting. On Father's Day, there's nobody else I could have imagined raising my sons with."
The bottom line; divorce does not have to mean "unhappily ever after." A post separation/divorce relationship is not an oxymoron. What we now include as "family" was considered an aberration a couple of generations ago. Now, the Census Bureau defines family as "two or more people who are related by blood, marriage, or adoption who are residing in the same house together." That means not only the "traditional" family of a husband, wife and kids, but also married same sex couples with or without children, single parents, or married couples with no children - and all the adults with children who are not married. These are the families we all know. They live next door. And many of them have weathered separations and divorce.
One parent describes her family unit as the new extended family. "So this is the unit that goes forward: me, my former husband and his wife of 10 years. We parent the older kids and now their new child." There's no escaping the fact that for parents and children, separation and divorce is challenging and painful. But these families aren't broken. They-- and others like them -- have simply untangled, let go of adult hurt and pain in favor of new energy around children. They rearranged.
Judy Osborne is the author of Wisdom for Separated Parents: Rearranging Around the Children to Keep Kinship Strong, and the founder of Stepfamily Associates in Brookline, MA. (www.wisdomforseparatedparents.com)
