Adult Children of Divorce - part 6

In the last post, we saw how many adult children of divorce, surveyed by Elizabeth Marquardt in her book, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, often were divided about the values, emotions, rules and general ways of doing things between both parents after the divorce. Another thing that was disturbing to me along these same lines, and Marquardt devotes a whole chapter to it, was that these poor children often had to keep secrets of one parent from the other parent.

Marquardt writes about how one parent wants to know what the other parent is doing financially, emotionally, and most important, relationship-wise. Was the other parent dating? If so, who? Children of intact families rarely are asked to reveal secrets about the other parent. This was disturbing to me as children, especially small ones, never should have to make decisions as to whether to tell a parent something about the other parent; or how much to tell.

27% of children from divorced families said they had to keep secrets while not quite 10% of children from intact families said they did.

One man surveyed said as a 12-year old boy his mother let slip to him that she was going to divorce his father. He had to keep that secret from his father and younger sisters. NO child should have this burden put upon them IMO. The reason these children felt they had to keep some things under wraps was so the other parent wouldn't become upset; or worse, become angry and take it out on the child. This 12-year old boy also said when his father started to date his future stepmother, he didn't tell his mother so as to not upset her. But when the mother found out - get this - she got angry at her son for not revealing this bit of information. His response to Marquardt in looking back at this event was, "At the time I felt like this is another thing that I'm put in the middle of."

Another side of secrets was the withholding of information from the child. Many children reported that when they visited the other parent, at times they would find they had remarried or had been in the hospital or had even moved. But the child was never told that until he pr she came to visit. Or, when the child got home, the parent he lived with had gotten remarried while the child was visiting the other parent. This is for real folks, if you can believe it. Coming from an intact family myself, I can hardly believe people do this to their children.

Here are two more questions from Marquardt's and Glenn's survey that I thought pertained to the subject of keeping secrets.

*I felt the need to protect my mother emotionally
From a divorced family From an intact family
Agree 52% 32%

*I felt the need to protect my father emotionally
From a divorced family From an intact family

Agree 29% 18%