The child behind the war of divorce

THE division of families has become a permanent stitch in the fabric of society with children of all ages being affected by parental separation and divorce and carrying wounds even into adulthood.

Caught in the Middle, written by Dr Audrey Pottinger and Dr Pauline Milbourn Lynch, addresses the underlying issue that after the legal meetings and even the battle of words between parents, children are left in the middle of the battleground.

The recently launched book saw supporters of the cause showing up in their numbers to praise a commendable step towards opening the can of worms and putting forward solutions to an age-old problem that has tormented society.

“We drew on several studies, there were focus groups of children who their parents separated, [who] shared their experiences,” said Dr Pottinger.

She said she did a study with middle-class children and another with children from the innercity and looked at how they responded to their parents separating.

“And then we also drew on international research in order to put together a thorough research on this topic,” she said.

According to the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, within the last decade divorces have increased by 50 per cent from 1,106 cases in 2000 to 1,654 cases in 2008.

“It is made easier because the laws have changed, there is no longer a drawn out process, the court system has made it very easy and one of the reasons why persons are engaging in divorce is that it is easier than in the past. The other thing is, though, I think that people are becoming a lot more psychologically minded and feeling that if I’m in a bad marriage I don’t need to stick with it for the rest of my life, whereas in the past we didn’t focus on the psychological. If you were married it was a thing sanctioned by the church that is not stuff that you tampered with,” said Dr Pottinger.

Children are precious and delicate and are affected by everything that happens in their environment, she said. She explained that some children tend to divert from the expected behaviour of children who have been affected by the separation of parents or divorce.

“The child will become the perfect child and that is atypical because we tend to overlook them and think that they are ok, but you will see a change in the behaviour where the parents do not have to argue with them, they are well behaved and those children, it is as if they are holding it together by a thread and oftentimes a small or a minor event can just trigger an outburst,” said Dr Pottinger.

She said other children at times blame themselves and will go to lengths to get their parents together.

“There is one particular case where a male child became so caught up with his parents separating that he tried everything, he would do all sort of trickery, trying to get them back together. He would phone one and tell them to come and meet the other, the parents would turn up to realise it was him trying to get them together. He just shut down in his life and did not do any schoolwork because he thought that if I just let them focus on me, they’d realise there is a common bar.”

Althea Brown, a guidance counsellor at Manchester High School, said divorce affects children at different ages in the school system for even babies are affected and become restless and get sick if the parents’ energy levels change.

“Even in preschool children sometimes blame themselves that they caused the divorce. Some might regress to babylike stage; some might want to hold on to their security blanket like old toys and blankets. Kids have become depressed, uncooperative and very angry at school and others tend to become disobedient.”

She said those in high school and primary school grieve as if they have lost somebody when one parent leaves; they become embarrassed, resentful, sometimes they show increased anger and sometimes they withdraw.

Guest speaker Reverend Howard Gregory, said he believes the book is an eye-opener to many who may have overlooked these issues or simply dismissed them as the concerns of adults in which children have no business.

“It is a wake-up call to us to become more aware of what is happening to the children around us whether in our families or in our various communities. For some readers, it will be a source of empowerment and healing, as for the first time they may come to gain some insight into their childhood experiences and the subsequent course of their life following the separation and divorce of their parents,” he said.