Why attack Children’s Commissioner?

In a meeting with the Movement Marriage Without Divorce, the Commissioner for Children referred to a report by Joan Kelly and Robert Emery which dealt with the “resilience” of children of divorced families.

Due to the controversy in the media, I decided to see for myself what the report said. In fact, their report contains an impressive list of studies, all of which report severe psychological harm to children arising from “divorce”, “remarriage” and “redivorce”. Just to mention a small number of them:

Children from divorced families face the risk of loner-term erosion or loss of important relationships with close friends.

Most scholars report that divorce substantially reduces the standard of living for custodial parents and children.

Divorce further accelerates the downward standard of living.

Divorce creates the potential for children to experience a continuing series of changes and disruptions in family and emotional relationships when one or both parents introduce new social and sexual partnerships; cohabit, remarry and/or redivorce.

A large body of empirical research confirms that divorce increases the risk for adjustment problems in children and adolescents.

These are but a very small selection of harmful effects the authors make reference to from “a large body” of studies.

So what is the fuss raised on what the Commissioner for Children said? Apparently, it is more on what she did not say then on what she said because nobody has disputed the negative effects of divorce described in the “large body of empirical research” referred to in the report .

They seemed to have picked on the idea mentioned at the end of the report that most divorce children “do well” when compared to other children when grown-up. The reason is because these unfortunate are “resilient” and can therefore weather the storm and, eventually, compare to ordinary children. Well, if there ever was a case of selective reporting then this becomes the mother of all selective reporting.

Only a few lines further up, the same authors state that “children and young people from divorced families seen in counselling or psychotherapy are a select group who surely differ from the general population of children of divorce”. Brilliant!

The report authors admit that “Painful memories and experiences may be a lasting residue of the divorce (and remarriage) process for many youngsters and young adults”. So the pain caused by divorce and eventual remarriage is there and not just for the select few but now for the many. The authors therefore were working (the report is not a very recent one) “to develop objective, reliable and valid measures of the important struggles associated with divorce that might be apparent first in schools or clinical practice”.

In other words, the report states very, very clearly that without divorce a number of children would not require clinical psychotherapy and “many” if not “most” would not be carrying with them “painful memories and experiences”, even a lasting mark on their approach to life.

The Commissioner for Children therefore did not at all misquote from the report and, just for the record, the report was very careful to distinguish separations from “divorce”, “remarriage” and “redivorce”. The last terms being used all through the report.

Those billboards showing us images of faces of beaten women, which are a cause of concern, seem to neglect or whitewash selectively the fact that there will be children requiring psychotherapy after the divorce of their parents.

We must all refuse to fall to their logic. We must be concerned about the bruises of those women even though they will soon heal and, just because those women may be resilient and strong physically, will not the memory of the beating remain with them all their life?

If this is so for battered grown-ups, how much more should it be so for “divorced” children? Or is it that, since they might prove “resilient”, in other words, strong, and learn to live with the psychological scars of divorce to appear on a par to other children then it becomes acceptable? Incredible!

The report authors do their academic duty to find clinical cures, therapies or strategies for children from divorces to mitigate the negative effects of divorce. However, might they not suggest that, in Malta’s case, prevention might in fact be better than clinical cure?