Term paper on Divorce And Remarriage

Divorce And Remarriage Essays

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Divorce and remarriage have a profound effect on the parents and can have harmful effects on the future relationships of their children. Marriage is a complicated and an arduous process with many trials. However, remarriage and the concept of a stepfamily is akin to walking barefoot on hot coals. The dynamics of a stepfamily is dictated early by the fantasies and the subsequently the realities of the marriage and stepfamily issues. In The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother, Nancy Chodorow and Susan Contratto call this “primary process” thinking. It means acting on fantasies and emotions rather than analyzation and interpretation. A marriage involves primary process as people fall in love and subsequently the realities of the hardship of marriage hits them. However, this process dominates a remarriage even more. Individuals entering into the remarriage are confident that they can make a marriage work. However, the result is that these remarriages fail at a greater percentage rate than those that occur the first time around. This situation is complicated even more if there is presence of children from previous marriage of the spouse. This “thinking process” is learned by the children inhabiting a stepfamily and then dominates their thought and actions into adulthood. A remedy of this situation is for the stepfamily to undergo this thinking process and to emerge with stronger and healthier relationships as a result of this ordeal.

The fantasies and misconceptions enveloping a family are illustrated in Nancy Chodorow and Susan Contratto’s “Fantasy of the Perfect Mother.” In the article, the authors present feminist theories and concepts that attack the idea of motherhood. Some of them present the belief that a mother can never be perfect in the rearing of her children and society will continue to harbor “unprocessed, infantile fantasies about mothers” (Chodorow and Contratto, 7). This idea is directly connected to the problems people encounter when they enter into the lair of a stepfamily as a member. This issue has been entitled “primary process” thinking. This idea of primary process thinking does not have to spell gloom and doom for the stepfamily unit. Nancy Chodorow and Susan Contratto provide a solution. “Secondary process” thinking entails thoughtful analysis and reaction to the surprising realities of a situation, instead of a preconceived, inflexible and emotional response to stepfamily problems.

Since times immemorial to the present, America has experienced incredible change in the family arena. Divorce was very rare in Colonial America. It was hard for both men and women. In Puritan New England, you could get a divorce if your spouse couldn’t have children. Most colonies granted what we would call "permanent separations" but neither party could remarry. Many men and some women "divorced" their spouse by leaving town or the colony. (Source: Making America: A History of the Unites States Volume a to 1877 by Carol Berkin) If the courts were presented with a divorce case, an assignment of guilty or not guilty was designated to either husband or wife and the only the person deemed not guilty was permitted to remarry as stated by Kay Pasley and Marilyn Ihinger-Tallman in their book, “Remarriage and stepparenting: current research and theory”. It is clear that society and church had the power to determine the formation of a stepfamily as only the innocent party could remarry. Divorce is difficult no matter where and when it occurs but society and church in colonial New England turned the process into a living nightmare. The sacred vow of “Till death do us part” was thus enforced by the church and society as marriages typically lasted until one of the spouse died. Divorce was almost non-existent as there were merely 1.2 to 4 instances out of every 1,000 marriages from the Civil War up to the turn of the Century (Pasley 10). After the Second World War, the number of divorced men began to outnumber widowers, and by the early nineteen eighties there were 9.2 million divorced and remarried couples in America (Pasley, 11). Today, the divorce rate is reaching new heights, and the fallout is easy to see: “Each child in a classroom half full of children of divorce cries out, Why me?” (Wallerstein, 28)

Stereotypes of the stepfamily are having increasingly destructive impact on the popular yet misunderstood remarriages. Traditionally, many people in society tend to associate the term “stepmother” or stepsister with the unfair treatment meted out to Cinderella of the fairy tales. “Interestingly, though the stereotype of the ‘wicked stepmother’ may be more widely known, it is the term ‘stepchild’ that is consistently used to represent a negative experience or situation” (Pasley, 20). Fairy tale stereotypes of the wicked stepmother only make a difficult role seem impossible. This myth, combines with the social expectations that women are more nurturing and effective with children, sets the stage for mothers to fail.Stepmothers may jump in too fast, especially those with no kids of their own. A stepmother may overhelm or scare stepchildren with the attention she gives them. She may refrain from enforcing family rules and discipline in fear of appearing too harsh. The following might be a plausible explanation of the horrible treatment of Cinderella by her stepmother or the alienation that Cinderella feels from her stepmother. In their book Stepfamilies: Myths and Realities (Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1984), John and Emily Fisher state that stepmothers have the most difficulty building a relationship with stepdaughters. There is generally less affection, less respect, and less acceptance in this relationship than in other stepfamily relationships. The daughter may resent the stepmother's closeness with her father. This is especially true if the father and daughter had a strong relationship prior to the stepmother's arrival. Attempts by the stepmother to fulfill her role in the stepfamily may be perceived by the stepdaughter as efforts to replace her mother. Stepmothers tend to hold...

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