tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post4257602527295371022..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: Organic yoga arugula Park Slope strollersPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-29581308873130605732011-06-18T17:30:33.574-04:002011-06-18T17:30:33.574-04:00Britta,
Interesting indeed, but it wouldn't r...Britta,<br /><br />Interesting indeed, but it wouldn't really matter in terms of the judgement of others, which is apparently the great fear of these women, or, in more neutral terms, the question of their "parenting." Once "custody" ceases to be an issue, once a kid's old enough that his own relationship choices make far more of an impact on his life than those of his parents, once the kid's two decades away from his organic-carrot-puree days and close to his graduation from Yale, assuming nothing financially gets in the way of the kid graduating on time, this is back in the realm of what happens when a couple without kids gets divorced.<br /><br />"[...] I feel like our parents' marriages weren't predicated on strict gender roles."<br /><br />I don't know how true this is of that entire generation. My anecdotal sense is it varied greatly by subculture, and that the two-career peer-marriage norm is something from the last decade or so. I can't say I've looked into this recently, though.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-61540694508881553172011-06-18T16:54:38.405-04:002011-06-18T16:54:38.405-04:00It would be interesting to see divorce statistics ...It would be interesting to see divorce statistics after the first 10 years. My own anecdata is that when I was in college we had several family friends who divorced their spouses after 25-30 years of marriage (including a different college roommate's whose perfect WASP family spectacularly imploded our junior year), which is right about when their last kid left for college. These were highly educated, high income baby boomers who did marry for love and shared interests rather than convenience, so while gender roles might not quite be where they are today, I feel like our parents' marriages weren't predicated on strict gender roles. The pattern seemed like it was initiated by the women, but then both of them quickly trading "up" in some way with new partners (i.e. the woman marrying richer, the man marrying younger).Brittahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02224221011978374915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-87986777860959820952011-06-18T16:48:33.841-04:002011-06-18T16:48:33.841-04:00PG,
"Anyway, in the absence of knowing that ...PG,<br /><br />"Anyway, in the absence of knowing that one of the parties provided a 'ground,' I don't like to judge people for divorce."<br /><br />I agree, and hoped I'd made that clear in the post. I don't think there's any point in judging individual couples, a) because you don't know what went on, really, and b) because, unless these are people you're close with, or unless they've announced how proud of themselves they are in the Vows, it's none of your business. I do, however, think no-fault divorce plus civility are perfectly compatible with pooh-poohing, <i>as a general rule</i>, divorcing without a damn good reason shortly after having kids with one's spouse, or, for that matter, shortly after marrying someone with young children. <br /><br />As for couples without children, I can't really get myself worked up about this, any more than I can re: unmarried but monogamous relationships (assuming the partners could legally marry - if not it's tough to determine which might be marriages but for the law) that end after many years. Depressing for the former couple, but gives both a chance to make it work with someone else. I mean, it may be <i>baffling</i> that a couple with a long history of premarital getting-along wouldn't make it work, but if no child's present, it's just baffling for others, depressing for the adults involved.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-68235552075995256702011-06-18T16:32:07.680-04:002011-06-18T16:32:07.680-04:00“The No. 1 reaction I get from people when I tell ...<i> “The No. 1 reaction I get from people when I tell them I’m getting divorced is, ‘You’re so brave,’ ”</i><br /><br />OK, wincing, because I have said that to friends who were getting divorced. But I think it <i>is</i> brave to say, "We are making each other unhappy and we don't have to live that way." Stasis and entropy are so much easier than forcing a rupture. Honestly, how many never-gonna-get-divorced couples have you seen making nasty, miserable little digs at each other? I think a lot of marriages that supposedly fell apart because one spouse had an affair (whether sexual or romantic) were probably already in that "Neither of us wants to admit that we've failed" stage, and the Other Person merely provides an impetus toward action. <br /><br />Admittedly, none of my female friends making up that 11% of college-educated folks getting divorced in the first decade of marriage had children, so the spouses' preferences were the only ones to consider. I have a male friend who divorced with a kid, but in far more 1950s-esque circumstances (i.e. unintentionally getting pregnant and getting married <i>because</i> of the pregnancy).<br /><br />The factors you note that might increase negative reactions toward divorce apply just as much to divorces without children as to divorces with. It is genuinely confounding as to how people who date, even live together, for years before getting married can't make it work once they had a legal status as a couple. <br /><br />And neither of my friends who divorced without kids had what a South Carolina court would consider "grounds" for divorce -- no physical abuse, adultery, substance abuse, desertion -- which I think might be another distinction between the high divorce rates of yesteryear (and possibly those of less-educated and lower-income folks) and those of today. For example, among socioeconomic groups in which violence is not abjured and law enforcement is regarded with some suspicion, there are statistically more incidents of domestic violence, quite often with <i>both</i> spouses striking each other. Among people who are poor and unemployed, it makes sense that more would engage in substance abuse or would desert their burdens. In contrast, the socioeconomic elite of the college-educated (admittedly a large elite, but still less than a third of adults) seems more prone to divorcing due to irreconcilable differences, aka "We're getting divorced before one of us becomes so miserable that s/he is tempted to desert, hit or cheat on the other."<br /><br />Anyway, in the absence of knowing that one of the parties provided a "ground," I don't like to judge people for divorce. Of course, we don't know why most of the people divorcing in the article did so (within three years, one of them is already remarried with a new baby...). Maybe Ms. Monet's husband would have met the mental cruelty standard of New York; maybe they haven't had sex in 5 years and he's addicted to porn (not a substance!); maybe he <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/senate-race-sex-scandal" rel="nofollow">kept pushing her to do things sexually that she didn't want</a>. <br /><br />In a world with the option to divorce amicably (i.e. without citing grounds that will be public record and that make explicit whose "fault" the divorce is), most people, especially those with children, would prefer that option.PGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09381347581328622706noreply@blogger.com