Admitting failure or breakdown in any relationship contributes to low self-esteem. One may feel victimized when one has embraced marriage as a serious commitment—“in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, as long as you both shall live.” When parents separate and marriages dissolve, one parent (or both) leaves the marital home; the partners often fight over the rights to parent the children, and they argue over the payment of child support. Braver finds that the top seven issues that most divorcing parents must settle include
physical or residential custody;
legal custody;
visitation or access;
child support;
spousal support/alimony;
additional child financial needs, i.e., education, medical insurance, travel expenses; and property and debt division.
Resolving these issues is emotionally and financially draining. Considerable time is also required for court appearances. Pressures from work, neighbors, and friends can make matters worse.
Contrast divorce with marriage. Usually, the beginning of a marriage is marked by joy and fun with exciting moments of confident expectation for the future. On the other hand, divorce depletes energy and foments anger. It results in the depletion of personal savings and retirement funds to pay legal, psychological, and other divorce expenses. Parental anger may be expressed through subtly or overtly hostile behaviors, ranging from sly criticisms to nasty language, lies, and other abusive behaviors.
Divorce is the resulting contract which both enter into, sometimes with one or two feet dragging and usually with great anxiety due to the nature of public litigation. As the goal in litigation is for one to win or compromise less, fear of loss accompanies the process.
When a relationship breaks up, a partner may ask, “Why me?” The one surprised by a failed relationship, the “dumpee,” may place the onus on the “dumper.” But according to Fisher and Alberti, the emotionally healthy approach is to accept the loss. Letting go of such internalized questioning will permit an individual to focus on his or her own growth.
Divorce recovery is relationship recovery. Rather than blaming the other for being “a bad choice” and the reason for the failed marriage, one needs to find a more positive approach. Fisher’s method incorporates several stages, which include acknowledgement of the loss, coping with one’s grief, and becoming more knowledgeable about one’s personality, choices, strengths, and weaknesses. The goal for the parent should be twofold: first, through therapy or other means of self-examination, to accept what cannot be controlled and build on one’s self-preservation and self-esteem; and, second, to determine how to raise the children post-divorce through co-parenting.
Presently, there are few agencies which combine intervention and support for families that are breaking up. No lists of books or other resources are handed out to moms and dads when they leave the court. There are no professional referrals—only court orders. The courts are for litigation, which often is labored and festering. Family court litigants —including moms, dads, grandparents, and children—seek out new relationships or seek to preserve old ones through a process involving many judicial parties. New social dynamics parallel the court processes where parents become visitors, where schedules become more significant and formalized. New realities about family and one’s association with the changed family unit transition into the unexpected.
The divorce process can be seen as motions for different personal agendas and different priorities for the mother and for the father, for custody and for child access. Society’s values are still interpreted through legal arguments, which many family advocates suggest are biased.
Gender bias ought not to be a part of court decision-making. But, as you’ll see, it historically that has been the case. The philosophical “nature or nurture” argument calls into question a male’s ability to parent a child. Cannot either parent be taught skill sets? It is not enough to accept John Gray’s conclusion that “men are from Mars, women are from Venus.” Nor is it enough to believe, as an elderly black woman told Smith, that “black women come from the earth and black men come from the moon.” Smith argues that black women are not grounded when their men lack the skills to communicate with their women. Black men, he finds, have difficulty measuring themselves against still-existent discriminatory standards—thus, their continuing low self-esteem. For many, these attitudes are inherited from their own dysfunctional childhood and family life.