Another triumph of the divorce generation

[fpb]

According to a recent piece of research that the BBC is heavily publicizing, one good third of British teen-agers do not consider their parents people they admire or want to imitate. Even disregarding the obvious notion of teen-age rebellion, this is rather a worrying number. However, the BBC does not draw one clear conclusion from it: if teen-agers have learned to despise or disregard their own parents, does that have nothing to do with the prevalence of divorce? Does it have nothing to do with Mother telling them all kinds of awful things about Fathers, and Father teaching them to hate Mother, and both of them instructing them to repeat the same stories in the divorce court? Stories the more damaging because they were often based on some truths - Father and Mother knew each other, after all, they knew how to defame each other in the most hurtful ways possible?

As I said elsewhere, the reasons for the prevalence of divorce are real and serious. But when you consider the damage it does, let alone the cost, is there no ground for a serious policy of reducing it?

Comments

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

During my parent's divorce, I had a chance to sit down and talk about something with my father. Can't remember what, that's not important - what I remember was the shock I felt as I realised he wasn't the complete scumbag my mother claimed he was. Of course, with the maturity that teenagers are famous for, I promptly decided that she was the incarnation of all evil...

The divorce certainly didn't help. Nor did teenage obnoxiousness. But another consideration - I live in a wildly different world to them. The lessons they learned, the useful habits they acquired, are completely useless to me. Imitating them would be a mistake. That's not their fault; quite the contrary. The better they adapted to the lives they needed to live, the less useful their lives were as a role model to me.
Not imitating =/= not respecting.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the report quoted by the BBC specifically spoke of not respecting, not looking up to. Not of not imitating. I certainly have no intention of imitating my mother, but I would, if necessary, die for her.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to think how I would have spoken of my parents when I was seventeen, had green hair and a school uniform 'adapted' to within an inch of its life. I think the word stupid would have been in there somewhere.

Funny how your parents get smarter as you get older.

A question, is increasing divorce an underlying cause or an effect of some other change in society.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I dealt with some of the remote - but still effective - causes of the divorce revolution here: http://fpb.livejournal.com/260448.html. I don't suppose it's an exhaustive treatment, but it does deal with some of the problems that have arisen between the sexes in the nineteenth and twentieth century. And there is an essay I once published on my own fanzine, which I should reprint if I ever find it.... We can talk about it, too. At least I don't have to fear any flaming from you.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

A very quick comment. I have not had time to read beyond the first line or two of your essay.

Isn't it odd, or at the very least interesting, how two people who both seem to hold C S Lewis in such high esteem hold such different views on so many subjects? I've always regarded Lewis' fiction as one of the prime influences on me and my morality as I was growing up and yet I suspect he would be appalled at some of my views - although perhaps appalled is not the right word. The things I got from Lewis was a sense that it was important to think about moral issues, take responsibility for your actions and finally that some sort of redemption is always possible for those who are true to themselves.

I hope he would have argued with me but understood that there can be deeply held differences between people who are equally thoughtful and moral.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You seem to be somewhat in the position of his student Kenneth Tynan, who revered Lewis all his life (to the puzzlement of his modernist wife) while doing a series of things that would have pained or disgusted the old master. Of course I am not suggesting that you would do anything like staging Oh! Calcutta!.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

If he couldn't, he wouldn't have been friends with Tolkien while still an atheist, would he?

But what exactly do you mean by 'true to themselves'?

Questing for the truth, having the determination to follow the truths you've found? - very much so, Emeth comes to mind.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

True to yourself as in not lying to yourself. Edmund in Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe knows that his actions at the start of the book are wrong, but makes excuses to himself to justify them.

I regard that as one of the greatist 'sins of will' and the reason why honest consideration of moral and other issues is important.

Ironically, this was the very reason I first declared myself as an athiest. Faith, to me, has to be active not passive. So many people I knew at the time believed in a way that I do not regard as belief at all, basically they belived because everyone else did. I realised that I no longer had an active belief in God, but was 'along for the ride'. I had two very good friends at the time (who I will now try to contact again - having thought of them) who later went on to become Ministers in the Prebyterian and Church of Ireland Churches. Talking to them I recognised that referring to myself as a Christian devalued their faith and was hypocritical - although at the time, much easier for a number of reasons. One of them female and particularly attractive.

I'm more positive in my atheism now, but regard myself as a sort of secular christian, if that makes any sense. In that, I regard "Do unto others..." as the single most important statement on morality in history.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

[nods] I hear you.

My immediate thought on reading your post was "so, you're not willing to tell what you believe to be lies, about God - good!"

