The Social Construction of The Divorce PDF
The Social Construction of The Divorce PDF
The Social Construction of The Divorce PDF
Gender
Author(s): Scott Coltrane and Michele Adams
Source: Family Relations, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 363-372
Published by: National Council on Family Relations
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3700317 .
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collectiveanxiety,documenting
conservative
howthedivorce"problem"
has beenframedby organizations
promoting
familyvalues.
Weexaminethehistoryof divorceandidentifysocialcontextsassociatedwithcyclicalclaimsthatdivorcereflectsa breakdown
of the
moralorder.In thecontemporary
context,we examinehowsocialscienceexpertsare usedto portraychildrenas victimsof divorce
andhowsuchimageslegitimate
issuesof genderinequality.
thepoliticalobjectives
of specificinterestgroupsandmaskunderlying
academic debate has continuedto the presentwith the 2000 publication of her book The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-
0
*w
182).
ignored for centuriesinto a majorsocial problem. "Missing children" is another consensus issue that was transformedinto a
nationalproblemon the basis of dramatizedpersonaltragedyand
widespreadmedia coverage (despite relativelylow incidence levels and ambiguous statistics; see Best, 1990). One reason that
the latter issues could be easily framed in terms of public consensus was the mobilizationof the symbol of the child as victim
(Best). Alternatively, the antiabortionmovement has been less
successful (until the relatively recent use of ultrasoundand other
technology to "person-ize" the fetus) at portrayingthe fetus as
a victimized child, and the issue remainslargely cast as feminists
versus antifeminists.
Similarly, 19th- and early 20th-century attempts to frame
the divorce problem as a consensus issue were not successful,
in partbecause the firstwave of the feminist movementwas busy
advocating for women's right to end bad marriages.Currentattempts to frame the divorce problem as a consensus issue have
been somewhat more successful, primarilybecause of cultural
shifts placing a high value on the emotional well-being of children. Casting the child as a victim of divorce, experts such as
Wallersteinet al. (2000) began to suggest thatparents(especially
mothers) ought to follow the lead of earlier generations,whenever it was at all possible, by overlooking problems with their
marriage and staying together "for the sake of the children."
With the help of think tanks with public relations skills such as
the Institutefor AmericanValues (IAV) and its Council on Families, media coverage of such issues became widespreadand persistent. Foundation and private funding has enabled organizations such as these to operate outside the normal constraintsof
scholarly peer review; celebrating the benefits of marriageand
the negative "sleeper effects" of divorce on children,researchers
who affiliate with these types of organizationsoften take their
message directly to the media, and throughthem, to the public.
Counterposed against Wallerstein's portrait of long-term
damaged children of divorce is research conducted by psychologists such as E. Mavis Hetherington(see Hetherington,2003,
this issue; also Hetherington& Kelly, 2002). Hetherington'sresearch, beginning in the early 1970s, involved long-term study
of approximately 1,400 divorced families and included their
2,500 children (Hetherington& Kelly, 2002). Based on these
data, she concluded that although neither pleasant nor painless,
divorce was not the inevitable disaster to children that Wallerstein's researchsuggested. Media reportsof the effects of divorce
sometimesjuxtapose Hetheringtonand Wallersteinas the "rosy"
and "dark" sides of divorce, or the half-full versus the halfempty glass, respectively (see, for instance, Duenwald, 2002).
Hetherington presents data showing that the glass is actually
"three-quartersfull of reasonably happy and competent adults
and children. .. resilient in coping with the challenges of divorce" (Levine, 2002). Nevertheless, the dark side of divorce, represented by Wallerstein'saccounts, tends to take precedence in
media reports.Our exploratoryreview of the Readers' Guide to
Periodical LiteratureIndices from 1980 through2002 (Cannon,
2002; Gauthier,2001; Gauthier & Marra, 1980-1999; Marra,
2000; Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, 2002), as well
as the National Newspaper Index from 1977 throughDecember
2002, indicates that media references to Wallersteinoutnumber
those to Hetheringtonby approximately14 to 1 for the former
and 6 to 1 for the latter,making Wallersteinsubstantiallymore
visible as a popularexpert on the issue of divorce.
By contrast, the Social Sciences Citation Index (19752002), which catalogs referencesto scholarly and scientificjour2003, Vol. 52, No. 4
...
May we not hope that some member of the new and vig-
sional custodians of the family-who train the next generation of social workers, reporters,women's magazine editors, teachers, counselors, psychiatrists,family lawyers, and
even the clergy-have a particularobligation to call their
students' attention to the research pointing to the powerful
importanceof enduring marriage for both adults and children (Waite & Gallagher,2000, p. 188-189; emphasis added).
