Speaking Out: Voices of Adult Children of Divorce on Parentification
This is the 6th in a series of blogs on this topic. This has been a tough blog for me to write. Every time I schedule time to write about “Parentification”, something comes up and I’m grateful for the distraction. I think it’s because the idea came from the realization that my siblings and I often play a “parenting role” with each other. It can be easier to rely on your sibling and not have to choose a parent for guidance. It wasn’t a question on my original survey so I revis
Speaking Out: Voices of Adult Children of Divorce
“The divorce was officially referred to in our house as "the war." If something was gone and missing it was "oh well, we lost it in the war." Amy This is the fourth in a series of blogs on this topic Children of divorce may feel like they have two separate identities. The child may behave or act a certain way depending on which parent he or she is with at the time. Given the freedom to make their own rules, parents are setting up their homes the way they wish to for the fir
Speaking Out: Voices of Adult Children of Divorce
This is the third in a series of blogs on this topic. In my first blog of this series, I wrote about how parents told their children about the divorce (from the adult child's perspective) and how it felt to have divorced parents. In the second blog, I asked people what was the most difficult situation they faced as a result of their parents’ divorce. Today we look at the positive outcomes of divorce as felt by the adult children of divorce. If couples are unhappy in a marriag
Speaking Out: Voices of Adult Children of Divorce
This is the second in a series of blogs on this topic. In the first blog of this series, I wrote about how parents told their children about the divorce (from the adult child's perspective) and how it felt to have divorced parents. As I mentioned, I am a teacher for the court-required parent education classes for divorcing or never-married parents. The goal of the class is not to teach people how to parent but how to co-parent with their ex-partner. I liken the relationship
Speaking Out: Voices of Adult Children of Divorce
“It doesn't matter how old you are when parents divorce, in my opinion. It's always painful. It's a break, a rift, a severing of what was…” Lisa This is the first in a series of blogs on this topic. In Massachusetts, parents going through a divorce are required to take a parenting class. I’ve been teaching this class one to two times a month for the last year and I find that when I share with the participants that I’m a child of divorce, and have been for 45 years, they have
