Kedric was sixteen when his parents divorced, and he seemed to weather the storm smoothly. He expected to follow his father's footsteps as a 747 pilot, so he majored in aeronautical engineering, earning nearly a 4.0 grade average. His Air Force ROTC instructors gave him the highest recommendations possible. Then he headed for basic fight school. Everything seemed in order.
Spencer, whose parents divorced when he was only twelve, has also, apparently, fared well. He has high grades, was accepted into a good college, and has plans for graduate school.
Kedric and Spencer are what our society defines as successful young people: They are high achievers, with every opportunity before them. It would seem that the fact that their families broke apart is almost incidental to their life stories. They have not followed the path of many children of divorce: They have avoided promiscuity, drug and alcohol abuse, disruptive school behavior, academic problems, and petty crime. But their stories don't end here.
Kedric had one more hurdle before embarking on a career in the Air Force: an interview with the squadron commander. When asked why he wanted to be in the Air Force, Kedric said seriously, "Because there is no better way to get away from people and probably no cleaner way to die." The startled officer asked him some more questions and received more deliberately outrageous answers. Kedric was finally expressing his anger at the betrayals and infidelities of his father, and his suppressed anger had gotten the better of him. As result, Kedric was asked to leave flight school.
Spencer sought out a psychiatrist during his college years: Having to decide where to go for Thanksgiving - to his mother's house or his father's- caused him to become uncharacteristically angry. He realizes now that, deep down, he trusts no one, not mother, not father, not even God. And He's terrified of marriage.
TRAUMA-FREE DIVORCE?
What about divorce and its effects on children like Kedric Spencer, and others? Can divorce be trauma-free?
In 1985 there were 1,091,000 children involved in divorce, and the numbers are growing. In recent decades, many experts took a rather sanguine view of divorce and its effects. In vogue were books with titles like Creative Divorce: A New Opportunity for Personal Growth and Divorce without Victims. Divorce counseling became desensitized to divorce, and icons of happily divorced moms and kids proliferated in the media. Where the previous generation had asked, What will divorce do to the kids?, the children of the Me Generation asked the question, How might a divorce help me grow?
Deborah was nine years old when her parents split up. There had been a lot of painful squabbling beforehand, and Deborah remembers feeling "like a little planet caught in the path of the gravitational pulls of two big planets" when the divorce finally happened. Deborah was sure the divorce was her fault because most of the fighting was over her. Her parents, however, did some things right: Her father bought savings bonds through the years to send her to college, and he allowed her to visit him regularly. She even called his second wife "Mom" and came to
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