On Sunday, the New York Times published its now-infamous "Vows" column about newlyweds Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla, who met at their kids' Upper West Side pre-kindergarten class, fell madly in love, and dumped their respective spouses to be with each other.
The piece set off a firestorm of controversy in the blogosphere and on Twitter, with readers alternately blasting the couple for going public with their story (and the Times' for publishing it), or commending them both for their honesty.
On Monday, Forbes' Jeff Bercovici quoted Riddell as saying that she and Partilla had participated in the story because they just wanted "one honest account of how this happened for our sakes and for our kids' sakes." By Tuesday, Riddell's ex-husband Bob Ennis had weighed in to Forbes with the view that the piece was a "choreographed, self-serving piece of revisionist history", adding that while "people lie and cheat and steal all the time...rarely does a national news organization give them an unverified megaphone to whitewash it." Yesterday, Partilla admitted to Page Six that he regretted participating in the piece, and wouldn't have done so if he and Riddell had had any inkling of the nerve it would strike.
The story made me queasy for many reasons, not the least of which was the way in which the devastation of two families was positioned as a Romeo and Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers, but with the twist of blending a happily-ever-after ending with a story of hope and renewal; or the way in which the two ghost-exes were so casually "disappeared", or the way in which readers were asked to believe that when the heart wants what the heart wants--and then marches out and brashly takes it--all one really needs in the aftermath is a little Bob Marley, because everything's gonna be alright.
Let me be clear. This is not an argument against divorce. Nor am I passing moral judgment on two people who fell in love and decided to leave their marriages to be with each other. People do what they do for all kinds of reasons, and it's not my place or desire to judge their choices. What does trouble me, however, is the apparently delusional manner in which these two people view the consequences of their choices on the people around them.
I say delusional, because Riddell and Partilla think they're having a sophisticated divorce, by which I mean that they believe, as many people do in our culture, that it is possible to divorce and wreak havoc in the lives of others, and somehow go about it in a civilized manner. They're so sure that this is what they're doing, and are so seduced by the idea that they their divorce is a thoroughly modern model from which others can learn ("We are really proud of our family and proud of the way we've handled this situation over the past year," Riddell told Bercovici), they chose to tell their story in the Times' "Vows" column, the apotheosis of stylish and urbane marital modernity.
What they don't know yet--but will almost certainly find out--is that there is no such thing as a sophisticated divorce--even if you're a triathlete advertising executive or glamorous TV anchor with a Pepsodent smile who dresses for her second marriage in a white strapless Nicole Miller.
There's no such thing as a sophisticated divorce because when you get divorced and you have young children, no matter how devoted or high quality a parent you are, no matter how much expert advice you seek out to get your kids through, no matter how responsibly and maturely you handle the situation, no matter how much you wish it weren't so, you are setting off an IED in your children's lives. There's simply no getting around that; yet it's something that divorcing parents--especially those who have uncomfortable and messy guilts of their own to assuage--often prefer not to think about.
I have been guilty of falling into this trap, and I know many thoughtful and caring divorced parents who have unconsciously fallen into it as well. For not only do children lack any agency in their parents' decision to divorce (not to mention its life-altering consequences), unlike many of their parents, they didn't see that homemade bomb coming. It just landed in their lives one day and took them out. Once that bomb has gone off though, there's no use in pretending that it isn't going to reconfigure a lot of lives in a profound way.
This is true even if their parent didn't marry a close family friend with whom they shared dinners, Christmas parties and family vacations, as was the case for the kids in these two families. In any event, when Riddell and Partilla broke the news to their kids, their kids were distraught. Surveying the damage, these are the rationalizations their parents chose to tell themselves:
Riddell: "He said, 'Remind me every day that the kids will be O.K.' [I would say] the kids are going to be great because we're going to spend the rest of our lives making it so."
Riddell: My kids are going to look at me and know that I am flawed and not perfect, but also deeply in love. We're going to have a big, noisy rich life with more people in it."