A prime example of marriage movement evidence is The
Casefor Marriage: WhyMarriedPeople are Happier,Healthier,
and Better Off Financially (Waite & Gallagher,2000). One reviewer likens this book by an academic and a partisanjournalist
to "an infomercialfor marriage... [in which] they hail the 'overwhelming scientific evidence' they've gatheredprovingmarriage
is 'good for you.'. .. Marriage,in their treatise,becomes a kind
of universal wonder product, Prozac without the side effects"
(Russo, 2001, p. 1). Additional "evidence" comes from other
researchersaffiliatedwith the Institutefor AmericanValues who
team up with journalists to focus on the negative effects of divorce, similarlyportrayingthem as clear and unambiguous.Thus
in The UnexpectedLegacy of Divorce (Wallersteinet al., 2000,
p. 297), the academic and journalist authorsclaim, "the effects
of divorce are long-term.We know that the family is in trouble.
We have a consensus that children raised in divorced or remarried families are less well adjusted than those raised in intact
families." Although the authorsclaim consensus with respect to
what is implied to be "universal" harm to children growing up
in divorced and remarriedfamilies, in fact, social scientists are
far from total agreementon the subject(see, for instance,Amato,
2003, this issue; Hetherington,2003, this issue; Hetherington&
Kelly, 2002; Kelly & Emery, 2003, this issue). Nevertheless,the
claim is given legitimacy by media exposure: The Unexpected
Legacy of Divorce (Wallersteinet. al., 2000) has been the focus
of stories in the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, the New York
Times, and U.S. News and World Report (see Amato), as well
as the cover story of Time Magazine in September,2000 (Kirn,
2000), asking "Should You Stay TogetherFor the Kids?" Similarly, Wallersteinherself was given considerableexposure as the
voice of expertise in the 1997 video airing on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), Childrenof Divorce, which arguedthat a
consensus exists about "the terribletoll divorce has taken on a
generationof children" (PBS, 1997). This film was producedby
Whidbey Island Films, recipient of $1.3 million in funding from
the conservative Olin, Bradley, and Scaife Foundations(Coltrane, 2001). Although not the only researchershowcased on the
program,Wallersteinwas credited by the moderatorwith being
the foremost expert in the country on the effects of divorce on
children, and her commentarywas given added legitimacy (and
effect) by being interwoven with scenes of despondentchildren
reflectingon the experience of theirparents'divorce. In this way,
media and public exposure, funded by political activists, add to
the credibility of the expert's "evidence," even in the absence
of data considered to be hard science.
Because the well-funded marriagemovement enjoyed widespread access to the media in the late 1990s and early 2000s,
family and welfare debates are now framed aroundthe morality
of individual responsibility, focusing on metaphorsthat blame
women for frivolously wanting to end bad marriagesand characterizing single and divorced mothers as short-sightedand selfserving (Seccombe, 1999). This is in large part because of the
acceptanceof the expert testimony of advocateslike Wallerstein,
2003, Vol. 52, No. 4
Horn, Eberly, Waite, Gallagher,Popenoe, Whitehead, Blankenhorn, Glenn, and others who hold leadershippositions in family
moralist organizations like the National Marriage Project, the
Institutefor American Values, and the National FatherhoodInitiative. (Wallersteinis on the Advisory Boards of the National
MarriageProject and the National FatherhoodInitiative and is a
longtime member of the Institutefor American Values' Council
on Families.) These organizationshave received millions of dollars from foundations that also fund politically conservative
causes and think tanks (e.g., HeritageFoundation,AmericanEnterprise Institute, Hudson Institute; see Coltrane, 2001). The
emergence of these hybridpolitical-religiousorganizationsis not
unprecedented,but the speed with which they have embraced
government "solutions" to moral "problems" and their success
in gaining influence in Washingtonhas been remarkable(Berlet
& Lyons, 2000; Coltrane;Diamond, 1996; Stacey, 1996). The
idea of increasing government activities to promote moral and
religious causes was once anathema to most conservatives
(Kintz, 1997), but political coalitions embracingthis strategyare
credited with an unprecedentednumberof conservative Republican victories since 2000, including gaining the presidency(Coltrane).
These coalitions also provided a political and culturalcontext in which "bad news" messages about divorce gained legitimacy. Primarily because evangelical Christians constitute the
largest religious group in the nation, and because they are increasingly likely to embrace worldly activism, family morality
has gained political legitimacy (Brooks, 2002; Coltrane, 2001;
Masci, 2001). Antidivorce and promarriageproposals in the
United States, such as those of the Institutefor AmericanValues
and the National FatherhoodInitiative, typically focus on promoting respect for fatherhood,treatingmen as naturalleaders of
the family, favoring heterosexual married couples over other
family types, making divorce more difficult, and allowing religious institutions a larger role in defining and regulating marriage (Gallagher,2002a; Horn & Sylvester, 2002). These proposals appeal to many family traditionalistsand religious conservatives. Although apparentlynot explicitly designed to restrict
the rights of women, most feminists see these family moralist
proposals as doing just that (Bounds, 1996; Diamond, 1996;
Kintz, 1997). Thus the politics of gender and religion are implicated in contemporaryproposals for divorce and marriagereform, just as they were a century ago.
