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In and out of marriage: A study of the multiply divorced

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IN AND OUT OF MARRIAGE:
A STUDY OF THE MULTIPLY DIVORCED
by
Patricia Ann Emerson
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Sociology)
December 2000
Copyright 2000 Patricia A. Emerson
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UM I Number: 3041449
Copyright 2000 by
Emerson, Patricia Ann
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
The Graduate School
U niversity Park
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089-1695
This dissertation, written by
Patricia Emerson
Under the direction o f h$L. Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment o f
requirements for the degree o f
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Dean o f Graduate Studies
Date December 18^ 2000______
D1SSER T A TION COMMITTEE
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ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work would not have come about if it had not been for the
cooperation, courage and openness o f the 32 multiply divorced individuals who
allowed me into very intimate parts o f their lives. To these people I say, I am
deeply grateful and humbled by your participation.
This work would not have come about without the early, ongoing,
enthusiastic support I received from my mentor. Dr. Carlfred Broderick. From my
first tentative suggestion until our very last conversation. Dr. Broderick maintained
a keen interest in this topic, ever urging me onward.
I am deeply indebted to my committee chair. Dr. Elaine Bell Kaplan. She
supported me with enthusiasm, encouragement, and challenging reviews. She sent
me back to grapple with the data many times, only to bring a deeper understanding
to the subject. The other members of the committee. Dr. Eun Mee Kim and Dr.
Lois Banner, were ever present with support and suggestions.
I could not have brought this dissertation to fruition without my peer
support group consisting o f Jane Bock, Susan Finch, Maryann Gallagher, Gloria
Gonzalez-Lopez, Sally Raskoff, Jackie Rogers, and Tracy Tolbert. These women
continually read and critiqued my work, heard me out when I was frustrated,
suggested new directions when I was stumped, pointed me back when 1 wandered,
gave me their shoulders to cry on and their ears to cry into. I especially thank
Susan Finch for generously and willingly reading and re-reading the entire work
several times, always with a fresh eye and with helpful and creative comments.
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iii
I want to acknowledge the cooperation of David Kuroda, formerly with the
Conciliation Court, for permission to speak to other Los Angeles County
mediators. I appreciate the mediators who referred their multiply divorced clients
to my study. I also appreciate the cooperation o f the University of Southern
California and California State University of Los Angeles for distributing memos
for me.
Most importantly, I must thank my family. My father, who died two years
ago, and my mother, urged me on. My grown children, Chris, Bill, Dan, Marta,
and Pam, gave me their unfailing support, love and pride even though graduate
school kept me from being with them. I am grateful for the role that Melissa,
Justin, and little Katherine, my grandchildren, played. Thinking about them gave
me more strength o f purpose, hoping that “Dr. Grandma’” s efforts could pave the
road to higher education for them. Now I plan to spend more time with all of you.
This dissertation would not have happened without many people, too
numerous to mention by name, who helped the project along in many ways, some
by finding participants, some by editing, some through useful discussion, some by
transcribing interview tapes, some by cheering me on. To all of you and many
more people who put themselves out to help me along, a big thank you!
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iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................................................................... ii
LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................... vii
A BSTR A C T................................................................................................................viii
1 INTRODUCTION......................................................................................... I
Prevalence of Multiple Divorce........................................................ 3
The Nuclear Family ............................................................................ 8
Family Systems Theory................................................................... 14
Divorcism: The Stigma of D ivorce............................................... 15
Historical Perspective of D iv o rce................................................. 18
The Voice o f the Multiply D ivorced................................................20
From Nuclear Family to Postmodern Families................................26
The Binuclear F am ily........................................................................ 27
Change and M ovem ent................................................................... 29
Purpose o f the Study and Study Q uestions.................................... 29
2 M ETH O D S.................................................................................................. 33
Participants .................................................................................................. 33
Qualitative Research M eth o d ..................................................................... 34
In-Depth Interview .......................................................................... 35
The Interview G u id e.......................................................... 35
Trust and the Complete Membership Role .....................................37
Protecting the Participants ............................................................... 38
Sampling M eth o d s............................................................................ 42
Sampling problem s............................................................................ 47
The Hiders: They never heard, never responded ..............48
The Refusers: They Would Not Participate.......................49
Grounded Theory Method ............................................................ 50
Sum m ary....................................................................................................... 54
3 I’M GETTING MARRIED IN THE MORNING.......................................56
Meaning o f M arriage................................................................................... 57
The Wedding D ay............................................................................ 57
Single is not the Norm ......................................................................61
Marriage is the N o rm ........................................................................62
Marriage is Doing Gender ............................................................... 62
What the Women Wanted in Marriage ........................................... 63
What the Men Wanted in M arriage..................................................64
Not Their Parents’ M arriage.............................................................65
What Motivated Them to M arry....................................................................74
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V
Six Reasons for the Sake of the Children ................................... 74
A Baby C arriage................................................................ 76
The Children Need a Dad .................................................78
A Two-Parent F am ily....................................................... 80
Help with Parenting .......................................................... 81
A Caring Relationship....................................................... 82
Financial Security.............................................................. 83
Leaving Home ................................................................................ 86
Here Comes the Rescuer .............................................................. 87
The Business Arrangement Marriage .......................................... 89
Make Someone H ap p y .................................................................. 91
Obstacles on Their Way to Marriage ....................................................... 93
No Teaching or Training................................................................ 93
They Knew They Did Not Know ................................................... 96
Blind Spots......................................................................................... 97
Ignoring the Still Small V oice....................................................... 98
They Pledge to Make it W o rk ..................................................... 101
I Can Make it W o rk ..................................................................... 102
Sum m ary.................................................................................................... 104
4 I’M GETTING DIVORCED IN THE AFTERNOON........................ 108
What is D ivorce?...................................................................................... 109
Filing the Petition for Divorce..................................................... I ll
Parental Support for Divorce ..................................................... 113
Advantages of Divorce for W om en............................................ 113
Advantages of Divorce for M e n ................................................. 115
The Obstacles That Held Them B a c k ..................................................... 117
Their Beliefs and Teachings about D ivorce............................... 117
Divorce as Failure and Badness ................................................. 118
No Thoughts of D ivorce.............................................................. 119
Divorce as Unspeakable, a Solution or About Children 121
The Double Standard o f Divorce ............................................... 122
Learning from Their P arents....................................................... 124
Family History of Divorce .......................................................... 126
No Parental Support for Divorce ............................................... 127
Disadvantages of Divorce for W omen........................................ 128
Disadvantage of Divorce for M e n ............................................... 134