I'm curious though: you realise the importance of truth, but are taking moral advice from people who you would have to regard as either mistaken or as lying. Doesn't that cause friction?

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Puzzled about your first comment. I don't think there are necessarly any 'lies' about God. In that to tell a lie, you have to know that what you are saying is untrue. I can think someone is wrong without thinking they are telling lies. And can I ask what you meant by the 'good' comment at the end of the sentence?

As to taking moral advice from people I thought were mistaken, (I certainly did not think they were lying). I'm not sure advice is the right word, although I did ask them about things in my own life more more than once, it was a friend to friend relationship rather than minister/parishioner and we discussed a lot of things. I don't recall any friction at all. And because I thought they were wrong about one thing, the existance of God, did not mean I thought they were wrong about everything else.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

I've now reread and, I think, understood your opening sentence. Sorry for the confusion and forget my earlier question

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Wrong link Fabio - essay on Snow White. I'm with Lewis on it though. Although a better example of what he is talking about(vulgarity in Disney movies) are the dreadful good fairies in Sleeping Beauty.

I was lucky enough to meet Ken Anderson, who was art director on Sleeping Beauty and one of the design crew on a host of disney movies. He was too much of a gentleman to criticise anyone he worked with, but he did say that those particular characters were not his favourites.

I'd describe them as almost ruining the look of the movie.

(Ken Anderson stayed with my parents for a week many years ago, in addition to being a true gentleman and a superb artist he was a keen gardener and was visiting to view the daffodils my father breeds and grows.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The link is right. The subject of the essay is the collapse of the relationship between men and women in the first half of the twentieth century. Read it, especially the closing paragraphs, with some care, and you will find that it has everything to do with divorce.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Apologies.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Having now read your article properly, I see where you are coming from.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It's like this: for most of history, and even in the most misogynous societies - such as ancient Greece - there was a specific female sphere of action, activity and even power, namely the house. Servants and maids made this into a small society by itself, and gave them interests in life, things to do, a respected and necessary role. Technology has destryed this whole social area - only the super-rich now have real servant staffs, and they are mercenaries drawn from distant countries such as the Philippines, not local girls and boys apt to marry each other and start local businesses - reducing even well-off housewives to the level of solitary and irrelevant social atoms. The role of housewife now has a lot less life in it than that of mistress of the house had a century or two ago, and as a result women want out of it.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

There are other factors that, I would say, have also led to Women wanting out of the role of 'Mistress of the House", the availability of higher education and equal pay for equal work, for example.

Are you offering your theory as an explanation of something that has happened, or are you suggesting that we need to return to simpler times to reduce the divorce rate?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That' s unhistorical. First, the introduction of technology released millions of women for paid employment. Then - at least two generations later - the scandal of different pay rates for men and women became obvious, and the trades unions - which originally had not even welcomed female employment - finally set about setting it right. The presence of millions of women in the workplace, you ought to see, is the pre-condition for finding differential rates of pay unfair, as well as for having the ability to do something about it. I do not believe that equal pay became an issue until the late sixties, whereas mass female employment had been a feature of the landscape since the First World War.

And I would ask you to beware of cliches. I was not speaking about "mistress of the house"; most women never did reach that exalted position - they were not born to it, for one thing. However, both servants and mistresses and anyone in the intermediate area - governesses, poor relations, nurses, etc. - shared a common area of activity, of interest, of fulfilling social life, with friendships and hates, feuds and reconciliations, dramas and comedies, a real life. The rivalry between the parlourmaids, the bad character of the cook, the supposed affairs of the pretty between-maid with the mistress' younger son (love affairs between upstairs and downstairs were so frequent as to become a cliche'), the unfairness of the mistress and the bad influence of her spinster sisters, were enough to fill days and lives, just as such things fill the lives of bloggers now. That it matters to nobody but them does not matter, so long as it matters to them. It is a life, and, between work and society, a full one. What I tried to point out in the Snow-White essay is that the vanishing of the female-based domestic society left much of the female life feeling increasingly false and empty; women came to depreciate it just as much as men already had, and began to cast their idea of "liberation" into a conquest of those active and satisfying male preserves, which had not been destroyed by social change, namely work, sports, clubs and male social life, even the army and the church. Very few women before the eighteen-nineties would have told you they felt oppressed; many of them would have laughed at the suggestion - "if anything, it is I who oppress my husband!" And indeed, a good deal of the male areas, especially pubs and clubs, had the sense of being places of refuge from female predominance.

