The Good Divorce

By: Constance Ahrons

The "good divorce" is not an oxymoron. The simple truth is that while there are bad divorces, there are also good ones. And it's never too late to have a good divorce.

My older daughter got married twenty-five years after her father and I divorced. A large family group took part in the ceremony, including my ex-husband, his wife, their two children, and my younger daughter. Looking at the video, I see two proud and happy parents walking their daughter down the aisle. From these images of smiling, laughing people, a stranger could never tell that this couple had not been husband and wife for the past twenty-five years -- unless he or she noticed the three beaming parents to the right of the bride during the altar scene. This family constellation is like many others around the world: families in which one or both sets of parents are divorced.

Those who witnessed our stormy, acrimonious parting in 1965 would never have predicted that my ex-husband and I could share the wedding of our child politely, let alone joyously. Although many things have changed since I joined the ranks of the formerly married (such as the availability of no-fault divorce and joint custody), the emotional experience and the need for divorced parents to find ways to continue to be involved in their children's lives remains unchanged. One thing that has changed dramatically, however, is the increase in the divorce rates, which means that there are many more of us now who need to find ways to work out how we're going to parent our children in the best possible way after divorce.

The binuclear family

There is nothing sacred about defining a family as those who live together in one household. We've just gotten stuck in our outdated singular idea that a nuclear family is the only "real" family. The reality is that most families continue to be families after divorce, even if they don't look quite the same as those nuclear families we're used to. Instead of all living under one roof, members of divorced families span two -- or even three or four -- households. These maternal and paternal households, which may or may not include stepparents and step- and half-siblings, form what I call a "binuclear family." Although divorce changes the structure of the family from nuclear to binuclear, families continue to do pretty much the same things they always have: care for and socialize children, form close personal bonds, and take care of their members' financial needs.

I coined the term "binuclear" almost 20 years ago, when, during the course of my research on how families reorganize after divorce, and in my clinical work, I heard the hundreds of divorced parents speaking out about their need to feel normal. They were upset and angry that their children were being stigmatized as coming from a "broken home," or being told they didn't even have a family because their parents were divorced. I wanted to counter this negative image by normalizing families of divorce: by putting them on the same footing as nuclear families, and by challenging the notion that nuclear families are "intact" families.

The need for healthy post-divorce role models

Because society still equates divorce with pathology and with the destruction of the family, we are inundated with negative images and stories about divorce. Stories of well-functioning parents and children after divorce just don't make headlines. As the young daughter of a friend of mine noted, "Why do they call the news 'news'? They should call it 'bad news' 'cause that's all they show!"

Reprinted from: Communication Skills Articles.

Dr. Constance Ahrons is the author of The Good Divorce. She is also the Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program and Professor of Sociology at USC, and has a private therapy practice in Santa Monica.For more details and articles relationships and break up, visit www.DivorceMagazine.com

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