Effects o f the Obstacles ........................................................................... 136
Wished Their Parents Had Divorced.......................................... 142
Not My Parents’ Marriage .......................................................... 143
Grounds for Divorce..................................................................... 144
Sum m ary.................................................................................................... 149
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5 STIGMA: Shame on M e !.......................................................................... 153
Do Participants Still Encounter S tig m a........................ 159
Does Stigma Increase with each Divorce...................... 163
Where does this Stigma O riginate.................................. 164
How does Internalized Divorcism Operate .................. 168
Gendered Divorcism-The Double Standard.................. 173
SUMMARY .............................................................................................. 178
6 CONCLUSION......................................................................................... 182
Sociological Effects on Marriage and Divorce ...................................... 183
Their Parents ................................................................................ 184
Their Children .............................................................................. 185
Their Economic Climate and Their Social S tigm a.................... 186
The Development of Their Decision-Making P ro cess............. 188
Their Inability to Know What They F e e l.................................... 189
Countering The Myths, Stereotypes, and Hypothesis ............. 192
Contextualizing the Study............................................................ 194
Participants’ Marital Status.......................................................... 195
Participants’ Thoughts about Future Marriage ........................ 197
Participants’ Recommendations for Public P o licy .................... 198
Implications for Clinical Practitioners........................................ 200
Implications for Future Research ............................................... 202
Final C om m ents......................................................................................... 204
REFEREN CES....................................................................................................... 206
APPENDIX A - INTERVIEW G U ID E ............................................................... 217
APPENDIX B - THE WOMEN .......................................................................... 226
APPENDIX C - THE M E N ..................................................................................... 228
APPENDIX D - TIMES DIVORCED................................................................. 229
APPENDIX E - WHO FIL E D ?............................................................................ 230
APPENDIX F - PARTICIPANTS’ C H ILD R EN ............................................... 231
APPENDIX G - SAMPLING R ESPO N SE........................................................ 232
CONSENT FORM ...................................................................................................233
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 - Projection o f Divorce from Population of 100,000 W o m en .....................6
Table 2 - Advantages o f M arriag e.......................................................................... 74
Table 3 - Divorces Filed by Gender of Participant ............................................. 112
Table 4 - Time Participants Deliberated Before Taking A ction......................... 137
Table 5 - Problematic Issues that Preceded D ivorce........................................... 144
Table 6 - Longevity of Participants Most Recent M arriage................................ 196
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viii
Patricia Ann Emerson Elaine Bell Kaplan
ABSTRACT
IN AND OUT OF MARRIAGE: A STUDY OF THE MULTIPLY DIVORCED
Divorce is still frowned upon and many myths prevail about the character of those
who have divorced three or more times, identified in this study as the multiply divorced.
Nevertheless, there is little research on those who have divorced more than two times; the
literature is sparse on this topic. This qualitative study was designed to examine the
experience of multiply divorced individuals through their own eyes. The data was gathered
by in-depth interviews conducted in 1997-98 with 32 multiply divorced individuals, aged
18 to 73 years, who lived in Los Angeles County.
The study findings indicate that: (I) The multiply divorced want to be part of the
norm; they placed a high value on being married and attempt to emulate the norm of one
monogamous marriage. (2) A large majority of the participants grew up in gravely
dysfunctional families. (3) The multiply divorced get a divorce, while distasteful to them,
because they will not ‘‘settle for” a marriage with the same dysfunctions they witnessed in
their parents’ marriage. (4) The multiply divorced are aware that they are stigmatized and
stereotyped and considered deviant. (5) Because of that stigma, the multiply divorced are
difficult to engage in research; many would not divulge their life story to anyone else. (6)
The experience of the multiply divorced varies by gender: women more often file for
divorce, more often retain custody of the children, suffer more degrading stigma, and more
often wind up in restrictive financial situations. (7) The experience of the multiply divorced
does not vary by social class: the story of the ninth grade drop-out was similar to the story
of the Ph.D. Lastly, and unexpectedly, at the time of the interview, 34% of the sample
were currently in, or widowed after, a marriage that endured for up to 35 years.
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CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION
I took [the vows] to heart. I still have my second
marriage vows-the minister gave [them] to us. For
better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. I don’t care
if my husband ended up in a wheelchair, that was my
mate. I’d take care of him. I’m very committed. I
respect the vows very much. I take them very
seriously. Mary
Mary was one of the most talkative o f the participants in this study, and
she-at 46-remains one of the most cheerful and optimistic. She grew up living in
submission and fear of her verbally and physically abusive, violent father. She
vowed she would be a career woman and would never marry. She joined the
military service and she had a short-term boyfriend. After a military doctor had
assured her that she was sterile, her first pregnancy came as a surprise. She
decided to raise the baby by herself. Home again, her father pressured a man he
worked with-20 years older than Mary-into marrying her. Her mother added to
her pressure, “It doesn’t look good for a single woman to have a baby.” Mary
complied, feeling that she was gaining security and safety for her child.
Devastating as it was to be the first in the family to be divorced, Mary
eventually left this husband because he was jealous and possessive; he battered her.
abused her child, and was unfaithful. Three years later, and pregnant, she married
again-because her parents again pressured her to do so. Once again, Mary soon
felt trapped and desperate with this husband, who was also unfaithful and
controlling, and who used drugs. Yet she stayed with him six full years to avoid
facing another divorce and the accompanying financial struggle. Mary was barely
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able to support her two children and herself on her combined salaries of two
menial-labor jobs. Not until five years later did she marry again. This time she
hoped that sharing the same church would make the marriage work. Mary again
was working two menial-labor jobs, but she soon learned that this husband was the
most irresponsible and immature o f all three-he refused to get a job, he was
content to live on Mary’s earnings, and he squandered a $1000 wedding gift. This
time, it took less than two years for Mary to file for a divorce and simultaneously
to obtain a restraining order against him for domestic violence.
Getting a divorce is a contentious, difficult, painful, expensive, time-
consuming, and all-around undesirable process. Culturally, divorce is controversial.
Historically, a divorce has been difficult to get, as the law required one to prove
grounds for divorce within narrow parameters before the advent o f no-fault
divorce law thirty years ago. Legally, divorce still remains difficult: the state
requires one to file with the court, engage a lawyer or act “in pro per,” know the
law, attend a mediation session to make plans for the children, and make court
appearances. From a religious point of view, divorce is often strongly discouraged
or forbidden outright. Socially, divorce is frowned upon. While the stigma has
lessened over the years, divorce remains loaded with it. Financially, divorce is
often disastrous, with property divisions, alimony, child-support payments, the cost
of establishing a new household and court-related costs. Emotionally, divorce is
painful for the two parties seeking to dissolve their union, as well as for their
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children, parents, siblings and friends. In the face o f all this, then, why do people
like Mary get divorced, not just once or twice, but three or even more times?
Since the existing literature does not answer the question, this study
juxtaposed the interview data o f 32 o f the “multiply divorced”-the term I give to
those divorced three or more times-with the popular myths that surround them.
There were approximately 1,352,000 multiply divorced persons in the U S. in
1997, the latest year for which statistics are available.
Prevalence of Multiple Divorce
The divorce rate in the U.S. has been increasing for more than 100 years
(DaVanzo & Rahman, 1993), and rose substantially in the late 1800s and early
1900s (Cherlin, 1999, p. 366). There was a marked increase from the middle 1940s
to the late 1980s, which plateaued between 1955 and 1963, and then reached a
peak in the late 1970s (Riley, 1991, p. 159). In 1996 alone, there were 1,150,000
new divorces in the United States and in 1997 there were a total of 19,315,000
(9.9%) divorced people 18 years and older in the U.S. (March 1997 Current
Population Survey, U.S. Census Bureau).