What these two besotted newlyweds don't seem to understand--or more likely prefer not to face--is that no matter how much they congratulate themselves for their handling of the debacle, or how resilient their children are, or how successful those children become later as adults, their children will have scars from the divorce, and they'll bear those scars, in one way or another, for the rest of their lives. If you don't believe me, then look elsewhere on this page and read Judith Wallerstein.
The five kids (three his; two hers) whose lives exploded in the wake of an "unstoppable" love, have watched their parents play a game of marital musical chairs, and they themselves have been moved around like pieces in a board game. No matter how much they're loved or are shepherded through the process; no matter how much their parents want them to put all this behind them and get better and love their step-siblings and their "big noisy family", they can't be sure that any of that will happen. In fact, if you read the literature on the subject, the deck is stacked against it happening.
What's more, in my view, they're only making matters worse by failing to see that the so-called sophisticated divorce comes fully loaded with ridiculous, impossible-to-meet expectations many of which parents project onto their kids largely to make themselves feel better, but that just wind up burdening them more.
When any divorce happens, kids lose the families they have known, and their sense of safety. For a time, they're traumatized and disoriented. In this case, the children have one parent who's madly in love, and another who's been turned into road kill. What are we to reasonably expect of any child who has to wrap his or her head around that?
I have a fantasy about the young girl in the "Vows" wedding photo. In my fantasy, she grows up to become a writer, and one day she decides to tell the story of her parents' divorce from her point of view, the way Noah Baumbach did in The Squid and The Whale.
That's one sophisticated New York divorce story I think we could all benefit from hearing.
THe author should be mortified for pointing the finger and judging " the white strapless nichole miller"
My God give people more credit than your own shallow bench mark . Marriage is a cultural myth .
Whats the biggest death bed regret ??? That they didn't get divorced !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bad for kids-a huge stigma in our society-it's what goes on-leaving your spouse for another sucks-happens all the time-get over it.
Hard not to be judgemental.
Until post WW II, divorce with children was unacceptable. A father who divorced was scorned by former friends. Mother divorcees lost friends, gained new sexual partners.
The divorce rate was steady, around 5%, in part because it was difficult, expensive to attain a divorce. Divorces were the province of the wealthy and movie stars.
With the advent of effective birth control devices, a burgeoning women's movement, an 'anything goes' in the name of self-fulfillment late 1960s thrust, and a sustained economic prosperity, the barriers to divorce with children were swept away.
To overcome the millenia years long belief that such divrces were harmful to young ones and society, it was asserted that "Bad as divorces are for children, it is even worse for them to grow up in a filled with acrimony" To prove it , a spoiled brat had only to raise the acrimony to a level, that even the kids would want a split.
There was only anecdotal evidence that such splits were harmful to children. Those who divorced believed that they could make it better for their kids. They were pioneers for a brave new world. But a half century later that experiment has prooved misguided.
Judge not lest ye be judged. Calling me and the millions like me around the world "unacceptable" is divisive, not uplifting. Offer us some love and compassion rather than putting the scarlet "A" on our chest.
Do you ever consider that unhappy parents, by staying together, teach their children that misery is acceptable in marriage? That it's "right" to stay with someone with whom you are unhappy - perhaps even neglected, verbally abused, or taken for granted? Because that's what I see in my friends who stay in miserable marriages; their parents did, so they think they, too, should stick it out. Otherwise, they're being "selfish." Well, that, and they also have no idea what a healthy marriage looks like.
The women's movement advocates for tossing out the message that women should always put everyone's needs ahead of their own, no matter the price to their own wellbeing. As the mother of two daughters, I want my girls to advocate for their own mental health - and yes, sometimes that means acknowledging past mistakes and making difficult choices in search of a better way.
Anecdotes about kids from divorced parents are not evidence. i have just as many stories (including my own) about adults from "intact" families who struggle with relationships because of what their married parents taught them.
Nowhere did the author say the mother was selfish, she made no judgement there. The article was about those who are delusional enough to think that their children will not be scarred by divorce. Maybe in some cases the kids are EVENTUALLY better off, maybe in some they are not...but parents who are foolish enough to ignore the scars that divorce leaves are just rationalizing.
