Out of Touch: When Parents and Children Lose Contact after Divorce

252 Pages·1997·14.19 MB·English

by  Geoffrey L. Greif

OUT OF TOUCH
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OUT OF TOUCH
When Parents and Children Lose Contact
after Divorce
Geoffrey L. Greif
NEW YORK OXFORD
Oxford University Press
1997
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Copyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data
Greif, Geoffrey L.
Out of touch : when parents and children lose contact after divorce /
Geoffrey L. Greif.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-509535-9
I. Children of divorced parents. 2. Children of divorced parents—
Psychology. 3. Divorce—Psychological aspects. I. Title.
HQ777-5-G74 1997 96-7929
306.874—dc20135798642
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Prefac
Cultures are rich with tales of parents who have abandoned chil-
dren. Whenever such stories have been told, whether they be mythology,
folktales, or fairy tales read to children, the theme emerges of the parent
who withdraws, due to some mysterious event, adventure seeking, divine
intervention, death, or leaving the child to be raised by others. This absence
then sets the stage for the child to overcome hardship and find success. Ro-
mulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome who are nurtured by
wolves, survive without their parents. Zeus is raised away from both par-
ents on the isle of Crete (hidden from his child-eating father, Cronus) before
becoming king of the gods. Cinderella, living with her stepmother while her
father either has died or is away at sea (depending upon the version of the
story), triumphs by marrying a prince (not a politically correct victory). Sta-
golee sets off on his own at the age of five to make his mark in the world,
parental supervision being unneeded. The message is that children can over-
come a life without a parent, sometimes being cared for by others, some-
times fending for themselves. A child hearing such a story could be reas-
sured that if he or she were left alone, all was not lost.
Almost always left unexplained is the state of the absent parents. Their
reactions to and feelings about being away from their children are not de-
scribed.
Fast forward to the end of the twentieth century, and we see a slightly
different cultural message. Now children raised away from a father or
mother not only are failing to adapt, but are suffering. Much is blamed on
vi Preface
a parent's absence. Schneiderman believes this theme is reflected in twenti-
eth-century novels whose protagonists are craving attention and praise be-
cause of a lack of strong parenting. By comparison, nineteenth-century
Dickensian parental figures are cruel and unjust, he writes, but an overall
parental structure still exists in the broader society which provides children
something to push off against in their attempts to define themselves.1 That
is not the case at the end of this century. We are inundated with the message
that the failures of families, whether they be rural, suburban, or urban, are
due to the decline of the two parent family as well as the rise of unwed
pregnancy. Crime, low academic achievement, substance abuse, and emo-
tional problems are being linked in the community psyche to father absence
and, occasionally, to mother absence. In past generations, the child pulled
himself up by the bootstraps and survived despite the absence of the parent.
Now it is not so simple.
What remains unchanged is that we still have little information about
the motivations and feelings of the absent parent. The fathers and mothers
are believed to vanish for reasons that connote weakness, lack of interest,
and self-absorption. They are often seen as ne'er-do-wells who are avoiding
paying child support and need to be corralled by the court system. Such ab-
sences are resulting, by most accounts, in one of the most significant crises
of our times and collectively appear to be a time bomb waiting to explode
in even broader dimensions on future generations.
To understand this many-sided puzzle, researchers and writers have
looked extensively at single mothers and fathers struggling to raise children
alone. They have inquired about the absent parent's visiting patterns and
child support payment habits. They have questioned and observed the chil-
dren, trying to understand how they are faring. They have made predic-
tions about the children's future well-being. Less well known, though, are
the positions of the fathers or mothers not in contact with the children.
Why are they not seeing their children? What is their side of the story?
How do they feel about their children, their ex-spouses, and themselves?
Having written other books on single parent families, I became inter-
ested in this topic both for its familiarity and its timeliness. In all of the
other books, some discussion centered on either a nonvisiting parent or the
possibility of a parent dropping out. These absent parents interested me in
a profound sense because they seemed the epitome of the misunderstood
and the insufficiently understood.
Once I began researching the topic, its complexity became quite appar-
ent. There are parents from all walks of life and of all ages who are not see-
ing their children, ranging from the wealthy child support evader to the
poor undereducated teen parent. Given the robust nature of the topic, and
vii Preface
the lack of information on these parents, I chose to focus primarily, though
not exclusively, on parents who were married at one time. I wanted to learn
about the feelings of parents who were not visiting and how they came to
lose contact with their children. Others will have to focus on unmarried