The U.S. has-by far-the highest divorce rate (21) per thousand married
women in the industrialized world, followed by Denmark and Great Britain (both
13), Canada (12), Germany, France and Netherlands (each at 8), Japan (5) and
lastly, Italy (2) (Sorrentino 1990). Divorce rates are higher in urban areas than in
rural areas, higher for African Americans than Whites, lower-but rising-for
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Mexican Americans than either Whites or African Americans (Riley, 1991). Racial-
ethnic groups o f women who had separated or divorced by 1980 and who had
married for the first time 19 to 14 years earlier ranked in this order: 52.7% of
African American, 47.9% of Native American, 46.5% o f Puerto Rican, 39.2% of
Hawaiian, 37.4% non-Hispanic white, 33.0% Cuban, 30.5% Mexican, 28.1%
Vietnamese, 21.8% Japanese, 21.7% Korean, 21.4% Filipino, 14.4% Chinese, and
on 7.3% Asian Indian (Sweet & Bumpass, 1987).
Between 1970 and 1979 the divorce rate in the U.S. more than doubled,
from 9 divorces per 1,000 married women to 23 per 1,000 though since then it has
fallen slightly (DaVanzo & Rahman, 1993). Roughly a third of American marriages
in 1979 involved at least one previously married adult. Approximately 75% of
divorced persons remarry (DaVanzo & Rahman, 1993). Since the late 1970s the
divorce rate has fallen slightly, from 23 per 1,000 in 1979 to 21 per 1,000 in 1988
(DaVanzo & Rahman, 1993). By 1992. the U.S. had 56,350,000 married couples
and 1,215,000 obtained divorce in 1992, resulting in a divorce rate o f 2.1 percent
(U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 1993).
Nine out of ten remarriages follow a divorce rather than a death (U.S.
National Center for Health Statistics, 1991). Remarriage is far more likely among
non-Hispanic whites than among Hispanics or African Americans. According to
one estimate from 1980 Census data, about half of all non-Hispanic white women
will remarry within five years of their separation, compared with one-third of
Mexican-American women and one-fifth o f African-American women (Sweet &
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Bumpass 1987). More recent statistics are not available, but it is unlikely that the
racial-ethnic differentials have changed much.
Locating statistics for the multiply divorced is difficult for a number of
reasons. One reason is that the appropriate question is not asked in surveys or by
census takers. Another reason is that people are not honest in their responses.
Even though multiple divorce was on the rise in the 1980s, Riley (1991) found this
difficult to document because people were not being truthful with clerks and
census takers about the actual number of times they had been divorced. This
strategy was also used by participants in my study to accommodate for stigma.
The following is an overview o f statistics I was able to find. There are early
traces of multiple divorce in the first half of the twentieth century. According to
Riley (1991), .86% of the men and .86% of the women who divorced in Linn
County, Iowa, between 1928 and 1944 had been married three times or more. The
U.S. Census Bureau reported in 1975 that 2.1% of the ever-married population
had been married three or more times (Cherlin, 1978; Spanier & Glick, 1980).
Multiple divorce had increased by 1987, when there were 700,000 multiply
divorced individuals in the U.S. which was 7% of all divorced individuals (U.S.
Bureau o f the Census, 1991). By 1997, there were 19,314,000 divorced persons,
which is 9.9% of the total U.S. population and of this number, 1,352,000 were
multiply divorced. Counts (1992) provided the statistics used for Table 1 below.
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O f 100.000 women: Therefore:
94%1 or 94,000 will marry a 1 “ time 6,000 will remain single.
33%* or 31,300 will divorce a 1 “ time 62,700 will remain married a 1 s t time
75%l or 23,475 will marry a 2n d time 7,825 will remain divorced a l5 ' time
40%2 or 9,390 will divorce a 2n d time 14,085 will remain married a 2n d time
90%2 or 8,450 will marry a 3rd time 940 will remain divorced a 2n d time
65%3 or 5,500 will divorce a 3rd time 2,950 will remain married a 3rd time
Table 1 - Projection of Divorce from Population of 100,000 Women
At the end o f Table 1, the result is that 5 .5% of the original 100,000
women experienced a third divorce. Counts (1992) predicted that the number of
third divorces would dramatically show up in the overall divorce rate in 1986 and
would continue to do so until at least 2006. Based on his research Counts further
predicted that those who will eventually divorce three or more times will increase
to 10,310 or 10.3% of 100,000 women married in 1970-71.
These numbers underscore the importance of conducting this study, as
does the view of the conservative element of our society who consider any divorce
to be a problem and consider the multiply divorced in particular to have a
pathological problem. The conservatives who speak about the degeneration of
family values look at the rising divorce rate as a negative indicator. To the
participants of this study, however, divorce became a means to end a dysfunctional
relationship in order to pursue a more functional family relationship, one which
‘Cherlin (1981)
•^adelson & Polonsky (1984)
3 Counts (1992)
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would be more nurturing and supportive to their children and to themselves.
Rather than a revolt against marriage, the motivation behind their divorce was a
devotion to the importance and desirability of a good marriage. Ironically, this
long-lasting monogamous marriage is exactly what the multiply divorced strive to
achieve. The significant findings o f this study are that: (1) the multiply divorced
want to be part o f the norm-they do not want to deviate. They have placed a high
value on being married and do their best to emulate the norm of the nuclear family
model; (2) The multiply divorced get a divorce-even though it is distasteful to
them-because they will not “settle for” a marriage with the same dysfunctions that
their parents’ marriage had and often settled for; (3) The multiply divorced are
aware that they are considered deviant and that they are stigmatized and
stereotyped; (4) The multiply divorced are difficult to engage in research, a result
of the stigma they encounter. Many will not divulge their life story to anyone; (5)
The multiply divorced grew up in grossly dysfunctional families-a very few of
them noted families with milder forms of dysfunction; (6) The multiply divorced
experience varies by gender. Women more often file for divorce, more often retain
custody of the children, suffer more degrading stigma, and more often wind up in
restrictive financial situations; and (7) The multiply divorced experience does not
vary by social class. From the participant who left school after the ninth grade to
the one with the Ph.D., the stories are similar.
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8
The Nuclear Family
The norm is the nuclear family as viewed by conservative voices in our
society. A model for the nuclear family was described by Parsons and Bales
(19SS). The model consists of adults caring for children with distinct differences in
the function o f male and female members. Think Ozzie and Harriet, for example. In
the nuclear family, the parents constitute the older subsystem, and the children
occupy the younger one. The father and the sons represent the male subsystem,
while the mother and the daughters represent the female subsystem. This model
mandates that the father take on the instrumental role, produce the income for the
family, and connect the family to outside institutions. The instrumental role is task-
oriented and requires the father to manipulate the environment, primarily that
outside of the home. Similarly, the nuclear family mandate for the mother is to
personify the expressive role, maintain the home, socialize the children, and be
emotionally supportive. The expressive role is relationship-oriented and requires
the mother to orchestrate all the activity within the home. This model presumes
that the marriage will endure. The nuclear family is sustained by these prescribed
roles; it is operational when each member fulfills his or her specific function.
