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

[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.