|
|
|
|
Subscribe to the Step-Family-Matters.com Weekly eZine!FREE articles & info. every Friday! |
||
Please take a moment to visit our sponsors: |
The "Walkaway Wife" Syndrome While the 'Deadbeat Dad' is a cad, what about the many women who bail out of marriage for ultimately selfish reasons?
by Paul Akers, Editorial Writer for the Scripts Howard News Service
Picture the contemporary American family as a silent movie.
Is there any doubt who would play the villain, instantly
invoking boos and hisses from the audience, and perhaps a
fusillade of popcorn? The answer is as plain as a waxy
mustache, sinisterly twirled: The Man.
Like the devil, the man takes many guises. In the inner city,
especially, he is an incubus, impregnating poor women and
leaving them to their fate as he seeks his next conquest.
Among the monied class, he shifts shapes to hunter, dumping
his loyal partner of many years for a Playmate-class trophy
wife. And whether ragpicker or Rockefeller, he is apt to
materialize as the Deadbeat Dad, refusing to give his kids the
financial support to which they are legally and morally
entitled.
Surely this fiend has a lot for which to answer. The best
research shows that children from father-absent homes,
regardless of economic class, are more likely to suffer
emotional maladjustment, flunk school, break the law.
The scoundrel's son may well become violent felons: A 1987
study found that 72 percent of young killers grew up
fatherless. His daughters are at risk for early pregnancy and
venereal diseases. If Betty Crocker wrote a recipe for a
miserable life, this would be it.
But in our zeal to pelt the screen with snack food when the
wicked man appears, we are overlooking a remarkable fact:
Whatever holds true in the ghetto and among country-clubbers,
in the middle class it is the female who most often initiates
family breakup, and indirectly performs "father-ectomies", by
the simple mechanism of filling for divorce.
Let us continue to hoot the Deadbeat Dad, while reserving a
small Bronx cheer and a few kernels of social condemnation for
the Walkaway Wife.
How prevalent is the phenomenon? In 1988, according to the
Monthly Vital Statistics Report, 65 percent of all divorces
involving children were wife-petitioned. Surveying 350
divorced men in Texas from 1988-1989, the Washington-based
Children's Rights Council found that their wifes had filed for
divorce in 75 percent of the cases.
David Blankenhorn, author of "Fatherless America", says that
women begin at least 60 percent of divorces - a historical
flipflop.
Granted, many female filers have sound reasons to hit the
marital silk. Their husbands may be philanderers, dope
addicts, batterers. In some cases, abandoned wifes are simply
formalizing a defunct marriage. Even so, says Blankenhorn,
something else is sending middle-class women to the divorce
lawyer, namely "a revolution in thinking about what it means
to be married".
Paradoxically, he says, most modern wives say they are getting
a better deal from their husband than their mother got from
their father. There is more gender flexibility, more shared
custody care. "But a lot of them also are saying, `I'm just
not getting what I need.' "
Blankenhorn likens the sexes' disparate criteria for a good
marriage to house-shopping. Men, usually more
"rule-governed", are satisfied to see a house that has a roof,
four walls, a den and other features it is "supposed" to have.
Women, however, are wont to ask themselves: Will I feel at
home here? Does this place reflect who I am?
"Similarly", Blankenhorn says, "men think, `I should be
married.' But women are much more `interior.' Their needs are
for affection, conversation and sexual intimacy.
Typically in counseling, women will say they're experiencing
emotional death. Men will say that they didn't know
anything was wrong."
That the wages of doltishness is divorce is confirmed by
Michele Weiner-Davis, an Illinois marital therapist and the
author of "Divorce Busting." Early in a marriage, she
ways, a woman often will pursue her husband fro "more
intimacy, more time, closer connection." If he withholds
them, she may begin to carp about his personal habits.
If her emotional famine persists, she often will take the
final, cataclysmic step: planning to exit the marriage.
Weiner-Davis claims an 85 percent salvage rate for sinking
marriages. But wives who deliberately decide to call it
quits are almost counseling-proof. "It's sad," she says.
"For the first time she really has his attention. He's
desperate to work on the marriage. But in the vast majority of
cases, she's long past being open to any reconciliation."
Further evidence that unhappy wives are increasingly
divorce-minded comes in a 1995 study of 589 couples published
in the American Journal of Family Therapy. Women, as it turns
out, are more prone to make plans about divorce and discuss
them with friends. Certainly in a country that leads the world
in marital failures, there are plenty of these divorce
"coaches," who may seek to assuage their own breakup guilt by
adding to their ranks.
Psychologist John Guidubaldi of the U.S. Presidential
Commission on Child Family Welfare detects a "contagion"
factor at work between actual and potential divorcees.
But greater social acceptance isn't the only reason divorce is
enticing so many women. State Laws and judicial
customs buffer women from of the pain of a split.
Divorcing mothers stand roughly a 90-percent chance of winning
real custody of the children, thus child support. As a rule,
ex-wifes receive half the marital property. Many
get spousal support. No one suggests that mothers be
forced to trudge out into the snow, babes in arms. But if we
judge family collapse to be a societal crisis, our laws should
not sweeten the divorce pot too much for either gender.
"A lot of women get bored in their marriages," say Guidubaldi,
"If they can forecast all these benefits, why stay married?"
But divorce hurts everyone. Fathers lose disposable
income and routine contact with their children. (Q: Except in
wartime, when else have loving fathers been legally torn from
their own offspring? A: During slave auctions before
black emancipation.) Women, too, become poorer and seldom meet
Mr. Right. "By leaving instead of working on the marriage,"
notes Weiner-Davis, "a woman sets herself up for a repeat
experience." And the havoc divorce wreaks on kids is
axiomatic.
Divorce upends the worlds of perhaps a million U.S. children
each year. Yet surely many of the rubbled marriages producing
these family-disaster waifs are rescuable. Before granting
divorces, states should mandate pro-family counseling that
teaches men and women how to talk to each other. Also, the
concept of "fault" should be introduced into divorce law. Then
any spouse who unilaterally abrogated the marital contract
without just cause -- ennui and a yen to self-actualize
wouldn't count -- could expect little favor from the court.
"It's socially risky when marriages depend on a day-to-day
temperature-taking of 'Am I happy in this relationship?' "
observes Blankenhorn. "In a high-divorce society, we
need to look at both male and female behaviors that contribute
toward divorce."
We won't do that as long as, (we are) preoccupied with with
jeering the Deadbeat Dad, we allow the Walkaway Wife to walk
off into the sunset.
Page Location: http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/walk.htm
Copyright 1997-99 AAML All Rights Reserved.
|
Looking for something? Find it on Sprinks!
|
Copyright 2000, 2001 - Step-Family-Matters.com - Designed and Maintained by Aesthetica Studios, Inc.