Some analysts contend that families have changed since Parsons and Bales'
time (1955). Others say they never really were the way Parsons and Bales
presented them (Coontz, 1992). These changes or differences illuminate the
limitations o f the nuclear family model, which is fixed and unchangeable, unlike
and unrepresentative o f real families. “Real families operate in real time with
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evolving rules . . . and they invariably adapt societal norms to their individual
circumstances” (Broderick, 1993, p. 14-15). Today's families may find a mother
earning more than a father, a father serving as house-husband, divorced parents, or
other changes in family structure that would not work within Parsons and Bales’
(1955) model. Coontz (1992) argues that the much-politicized “ideal 1950s’
family” is a myth. She asserts that even the 1950s’ form and function o f the family
was more diverse than the traditional, ubiquitous ideal o f the nuclear family that
was glorified by Parsons and Bales (1955). Contemporary conservative
sociologists such as David Popenoe (1996)-and politicians such as Patrick
Buchanan-continue to argue for the return to the family model which consists of a
wage-earning husband and a home-maker wife, both of whom focus on their
children and do not divorce4. Such conservatives, beginning with Kingsley Davis
and continuing with Popenoe (1996), believe that the family today is unstable,
either fading away or in decline because of the high rate o f divorce.
Others, like Coontz (1992), argue against the nuclear family mold. Thome
(1982) argues that Parsons and Bales (1955) created the false impression that the
division o f labor in a family is inevitable. Parsons and Bales’ work implied that
4 Judith Wallerstein, in her latest controversial book, The Unexpected
Legacy o f Divorce, featured in Time (September 25, 2000, pp. 34-46), advises
parents considering divorce-short o f battered wives or spouses o f alcoholics-to
stick it out for the sake o f the children, and that children are better off with their
parents together, even where there are problems. My research-on the other
hand-supports the argument that children may be better off with one parent who
cares for them than with two who have problems.
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10
expressive and instrumental roles have equal power, ignoring the variety in families
apparent even in the 1950s. Thome (1982) claims that the traditional family-based
on monogamous marriage-constricts women's freedom and personal growth,
exacts a great deal o f unpaid and unrewarded labor from them, and keeps wives
economically dependent on husbands. Those analysts contend, for example, that
the concept o f gender as a role should be eliminated altogether (Ferree, 1990).
Similarly, West and Zimmerman (1991) criticize the theory of gender roles,
pointing out that gender is far too broad to be considered just one o f life's roles.
The traditional nuclear family form is based on distinctly defined rotes that
trap individuals into stereotypes (Connell, 1987; Lipman-Blumen, 1984). Those
analysts who celebrate it, embrace the concept of roles as if the roles are the norm.
Parsons and Bales' (1955) nuclear family, for example, emphasizes the
differences-not the similarities-between the sexes. That theory does not take into
account the relationship between the sexes and, furthermore, it concludes that
deviation from these roles is caused by personal idiosyncracies or inadequate
socialization. Through this lens, single parents, employed mothers, nurturing
fathers, gay and lesbian parents, divorced and-even more so, the multiply
divorced-all appear deviant.
Many myths-imaginary stories often reflecting cultural stereotypes-persist
about the multiply divorced. One o f the purposes o f this study is to challenge the
reality o f such myths, one of which is that there are not very many of them. In fact,
as early as 1975, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 2 .1%-or 48,300-of the
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11
ever-married population had been married three or more times (Cherlin, 1978;
Spanier & Glick, 1980). By 1987, there were 700,000 people divorced three or
more times (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991). By 1997, as I have noted, there
were 1,352,000 multiply divorced persons in the U.S.
Numerous other myths abound about the multiply divorced. They are
mostly portrayed as marrying and divorcing quickly and carelessly. In the media or
in words spoken by strangers, friends, or students o f mine, in classes and in focus
groups, I have heard the multiply divorced characterized as people who are:
insincere, insecure, immoral, eccentric, incomplete, uncommitted, impatient,
unlucky, unstable, headstrong, quitters, losers, selfish, greedy, sex-hungry, needy,
depressed, and lonely. The only positive word I have heard used in reference to
them is idealistic. So, one might ask, how much truth is there in these myths?
Yet another myth is that divorce must become easier for those who have
been divorced so many times. People have made comments to me such as, “This
should be easy for you. After all, you’ve done it before” or, “It must be easier for
them by that time.” The impression that divorce gets easier with each divorce
arises because many activities do get easier with practice. Playing the piano, riding
a bicycle or speaking in front o f a group are all examples of activities that can seem
insurmountable when first approached, but do get easier with repetition. Even
some undesirable behaviors can get easier when they are repeated. So it is
understandable that society would believe that divorce becomes easier as people
experience it three or more times. The experience o f the participants, however, is
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similar to that of Mary : it actually gets harder each time. Each subsequent divorce
becomes an even more painful and difficult transition. With each succeeding
divorce it becomes harder to face the discrepancy between their own experience
and the norm they sought to follow: one satisfactory marriage for their lifetime.
With each succeeding divorce the stigma grows yet the participants refused to
remain in a marriage that treated them and their children wretchedly. However
long it took, they gathered up their strength and courage to face whatever they
needed to face in their attempt to transcend a dysfunctional way o f life.
In spite of the numbers of multiply divorced, the literature on multiple
divorce is surprisingly sparse (Counts, 1992). Before this study, no one had done a
qualitative study involving interviews with individuals who have divorced three or
more times before this study. The literature that does exist adds to the mythology
about the multiply divorced. All studies, no matter the author, view plural
marriages and divorces as pathological. For example, Brody, Neubaum &
Forehand (1988) reviewed studies o f multiply divorced male physicians,
psychiatric patients, readmitted psychiatric inpatients, and poorly adjusted
remarriage partners who were in therapy and inferred that these samples are
representative of the entire multiply divorced population. Similarly, Counts (1992),
and Counts and Sacks (1991) based their research on a clinical sample drawn from
clients’ in Counts’ clinical practice in New York. Once again, in this study, as in
the one by Neubaum et al., the multiply divorced are seen as pathological even
though the data is taken entirely from Counts’ client population. Counts refers to
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the multiply divorced as patients, a traditional term used by the medical and
psychological professions, which implies that they are sick, unhealthy people in
need of a doctor’s treatment. The samples for the above studies were not
representative of the total population but instead comprised patients under a
doctor’s or hospital’s care. Those clinical samples can hardly represent the entire
population of the multiply divorced, for it includes many individuals and couples
who never sought or required care of a doctor or of a hospital.