Your case for selfishness makes clear why today's women's movement must dissociate itself from this 'it's better for everyone if mommy is happy' plea.. It simply is not the case when what makes mommy happy is divorce. The jury no longer is out on that one.
It is not surprising that the washing away of societal barriers to divorce with children coincided with the advent of effective birth control devices. It also coincided with an extended period of economic prosperity.
The primary message that children of divorce receive is that nothing is more important than old number one, not even one's kids.
Does one wish that one's not-yet-wed children's marriages with children end in divorce while the children are young?.
Their kids lives were completely derailed to this day. Even if they someday are okay it probably won't make up for all the lost years of childhood.
The parents alternate between regret and defiance of what bad moves they made. Or perhaps they bought into a bad fantasy that you can make things go your way because you think it should work the way you want it to.
About a year ago someone I know divorced and said her kids would be fine because all their friend's parents are divorced. Well, here we are today and I hear the teenage daughter now hates the mom because mom makes daughter spend all her weekends away from her school friends on an isolated farm (mom's share of marital property). It is hard to figure how these myths keep going about how resilient kids are.
Its worthiness would be enhanced by dissociating itself from the idea that divorce with children is neutral to society. In the overwhelming majority of cases it is harmful , often seriously so, to the children of divorce.
Surely there are instances where one parent is chronically abusive or deep into drugs or alcohol, where the children benefit from a divorce. But absent such compelling factors, selfishness of one spouse, however rationalized, puts the children's emotional and moral development at risk.
Resolve hostility and better the Marriage. Kids from 'better Marriages = Best Results for kids, per all the studies. There is no serious scientific debate about the best possible start you can give them - work it out! Dont be so hostile, selfish, narcissistic - and dumping the spouse leads to more hostility, throughout these kids lives, not less.
You might want to look at your research with a bit of common sense in drawing conclusions.
So much judgment on these threads. I'm simply advocating for trying to find compassion for people before, or perhaps instead of, dismissing them as pathological, horrible people.
As a grad student in clinical psych, I got all excited to do my master's thesis on the horrible effects of divorce on children of all ages - little ones through college age. I assumed I'd find piles of studies confirming what supposedly everybody "knows" - that kids suffer permanent harm from divorce. Well, I kept digging until I finally had to change the topic of my thesis. Turns out, the overwhelming majority of long-term studies done on the impact of divorce on kids shows that it's NOT divorce that traumatizes kids - it's parental hostility, whether they stay together or divorce. Believe me or don't, but as someone who was really invested in doing a big ol' paper on just how bad divorce is for the kids...the evidence just wasn't there (and I dug up over 60 studies).
Maybe before we all crucify a couple we don't know, we should ask ourselves why we are so dang invested in making them into narcissistic villains willing to sacrifice their kids in the name of hedonism. Did they do the right thing? Maybe so, maybe no. But to me the more interesting question is, why are thousands of people so eager to condemn them to eternal misery?
I love how doing the right thing equates with doing what feeeeels good at the time.
As I tell my own children, most people pretend that everything they do is right, and the result of careful thinking and analysis, but in reality people just do what they please and rationalize it later as "their only choice".
But they are in much better shape than the kids whose parents went to war. Most of those kids I know have gone on drugs for awhile, and are frequently estranged from one parent. What happens when one parent fights every money request from the custodial parent, is the child feels it's about them. Those kids frequently never see the non-custodÂial parent after they are 18.
My ex-stepfatÂher fought college costs in court for my half sister back in the day, and said horrible stuff. Then he threatened to put a hit on our mother if she didn't scale back the judgment 90%, and mom did that. My sis went to college on scholarshiÂps after that.
She didn't speak to him for 10 years, and their relationshÂip was never close after that. His son with his next wife was a ner do well that was in prison, and my half sis was a highly respected professionÂal. There is a cost to everythingÂ.
When I read the NYT article, I just shook my head in disgust. First for the delusional thinking and rhetoric that accompanies the beginning stages of love struck people who are blind to the ramifications of their behaviors on other people, and secondly that this type of crap would be made public in such a way that honors narcissism and contributes to mocking basic human values.