“I’ve come to envy young children going through a divorce. Everyone worries about them. They’re sent to psychologists. The adult child’s grief isn’t taken as seriously. Many of our parents stayed together because we’d be more mature once we headed off to college, walked down the aisle, or had our first baby. 

Parents expect us to shrug off their split, as if the breakup of our family should no longer concern us because pieces of our adult life are in place. Even I felt I was overreacting. I’m an adult, I figured. I should be able to handle this.”

That’s a quote from Brook Lea Foster, who wrote the article “The Way We Were” featured in the Sept/Oct 2006 issue of AARP Magazine. She was talking about the difficulty of coming to terms with her parents divorce even though it happened when she was an adult.

Even though you are an adult, it doesn’t mean that you don’t still feel immense pain because you realize that “things will never be the same.” As Brook said in the article:

“My life suddenly seemed a series of “lasts” —a final Christmas, an end to eggs together at the breakfast table. I’d never again find my parents standing side by side on the porch, waving to me as I pulled into the driveway.”

There are a lot of “lasts” an adult child of divorce must go through in letting go of the past and a lot of “firsts” to adjust to as you visit your parents one-by-one in different locations and often different states. There’s also the “firsts” to adjust to as you meet new people they are each dating. This adjustment doesn’t necessarily come easy just because you are supposed to “be adult about it.”

In another article posted in the Washingtonian Magazine, Brook had additional thoughts to say on this subject. She wrote,

“When a younger couple gets a divorce, they worry about how it will affect the children. My Mom told me that’s partly why she and Dad stayed together for so long. Did it mean that what I saw as a perfect childhood was a lie?

“There’s a notion that an adult child won’t hurt as much as a youngster, that a 26-year-old isn’t as likely to be affected by her parents’ breakup. That she’ll understand. It’s not true. Understanding what your parents are going through is even worse. I began obsessing about their growing old alone. I pictured them in separate houses without someone to make them tea if they had the flu. They could come live with me, but I’d have to choose one.

“My parents and I reversed roles. I became the worried one, the one wanting to make sure they had a good weekend or that the birthday present I’d sent was perfect. ‘I told a friend after the holidays that my family felt dead to me.’ ‘I think you’re exaggerating,’ my friend said. But I wasn’t. I was in mourning. My family as I knew it was dying.”

As you can surmise, it’s not as easy for many adult children to adjust to their parents’ divorces even though many people may thin they should. That’s why we want to lead you to some additional  thoughts on this subject, hoping that they will help those who are dealing with this issue.

The first resources we want to direct you to are a series of interviews conducted by the ministry of Family Life Today with Dennis Rainey. This series was aired October 23-27 of 2006 where Dennis interviewed Jen Abbas and Elizabeth Marquardt.

To make the choice to either listen to or read the transcripts for each broadcast, please click onto the links provided below:

• Surviving the Aftermath of Divorce

Series Title: Adult Children of Divorce: Healing the Pain That Lives On (Day 1 of 5) Guests Include: Jen Abbas, Elizabeth Marquardt. On the broadcast today, Elizabeth Marquardt, director of the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, and Jen Abbas, author of the book Generation Ex, tell Dennis Rainey about their experience growing up without both a mother and a father in the home.

• The Emotional Hurdles of Living Through a Divorce

Series Title: Adult Children of Divorce: Healing the Pain That Lives On (Day 2 of 5) Guests Include: Jen Abbas, Elizabeth Marquardt. Divorce not only dramatically affects the couple involved, but also their children. That’s according to authors Elizabeth Marquardt and Jen Abbas, both adult children of divorce. In this broadcast, Elizabeth and Jen talk about the reality of divorce emotionally for children with FamilyLife President, Dennis Rainey.

• The Sleeper Effect of Divorce

Series Title: Adult Children of Divorce: Healing the Pain That Lives On (Day 3 of 5) Guests Include: Jen Abbas, Elizabeth Marquardt. In this broadcast, divorce survivors Elizabeth Marquardt and Jen Abbas tell Dennis Rainey how their parents’ divorce nearly 20 years earlier has affected them throughout their lives and continues to affect them today.

• Forgiving Our Parents

Series Title: Adult Children of Divorce: Healing the Pain That Lives On (Day 4 of 5) Guests Include: Jen Abbas, Elizabeth Marquardt. In this broadcast, Jen Abbas, author of the book Generation Ex, and Elizabeth Marquardt, director of the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, talk about forgiving their parents for the divorces that catapulted them as children into a strange new world often difficult to navigate or understand.

• Approaching Marriage

Series Title: Adult Children of Divorce: Healing the Pain That Lives On (Day 5 of 5) Guests Include: Jen Abbas, Elizabeth Marquardt. Divorce has a dramatic impact on the lives of children. But how does it affect a person’s approach to marriage as an adult? Today on the broadcast, Dennis Rainey talks with Jen Abbas, author of Generation Ex, and researcher Elizabeth Marquardt, both adult children of divorce, about how how their parents’ divorce affected their thoughts about marriage and family.

As well, there is another series of broadcasts conducted by the ministry of Family Life Today with Dennis Rainey that deal with the subject of adult children and how their parents’ divorce has affected their lives. Please click onto the links provided below to either listen to or read the transcripts for:

• The Beginning of the End

Series Title: Six String Rocketeer (Day 1 of 3) Guests Include: Bill and Jesse Butterworth. In this broadcast, award-winning communicator Bill Butterworth and his son, Jesse, talk to Dennis Rainey about the divorce that changed both of their lives forever.

• The After Shock of Divorce

Series Title: Six String Rocketeer (Day 2 of 3) Guests Include: Bill and Jesse Butterworth. In this broadcast, father and son team, Bill and Jesse Butterworth, tell Dennis Rainey how they felt as they struggled to get back on their feet emotionally and spiritually after Bill’s sudden divorce from Jessie’s mother.

• The Worst of Both Worlds

Series Title: Six String Rocketeer (Day 3 of 3) Guests Include: Bill and Jesse Butterworth. In this broadcast, well-known author Bill Butterworth joins his son, award-winning singer and songwriter Jesse Butterworth, to talk about life many years after Bill’s divorce that rocked both their worlds.

The above article was put together by Cindy Wright of Marriage Missions.