From their review of other research, Brody et al. (1988) formed several
hypotheses about those they called multiple marriers. They define those individuals
as people who have married three times and divorced two times, one divorce short
of my sample of the multiply divorced, individuals who have divorced three or
more times. Brody et al. (1988) hypothesized that these multiple marriers: (I) have
maladaptive behaviors, (2) lack commitment to marriage and family, (3) quickly
resort to divorce for problem solving without trying other alternatives, and (4) are
not likely to be effective parents.
The myths extend into academic and clinical circles and are not restricted
to the lay audience. The myths are apparent in casual conversations with other
academicians and therapists. I hear commonly-held myths about the multiply
divorced, to wit: the multiply divorced take marriage too lightly, choose divorce
too easily, are too difficult to please, have not learned “their lesson,” re-marry the
same type o f person, and will never succeed in a marriage.
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These hypotheses and assumptions are particularly problematic because
they imply that, as people move through these transitions in life, they never
change, they are unaffected, their identity is static, every one has the same
problem. The diagnosis is terminal, “They can’t change!”
Family Systems Theory
Family systems theory is helpful in understanding the lives o f the multiply
divorced, as it allows looking at them as a part o f their larger family system, while
the afore-named researchers, Brody et al. (1988) and Counts (1992), looked only
at their situation as individuals. Through the lens of family systems theory, the
family can be seen operating as a system with each individual affecting the family
as a whole, while at the same time, the family as a whole affects each individual
member (Broderick, 1993; Klein & White, 1996). Using family systems theory
permits seeing the intertwining of the lives of the multiply divorced with their
families, especially how they are affected by their parents and their children.
According to Broderick (1993), the family system is a system that is open-
communication and other material moves freely in and out o f the family. A family
is ongoing-change occurs with the passing of time. It is seif-regulating-families
pattern their behavior according to their own governing principles, their own rules.
The family's rules operate to monitor and regulate the relational distances among
its members through bonding, buffering, bridging, and maintaining boundaries.
Additionally, a family is emergent-in that the whole is greater than the sum o f the
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15
individuals. Communication takes place both within the unit-among the
members-and outside the unit-with other individuals and institutions in the
environment. Family systems theory also sees a family as encompassing the
relationships, the interactions, and the dynamics between its members and the
world at large. Broderick claims, additionally, that the family is goal-
seeking-selecting and pursuing goals with identified tactics and timetables. These
descriptions fit both functional and dysfunctional families. When a family is
functioning, these rules work to enhance each member’s enjoyment o f life and their
ability to accomplish their goals, while in dysfunctional families the rules can work
to constrict each family member’s ability to achieve the same goals that members
o f functioning families achieve. Since the participants in my study came from
families that appeared to suffer from major dysfunctions, I needed to look at the
rules and interactions within those broader family dynamics.
Because family systems theory allowed me greater flexibility than the
nuclear family model, I found this theory more useful for examining these families.
When viewed and understood through the lens of family systems theory, the
multiply divorced are not automatically reduced to being deviant.
Pivorcism: The Stigma of Divorce
However, the multiply divorced are seen through the afore-mentioned
hypotheses and myths as deviant; different from the norm. These hypotheses,
myths and beliefs enlarge the stereotype of the multiply divorced. A stereotype is
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“a biased, generalized image o f the characteristics of a social group” (Funk &
Wagnall, 1983, p. 792), in this case, the multiply divorced. The multiply divorced
are, indeed, a stereotyped group.
The stereotype of the multiply divorced is not a positive one, judging from
the tone of the myths and hypotheses described above, all of which stigmatize the
multiply divorced, forcing them to deal with issues of disgrace, dishonor, and
shame. Stigma is a reminder that one is different, discredited, undesirable, and
disqualified from full social acceptance (Goffinan, 1963; Mason, 1993). Ahrons
(1994) coined the term “divorcism” to represent the stigma associated with
divorce in general.
Divorce is a situation that has historically separated individuals from social
acceptance. Even 50 years ago (Riley, 1991), divorcing individuals experienced
great social stigma. According to Riley, manuals and guidebooks in the 1940s
spoke of the evils of divorce. These manuals predicted that “the divorced would
find themselves alone in a lonely world, shunned by family and friends, doomed to
spend the rest of their lives by themselves” (p. 174).
Some people predicted that the no-fault divorce laws would remove the
last trace o f stigma from divorce (Bernard, 1973). This prediction did not come
true, although the stigma was ameliorated somewhat. The no-fault law did
contribute to the divorce rate surge in the mid-1970s following its adoption
(DaVanzo & Rahman, 1993; Eisler, 1977). As a result, divorce occurred so
frequently that the stigma no longer held the power to control or embarrass people
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17
to the extent that it had before (Goffinan, 1963, p. 137). Indeed, stigma does seem
to have diminished tremendously for the first-time divorced. Even so, the once-
divorced continue to experience divorcism (Ahrons, 1994).
How does divorcism affect the multiply divorced? Multi-marriers,
according to Fox (1983), are seen as a problem, as an embarrassment to society,
and as losers and failures in a society that advocates winning. The attention and
derision given to celebrities, particularly female ceiebrities-Elizabeth Taylor and
Roseanne Barr-on their successive marriage and divorce announcements attests to
this fact. Fox’s (1983) study of those divorced just two times concluded that
modem society values marriage, but does not value those individuals who attempt
marriage repeatedly. How much more stigma is bestowed on those with even more
divorce experience-divorced three or more times?
Judging by a combination of factors, such as the relaxation of state and
church institutional controls, the notable prevalence today of the divorced
population, and the diminishing tendency to refer to divorce in terms of sin or
crime, one might conclude that divorce is no longer stigmatized. That would,
regrettably, overlook the everyday, lived experience of divorced women and men
who believe they are targets o f exclusion, blame, and devaluation (Gerstel, 1987).
Stigma functions to maintain the image that the nuclear family model is
preferable, a model in which the multiply divorced are seen as deviant. Stigma also
works to keep those who do not meet the standard set by the nuclear family
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embarrassed and quiet. Thus the multiply divorced, whose status is a public record,
often try to keep their status invisible.
Historical Perspective of Divorce
How did we come to a place in our history where multiple divorce has
become a significant part of our society? Multiple marriage is certainly not
new-widows and widowers have remarried for centuries. Multiple divorce is not
new either. One very early multiple marrier who is likely to have also multiply
divorced was Ovid. Henry VIII divorced two of his wives and beheaded the ones
he couldn’t divorce (Gettleman & Markowitz, 1974). Had the Roman Catholic
Church been more cooperative, Henry would likely have gone down in history as
having divorced three or more times. Even the woman at the well in the Bible story
had been married to five husbands-presumably by divorce-prior to the man with
whom she was cohabiting at the time she encountered Jesus (KJV, John 4: 2-22).