The collapse of the extended family with servants, due entirely to the progress of technology, changed this balance completely. You can follow it in the image of women in fiction: the women of Wilkie Collins and Trollope (Dickens is a case apart) are ten times as adult and powerful as the flappers of the twenties, let alone Snow-White.

Cliches?

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Should I beware of cliches, even when they are yours?

"The role of housewife now has a lot less life in it than that of mistress of the house had a century or two ago, and as a result women want out of it".

Re: Cliches?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That was poorly phrased, but I tried to make it clear from the beginning that I was speaking about the whole female world of the household.

Re: Cliches?

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

It was clear, I just couldn't resist a wee poke.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You have to remember that the Western woman always did have powers of her own. Let me tell you a story that sums up a few facts I learned from Bernard Lewis, the great Arab/Muslim historian. When, after the French invasion of Egypt and the British conquest of India, the Muslim ruling classes began to realize that they had been completely outpowered by infidels from the thus far despised Europe, they began to study them with a care they had never before given them. From about 1810 on, dozens if not hundreds of upper-class travellers from Muslim countries, mostly highly educated and intelligent, visited all Europe in search of the secret of the West. They emphasized all sorts of things: the organization of the military, the political system, the property laws, the technological advance and the legal institutions that underlay it, the transportation, the mentality, even the sports and music. (In about 1838, the Sultan of Turkey hired the brother of the Italian composer Donizetti to establish and run an Imperial Military Band, which apparently Mr.Donizetti did with great success.) But practically every single one of these travellers, reporting home, stressed one thing: "You," they said to their fellow-countrymen, "are wasting the energies of one half of your people." They saw, and wondered, that aristocratic European women sat at dinner with their men and discussed all sorts of things with them, including politics and business. They saw that when someone was invited somewhere, it was the mistress of the house, and not the master, who was the host. They saw that European women could own, buy and sell property, go out on their own, own and run businesses, write and publish (a particularly precious evidence of status in the eyes of a Muslim), run schools and teach, even, in some countries and sects, preach. All these things were accessible to most women, in most of Europe, before 1850. That the women of the West have become more powerful is due to the fact that they always have been powerful. In the late 1700s, for a while, the two most powerful leaders of the West were two formidable women, Maria Theresa of Habsburg and Catherine II of Russia, both wearing the title of Emperess in their own right and the only ones in their time to claim it. Since the Middle Ages at least, European women have owned large estates, governed states, led armies (Joan of Arc was only untypical in that she was not a noblewoman), owned and ran businesses, held official posts, been governors and diplomats.

Another cliche' is "a return to simpler times." We live in simpler times now. The Victorian or Georgian household was an infinitely more organized and demanding environment than most people experience today. So that makes your question pointless. But in so far as it has a point, we cannot go back in time. That road is blocked. Anything that happens now will not, except superficially, have the character of a restoration.

[lyssiae.livejournal.com]

I think if I look at my parents now then I most definitely see things about them that I admire and would want to be able to imitate if I were in their situation. However, much of this is stuff that comes with being an adult child and living away from home.

But that does not mean that it's unrealistic to expect children to do the same of their parents when still children. In fact I think one of the happiest family lives could be those where the children look up to their parents, and not just to beg for money or toys either. If Mum and Dad are decent people who aren't afraid to show (in some way at least) their overflowing love for each other and their family then I think kids are going to be drawn to that, whether or not teenage hormones and angst will let them show it.

I'm firmly convinced, however, that in order for parents to be able to build that kind of atmosphere, they must have a mature (or maturing) relationship in which their love and respect for each other is so solid that even during the tough times they don't give up on each other.

What God Hath Joined Let No Man Put Asunder

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

You and I, friend, sing from the same sheet of music on this issue. I hate divorce as I hate hell: most of my friend come from broken homes, as do I.

I wish my fellow conservatives would pass here in America a "defense of marriage act", but instead of outlawing homosexual marriage, they outlawed divorce for all but cases of adultery, cruelty or abandonment.

More importantly, I wish the culture was adult enough to have this as part of their unwritten expectations and assumptions, so that the presence or absence of such a law would be moot.

Re: What God Hath Joined Let No Man Put Asunder

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Or at the very least recognise that Marriage is a serious committment and not something to do on a weekend in Vegas.

I'd be much more liberal than you, in this and in almost everything else, but the huge problem with the liberialisation of society is that we appear to have thought, or remembered, only about rights and not about the responsibilities that ought to be associated with those rights.

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's divorce that is to blame for kids disrespecting their parents. I think parents acting like jerks has a lot to do with it.

I'd love to see more education on how to communicate effectively and without losing one's temper. But chaining people together (the more obvious way of reducing divorce) only hides the problem.