Discussion
By tapping into social anxiety about the changing role of
women and the well-being of children, political/religiouscoalitions with generous foundation funding have been able to put
family morality back on the domestic policy agenda. Our historical analysis suggests that proclamationsabout a marriagecrisis are not new and that they reflect longstandingtensions within
American culture that resurfaceperiodically in public and political rhetoric. Claims that divorce inevitably and seriously damages children and hastens the breakdown of American society
are symbolic tools used to defend a specific moral vision for
families and gender roles within them.
The coexistence of the demand for gender equality and the
culturalremnantsof separategender spheresin Americansociety
produces contradictorytendencies that are not easily resolved in
the individualor in the polity. Few people, including family moralists, overtly call for women to retire exclusively to the domes369
tic sphere or for men to be the only family breadwinners.Nevertheless, most moralistshold to the ideal that women's truecalling is to nurturethe family and men's is to provide for and
protect "their" women and children.In recent decades, women's
sphere has been, if not transformed,at least refocused to reflect
the ideology of "intensive mothering" (Hays, 1996). This ideology incorporatesa focus on childrenas victims and is bolstered
by assumptionsabout (a) mothers as primarycaregivers, (b) the
need for childrearingtechniques that are child-centeredand expert-driven,and (c) an image of the child as "innocentand pure"
(Hays, p. 8). Historical supportfor separategender spheres predisposes many Americans to embrace this ideology of intensive
mothering that conflates mothers' and children's interests. Portraying children as innocent victims of divorce links women's
and children's interests and supportsmoral argumentsabout the
sanctity of marriageand women's responsibilityto maintainit.
When the adversarial,victim-driven process of fault-based
divorce was changed to the nonadversarialprocess of no-fault
divorce, separatespheres ideology re-emergedwithin the ideology of intensive mothering. When coupled with the specter of
the child as the victim of divorce, this ideology symbolically
reassertsthe adversarialnatureof the divorce process. In current
debates, however, the adversariesbecome self-indulgentparents
(especially mothers, characterizedas seeking divorce for selfish
reasons), and the child victims of divorce. Symbolically, this
rhetoricalturn,bolsteredby the work of experts like Wallerstein,
provides justification for reasserting family morality based on
assumptionsabout a putative naturalorder (Lakoff, 2002).
Thus, promarriageand antidivorce activists embrace what
Lakoff (2002) calls "strict father morality." According to this
deep-seated metaphoricalunderstandingof the world, the strict
father must have moral strengthif he is to support,protect, and
guide his family, and it is a virtue he must impartto his children
for the good of society and the individual. As such, the world
is divided into the moral and the immoral;moral strengthallows
one to combat evil with self-discipline and self-denial (Lakoff).
When applied to divorce, this reasoningleads to the conclusions
that divorce is evidence of moral failure and that the ultimate
strict father-the state-ought to step in to restore order and
protect the childrenby promotingmarriageand discouragingdivorce. Reinstituting a fault basis in divorce proceedings holds
the promise of reasserting strict-fathermorality and defining
right from wrong based on an assumednaturalorder.We suggest
that this desire to re-establish moral reasoning in social policy
has provided a major impetus for the antidivorcemovement and
promotedthe use (and acceptance)of experts whose claims emphasize the way in which divorce harms children.
Because social problems enjoying a broad consensus are
more likely to be addressed,family moralistshave claimed that
social science researchon divorce is unequivocallynegative and
resounding. In this vein, Wallerstein'slatest work (2000) takes
on an "unrelentinglynegative tone" (Kelly & Emery, 2003, this
issue), drawingconsistently on terms such as "cruel, doom, panic, tragedy,and terrorin describingthe effects of divorce" (Amato, 2003, this issue). Ambiguityin marriageand divorce statistics
has allowed divergent claims to coexist, but those groups with
resources and access to media have been able to repeatedlyadvance their version of the problem. Social scientists like Wallerstein, whose findings fit the goals of the marriagemovement
and whose books and articles provide compelling stories to help
frame divorce as an importantsocial and moral problem, have
been recruited into the movement and become leading experts
370
Conclusion
Drawing on the sociology of knowledge, we have examined
the ways in which the so-called divorce problem and the symbolic use of the child as a victim of divorce are socially constructed to reinforce the interests of certain groups of family
moralists.Understandingthis allows us to see divorce not as the
universalmoralevil depictedby divorce reformers,but as a highly individualized process that engenders different experiences
and reactions among various family members, each with his or
her own self-interests. Recognizing that "just saying no" to divorce (for the sake of the children) is a vastly oversimplified
soundbite grounded in idealization of the traditionalnotion of
feminine self-sacrifice for the family, therapistsand policy analysts should avoid conflating mothers' interests with children's.
Mothers', children's, and fathers' interests are neither identical
nor diametricallyopposed as divorce reformerswould have us
believe. As Wallerstein maintains, children's voices must be
heard; so, too, must be heard the voices of mothers and fathers
who face extremely complex and difficult decisions about their
(and their children's) future as they contemplate divorce. The
complexity and struggleassociated with divorce, capturedby the
Kelly (2003) and Emery and Hetherington(2003) articlesin this
Family Relations
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