In the early years of this country, colonial divorce law was a legislative
issue copied from England (Cott, 1976; Gettleman & Markowitz, 1974; Riley,
1991). As the divorce rates increased, the new states established judicial divorce as
a more efficient route (Gettleman & Markowitz, 1974). Rising divorce rates were
a national concern by the mid-1800s (Riley, 1991). The most common justification
for divorce changed by the early twentieth century, from the failure of one's spouse
to fulfill his or her role expectation in 1880, to the absence of love and fulfillment
just forty years later (May, 1980). The American emphasis on intimacy and
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companionship appeared to burgeon during this period o f time (Blumstein &
Schwartz, 1983, Schwartz, 1994). Thus, the standard for what constitutes a
satisfactory and satisfying marriage changed dramatically, from remaining married
if roles were fulfilled to demanding a divorce if one was not satisfied emotionally
(Goode, 1956; May, 1980). The Institutional Marriage had evolved into the
Companionate Marriage (Cherlin, 1999), a “union based on a partnership of
friends and equals” (Riley, 1991, p. 55) Still, from that time forward, divorce law
changed very little until 1969.
The gain in significance o f multiple divorce was aided, in part, by the no
fault divorce law. The concept o f no-fault divorce was first signed into law in 1969
by then governor of California, Ronald Reagan. It took only nine years to spread
across the country, until today most Western nations and every state has adopted
some form of no-fault legislation (Eisler, 1977; Glendon, 1984; Guttman, 1993;
Halem, 1980; Riley, 1991). Before no-fault divorce laws, a man and a woman
could not get a divorce without proving one spouse guilty of one of the few
acceptable grounds for divorce that varied state by state and generation by
generation, but generally consisted o f the basic grounds o f adultery, alcoholism,
and domestic violence. This no fault law was intended to effectively end the use of
recrimination, connivance or collusion which was often necessary to obtain a
dissolution under the previous laws (Eisler. 1977; Kaslow & Schwartz, 1987;
Kitson, 1992). After the spread o f no-fault divorce, irreconcilable differences
became the most commonly-used grounds for divorce, and a waiting period
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became the only requirement (Eisler, 1977). No-fault divorce laws opened the
floodgates for the divorce rate to surge to a record high by the mid-1970s. Since
married parties no longer had to establish someone’s guilt in order to divorce
(although one might question this given the diatribes regularly delivered in legal
declarations); they no longer needed a consensus. Consequently, not only did more
people divorce, they did so at a younger age, leaving much more of their lives
available for remarriage and re-divorce.
After divorce, satisfactory second marriages and step-family arrangements,
by their nature, are difficult to achieve without the kind of established norms, roles,
and rules that exist for first marriages (Bohannan, 1970; Carter & McGoldrick,
1989; Cherlin, 1978; Pasley & Ihinger-Tallman, 1987; Visher& Visher, 1988).
This difficulty contributes to a higher rate o f second divorce (60%) than for first
divorce (50%. Then it is only one step from the second to the third divorce. A
significant number (70% o f third-time married individuals subsequently find
themselves divorced three or more times (Glick, 1984).
Knowing the history of divorce (Gettleman & Markowitz, 1974; May,
1980; Riley, 1991) contributes to understanding the advent o f multiple divorce.
This history also indicates more of society's role in creating this phenomenon.
The Voice of the Multiply Divorced
This study gives the multiply divorced a voice to express what they wish
society to hear about them. What the multiply divorced say when they are given a
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21
voice is that they are not like the myths and stereotypes that abound. They cry out
that they do not take marriage lightly, and they do not divorce easily. They say
they are not hard to please, and that they do not marry the same type o f person.
They proudly point to their ability to be stable and responsible parents, employees,
professionals, bill-payers, and have many long-term friends.
The multiply divorced want society to hear that they are on a quest for
transcendence to a life better than they have known before. They are striving to be
part of a norm, but they are not simply seeking the norm of being married.
Norms-the rules that define ‘in’ and define ‘out’ (Henslin, 1991)-may vary from
group to group. For conservative functionalists, the norm is the nuclear family,
which dictates that one should be married once and that the marriage should last
until death regardless o f the dynamics within the marriage. Except for, and in some
cases, in spite of, any potentially damaging dynamics that may develop within the
marriage-such as alcoholism, domestic violence, or mental illness-the nuclear
family promoters would ask the couple to stay married and work it out or-at the
very worst-separate but never remarry. This is not the norm that the multiply
divorced embrace nor the norm that they want to achieve.
The quest o f the multiply divorced moves them away from relationships
that are not healthy and not functional. They are moving away from what they
perceive as dysfunctional and undesirable both in their relationships with their
parents and in their subsequent relationships with their spouses. They reject the
idea that any marriage is acceptable, that any marriage is workable and that any
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marriage satisfied the norm. They are attempting to escape from unwanted,
dysfunctional elements o f their lives: being strapped with stigma, financial
shortages, and overwhelming responsibilities. They are attempting to avoid
alcoholism, domestic violence, and non-communicative relationships.
The quest o f the multiply divorced moves them toward a relationship that
they envision as the norm, a relationship they feel they have a right to hope for, in
a form that they see as a more acceptable norm-a healthy, functional relationship.
This is the relationship which nine (28%) of the participants in my study believe
they have achieved in their current marriage, which two widows in my study
achieved in their most recent marriage, which numbers of others hope for in their
next marriage, and which some believe they have found in their current unmarried
state. They are willing to risk the derision of society, and willing to risk the
possibility of yet another divorce, willing to risk getting into yet another
marriage-despite the fear, danger, or suffering they may have experienced in their
past marriages-in the hope that they can achieve the relationship they believe to be
the norm: a relationship with a marriage partner that is safe, comfortable, and
affectionate with open communication and shared responsibilities.
The norm they are trying to fit within is not just any marriage but a
satisfying, functioning marriage. The norm they seek corresponds with what
Cherlin (1999) calls the companionate marriage, “with its emphasis on affection,
friendship, and sexual gratification” and reject the norm o f the institutional
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marriage, with its emphases on “male authority and conformity to the social norms
of the nuclear family .”
An examination of the processes of marriage and divorce for the multiply
divorced offers new insight into the sociological context o f their situations. This
examination shows that, rather than flighty personalities making impulsive
decisions on the spur of the moment, as the above popular myths and stereotypes,
or the studied hypotheses would suggest, the multiply divorced are a more
reasoned and rational group. It shows that they are influenced by relationships with
family members from both the generation before and the generation after
themselves and that they have a goal. Their goal is to be part o f the norm, and to
have a functioning, satisfying family anchored within a marriage. Accused of being
too idealistic, too romantic, too “whatever,” in their conception of that marriage,
they would be pleased to settle for a marriage just a grade above the marriage
containing the hard-living conditions (Rubin, 1976), such as alcoholism and
domestic violence.
C. Wright Mills (1959) explained that when something occurs for one
individual it is a personal problem, but when many experience the same issue, it
becomes a social issue. Although I wish to examine the multiply divorced through
the lenses o f gender and family theories, it is true that in our society, divorce-even
once-is considered a problem. The myths and the stereotype o f the multiply
divorced make them out to be pathological. This pathologized view of the multiply
divorced permeates our entire society, as evidenced by the teachings of some
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major religions such as the Roman Catholic Church-which excludes people who
remarry from fully participating in the church sacramental life (Catechism o f the
Catholic Church, 1994; Kasper, 1980). Some of the faithful consider this state to
be “living in sin.” Certainly, as a Marriage and Family therapist, I have encountered
individuals who want to make their marriage work “no matter what;” as well as
others who view themselves as having a problem because they were not able to
make even their first marriage work.