teen parents who are not seeing their children and those who are dodging
child support payments, both social problems that have grown out of pro-
portion. A few such parents, both white and African-American, appear
among the parents I interviewed, but here the focus is on the process that
unfolds when relationships go bad.
I began the study with a national questionnaire sample of over 180 par-
ents who belonged to Parents without Partners.2 Two follow-up telephone
surveys were conducted in subsequent years to gather more information
and to watch changes over time. I found immediately that collecting quan-
titative data was insufficient to understand the complexity of the situations
involved. Their lives could not be explained by checking off a series of
boxes. I chose to interview a subset of these parents myself and to look for
other parents not connected to a self-help group who might provide addi-
tional information. I first thought I might find a great number of parents
who were clearly wronged by what had happened to them and were suffer-
ing because of it. I hypothesized that some parents were being deprived of
the contact they wanted and that, through discussions with them, I could
clearly point out the multiple injustices that had befallen them. What I
ended up with was less clear cut. While many of the parents I interviewed
were suffering and do not fit the common profile of the uncaring self-ab-
sorbed parent, others presented less sympathetic tales, even though they
claimed to have been treated unjustly. I have not excluded people that I in-
terviewed for the book to prove a point. Rather, what I was left with was a
great appreciation for the complexity of these people's lives. Little in life is
clear-cut; and when you shake in a tincture of divorce, acrimony, legal and
financial disputes, suffering, and varying impressions from the family mem-
bers intimately involved, the picture can be fuzzy. I have classified the most
common themes that I have heard from the mothers and fathers but—and
again because of the complexity of the issues—this becomes an approxima-
tion.
Editing their comments was necessary to make their words more read-
able. In addition, great care was taken to disguise identities of the families
involved without changing the nature of their stories. But I scrupulously
have tried to capture their own words, sometimes unsettling or sad, some-
times inflammatory, and sometimes contradictory.
Where is the road map for these parents? There are no frequently retold
folktales to refer to that provide cultural messages about divorced parents
viii Preface
struggling to see their children. Where is the fairy tale of the parent who is
good and pure but does not have access to a child because of earlier mari-
tal problems or a seemingly unfair court system? Does that parent receive a
visit from a fairy judge? When does he or she get a turn at happiness?
No culture is telling those tales. I believe we suffer as a result, because
our options for self-definition are reduced. If we understand the complexity
of divorced families better, maybe we will believe that some single parents
who are out of contact with their children are decent people. But simple so-
lutions, unfortunately, do not exist.
Over the past four years, many graduate social work students at the Uni-
versity of Maryland have assisted me in tracking down and interviewing
parents and understanding the lives of the parents they have contacted.
Most recently, Linda Beam and Danielle Donner helped with the three-year
follow-up interviews and a further literature review. These students' inter-
est and questioning have made this book immeasurably better. My daugh-
ters, Alissa and Jennifer, also helped along the way with editing suggestions
and mythological references. The support of Parents without Partners and
Mothers without Custody in publishing the questionnaire as well as articles
about the findings is greatly appreciated. The research could not have been
undertaken without them! Rachmael Tobesman, Jennifer Isham, and Joan
Kristall need to be thanked, as do the folks at the Annapolis Child Support
Project, who were extremely cooperative in helping me understand the di-
mensions of child support payment enforcement. To David Roll and Gioia
Stevens at Oxford University Press, who supported the idea of the book, I
also give a nod of thanks.
Finally, and most important, I wish to recognize the parents who partici-
pated in the original survey as well as the parents and children I later con-
tacted and who contacted me. Many allowed me enormous access to their
lives, including permission to review court documents. Sharing their expe-
riences with me was often painful. Some interviews went on for hours at a
time. Many parents stayed in touch with me for a number of years to pro-
vide me with updates. I have been following one family, discussed in chap-
ter 6, for ten years, allowing for a view of divorce and parent-child sep-
aration that reaches from childhood to young adulthood. I thank you all
and hope that I have done you, and other parents in your situations, justice.
G. L. G.
Baltimore
September 1996
Contents
1 Divorce and How Parents Lose Contact 3
2 When Fathers and Children No Longer Visit
Feelings of Inadequacy and Rejection 3 2
3 When Fathers and Children No Longer Visit
The More Acrimonious Cases 5 5
4 When Mothers and Children No Longer Visit
Feelings of Rejection and Betrayal 78
5 When Mothers and Children No Longer Visit
When Others Raise Concerns 112
6 The Children's Views 127
7 Absent Parents, Law, and Social Policy 159
8 When Contact Is Reestablished
Where to Go from Here 169
9 Prevention and Resolution
Advice for Parents and Children 189
NOTES 22.1 221
REFERENCES 229
INDEX 237