The multiply divorced are ignored, considered deviant, stigmatized and
stereotyped. Because they are ignored and considered deviant, their voices have
not been heard. The entire corpus o f the studies done on them is quantitative, not
qualitative. I used the qualitative research method because it presents a unique
vehicle for their voices to be heard.
1 wanted to study the multiply divorced because they present a challenge to
the centuries-old societal norm that people marry once, and that these marriages
last until the death o f one’s spouse or one’s own death. And, indeed, this is the
view that the multiply divorced hold themselves-one partner for life, “No matter
what.” I wanted to study them because their lives have included at least three
divorces beyond that mark. As I discuss in the chapters 3, 4, and 5 on marriage,
divorce, and stigma, respectively, it becomes apparent that the multiply divorced
have internalized and still react to this societal conception that one must “get it
right the first time.” As Kitson (1992) states, “Virtually no one marries with the
intention o f divorcing.”
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It is interesting to note that society views multiple cohabitation differently
than multiple marriage-although many issues of both the multiply divorced and
people with multiple relationships are similar. A complication for the multiply
divorced is that, so far, all marriage and divorce records are public. Therefore,
whenever the multiply divorced get married or divorced, the change in their marital
status becomes public knowledge. Obvious examples include celebrities such as
Johnny Carson and the afore-mentioned Elizabeth Taylor, whose multiple marital
couplings and uncouplings make front-page headlines. The ending of marriage for
Jane or Harry down the block also become part of the public record, but theirs is
recorded without fanfare. Nevertheless, some newspapers-such as the Antelope
Valiev Press in Lancaster, California-still print the names of recent marriage
license applicants as well as divorce and legal separation petitions. Thus, the world
has access to this private information about the lives of the multiply divorced,
while those who have serial cohabiting5 relationships begin and end without such
public knowledge (Furstenberg, 1990). Moreover, the Census Bureau does not
consider cohabiting individuals as family until after they marry (Cherlin, 1999).
Those who rotate in and out of multiple relationships do not appear to be exposed
to the same notoriety or stigma as those who have rotated in and out o f
matrimony.
Not everyone looks at the concept o f divorce in negative, deviant, and
stereotypical terms. Both Stacey (1991) and Ahrons (1994) focus on positive,
sCohabitation is not a topic o f this dissertation.
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creative strategies that divorced people have employed to maintain their family
ness.
From Nuclear Family to Postmodern Families
Since the past several decades have shown the many different directions
that families can take, Stacey (1991) introduced the “postmodern” family theory, a
revolutionary concept intended to include these family directions and to move the
debate away from the “modem” nuclear family. Stacey does not define the
postmodern family as being a new model of family life or the next stage in an
orderly progression of family history, but rather as the stage when the belief in a
logical progression of stages breaks down. Stages of family development were
defined by early family theorists (Duvall & Hill, 1948; Hill & Rogers, 1964). The
stages were mostly intended to represent the normal, expected route of family
development, and they soon needed to be modified to include variations such as
divorce, death of a child, or early death of a parent. Postmodern theory, as applied
to families, refers to the “contested, ambivalent, and undecided character of
contemporary gender and kinship arrangements” (Stacey, 1991, p. 17). Employed
wives (Hochschild, 1989), alternative family structures of blue-collar families
(Stacey, 1991), and bi-nuclear families (Ahrons, 1994; Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987)
are examples that illustrate some of these arrangements.
Dual-career families take a step away from the rigid instrumental or
expressive roles o f the nuclear family (Parsons & Bales, 1955). Hochschild’s
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(1989) interviews with duai-eamer couples reveal that even empioyed-mothers-
wives-women are primarily held responsible for keeping the house and raising the
children, while employed-fathers-husbands-men are only minimally engaged in
these necessities o f family life. Hochschild's work benefits this study both by
showing a clear break with the woman's expressive role in the nuclear family and
by pointing to the ongoing gender difference in families. Hochschild’s work opens
the door to address gender differences appearing within the multiply divorced
throughout this study.
The diverse efforts to create and legitimate alternative family structures in
recent decades are present in Stacey’ s (1991) research on blue-collar families.
Rather than living in traditional families, the married-in-the-1950s blue-collar
worker couples who Stacey interviewed reorganized their households' shape and
function after experiencing divorce to include a motley combination o f their grown
children and grandchildren. Stacey's work is important to my research in two ways:
(1) Her work with divorced families shows these families continuing to function as
families, post-divorce, in brave, new, creative ways and forms; this sets the scene
for me to analyze the families o f the multiply divorced in such a way as to reframe
these so-called “deviant” families as “innovative” or “creative.”
The Binudear Family
One form of the postmodern family that is particularly informative to this
study is the binuclear family (Ahrons, 1994; Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987). The
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binuclear family demonstrates that a family can exist in two separate households.
Each household contains one biological but now divorced, parent. In this family
structure, the children reside in one parent's house part o f the time and in the other
parent's house the rest of the time. The child's parents may or may not be married
to a new spouse.
Ahrons (1994) pointed out that the famed anthropologist Margaret Mead
was divorced three times, and she credited Mead with predicting that serial
monogamy would be the wave o f the future. Ahrons also attributed that trend to
the fact that longer life expectancy means “serial relationships are becoming the
norm” (p. 1).
Three aspects of Ahrons’ work were helpful in looking at the multiply
divorced. Ahrons created a useful and informative typology of divorced parents
that encouraged me to look for variation and types amongst the multiply divorced.
As mentioned above, Ahrons use o f divorcism provided a foundation for looking
at the degree of stigma experienced by the multiply divorced. Ahrons concluded
that divorce is not necessarily life's greatest failure. This simple statement has great
implications for multiply divorced individuals who struggle temporarily or
permanently with the idea that they are a failure.
Like the other authors above, Ahrons does not discuss, define, or describe
the multiply divorced. Other than briefly mentioning that many people will marry
two, three, or more times over the course o f their lifetime, she does not mention
the multiply divorced in particular, or serial relationships in general. Having looked
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at theoretical frameworks for analyzing families, I now turn to literature that
describes how divorce afreets individuals and how social life afreets divorce.
Change and Movement
Throughout their studies, Stacey (1991) and Ahrons (1994) illustrate how
some families o f divorce demonstrate their resiliency and creativity. Both Higgins
(1994) and Wolin and Wolin (1993) inform us that resilient people are able to
appreciate and build on positive experiences. Contrary to the notion that the
multiply divorced cannot change the pattern of their lives. Brown (1995) asserts
that people's identities are not static. According to Brown, people are engaged in
an ongoing evolutionary process, incorporating new experience and knowledge
into their changing identity. Some of the multiply divorced participant’ stories
demonstrate this evolutionary process: Nine (28%) were married-plus two
widowed after a lengthy marriage-some for a length of time up to thirty-five years.
Others were looking to the future with optimism for finding a satisfying and lasting
mate, while some had transformed their life dream of marriage into contentment as
a single person. The identities of the multiply divorced did change, and they could
see themselves as evolving and resilient.
Purpose of the Study and Study Questions
This work looks at the multiply divorced through their own eyes, a vantage
point that previous research has not taken (Ahrons, 1994; Ahrons & Rodgers,
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1987; Brody et al., 1988; Counts, 1992; Counts & Sacks, 1991; Furstenberg,
1990; Guttman, 1993; Kaslow & Schwartz, 1987;Kitson, 1992; Stacey, 1991).
The theoretical implications of this study apply to the study of marriage and
family, of emotions, of family life-cycle development, o f gender and aging, and of
stigma. It has implications for marriage and family studies in that it talks about
varying forms o f family and it talks about the long-range effects o f parenting.
There are implications for the sociological theory of emotions in suggesting the
importance of knowing and trusting one’s feelings, one’s “true self,” before
engaging in plans for marriage. The participants have described making marital
mistakes because (1) they did not recognize their own warning signals (feelings) or
they did not trust or honor these warnings (feelings) even when they were aware of
them. The multiply divorced challenge the life cycle theory of family development,
which has been expanded to include a single divorce, but has not defined how
families circle around through the divorce process three or more times. This work
also has implications for the way gender and aging theory interlock. When the
women are young and have young children, they are more in need o f a partner, but
as the multiply divorced women get older, they are less likely to remarry (Gurak &
Dean, 1979). Is this because their need for marriage has changed or because the
reality is that there is a smaller marriage market available to them or both? This
research also has implications for those studying the theory of stigma. The multiply
divorced want to be a part of the norm in society, but that requires an individual to
avoid any association with what could be deemed deviant. If the individual falls
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short o f that mark, as the multiply divorced do, then the individual needs to
attempt to appear as though part o f the norm. The multiply divorced do this by
covering the deviance in at least two ways: (1) with remarriage, or (2) by not fully
and openly revealing their multiply divorced status.
The purpose o f this study is to investigate the following issues: What
motivated the multiply divorced to marry and to marry again in the face o f the
difficult marriages they had experienced? What motivated them to divorce and to
divorce again in the face of their own opposition to divorce and the difficulties that
divorce brought with it? What did the experience o f being multiply divorced mean
to them? What reception did they get from the society around them? Finally, and
most important, will the experiences and attitudes of the multiply divorced
challenge the previously-held assumptions about the multiply divorced?
I attempt to answer these questions through the voices of the multiply
divorced. Chapter 2 lays out the methods used to conduct this study as well as the
study’s limitations and ethical concerns. Chapter 3 looks at the participants’
experience with marriage and discusses the participants’ beliefs about marriage,
their motivation to marriage, as well as what they believed about marriage and
what they wanted in marriage. Chapter 4 takes up the participants’ orientation to
divorce, their beliefs about divorce, their motivations for divorce, and the
advantages and disadvantages they found in divorce. In Chapter 5 ,1 discuss
stigma, what it is, how the participants experienced it and how the participants
have been treated by their families, friends, and society in general. Finally, I
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conclude with Chapter 6-a discussion on what these participants’s views on
marriage were when I last talked with them, how they have been influenced by
society, and how they are similar to many in society. I also discuss some
considerations for clinicians and for future research.
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33
CHAPTER 2 - METHODS
This research was designed to generate sociological insight into the
phenomenon o f multiply-divorced individuals in order to more fully address
questions raised by my preliminary research.6 1 use multiply divorced to represent
persons who have divorced three or more times. My criterion of three divorces
clearly differentiates this study from studies about the first or second divorce
(Ahrons, 1994; Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987; Arendell, 1986; Arendell, 1995; Kaslow
& Schwartz, 1987; Kitson, 1992; Wallerstein & Blakesley, 1989; Weitzman,
1985). It examines the marriage, divorce and stigma experience of the multiply
divorced within the context of other research on families. In the tradition of Glaser
and Strauss (1967), I developed grounded theory from qualitative data, in dialogue
with concepts and frameworks in the literature. As in my preliminary study of
multiply divorced individuals, I collected the data for this study through the use of
in-depth interview.
THE PARTICIPANTS
I collected the data for this study through in-depth interviews with 32
Caucasian individuals-20 women and 12 men-ages 28 to 73, who lived within the
greater Los Angeles area. Each was divorced from a minimum of three separate
spouses. Only two o f the participants had not finished high school, while many had
6 In 1992-1993 I conducted a preliminary research project, in which I
interviewed six multiply divorced women and six multiply divorced men. That
earlier research gave birth to the questions that drive this study.
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earned Bachelor’s degrees, several had Master’s degrees and one had a Ph.D. The
women’s occupations and education (See Appendix B - The Women, and
Appendix C - The Men) ranged from that o f a clerical worker with a ninth grade
education to that of a director o f a large social service center who had two
master’s degrees plus a JD. The men’s occupations and education ranged from a
salesman with a high school diploma to a university professor with a Ph.D.
THE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHOD
In this research, I enabled multiply divorced individuals to talk about their
experiences with their spouses, their children, and their parents. I chose a
qualitative method to collect and to analyze the data for this research. I wanted to
gather data directly from the voices o f the multiply divorced. Quantitative research
has three parts. These are the data, the analytic procedures, and the written report
(Strauss & Corbin, 1990). While Straus and Corbin admit that the term is
confusing, they define a qualitative research method as a “non-mathematical
analytic procedure that results in findings derived from data gathered by a variety
of means” (Strauss & Corbin. 1990, p. 18). Since a quantitative study of
manipulated statistics of human behavior cannot tell us about the lives of real
people, the qualitative method is better suited to projects wherein the researcher
seeks to capture the richness and fullness o f the participants’ experience (Lofland
& Lofland, 1995).
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The In-Depth Interview
I used an in-depth interview format, with both open and closed-ended
questions (See Appendix A - Interview Guide). Each tape-recorded interview was
completed in one session; each lasted between two and five hours. I chose to use a
face-to-face in-depth interview, precisely because this method could help me
capture and understand each participant’s perspective o f his or her experience of
multiple divorce. By conducting my research based on this qualitative
methodology, I noticed subtleties impossible to explore by any quantitative
approach (Lofland & Lofland, 1995; Reinharz, 1992; Renzetti & Lee, 1993;
Bogdan & Taylor, 1984). “Interviewing offers researchers access to people’s
ideas, thoughts, and memories in their own words rather than in the words of the
researcher” (Reinharz, 1992, pp. 18-19).
At the beginning of each interview 1 told the participant:
If you are uncomfortable with a question, if it does
not apply to you, or if you do not know the answer,
you may pass. You can refuse to answer any
question, and you may stop the interview at any
time. Please feel free to inject any thought that
comes to you that you feel is relevant to the topic.
You are welcome to discuss or elaborate on any of
the questions in this interview.
The Interview Guide
Since many of the questions were open-ended, the interview guide (See
Appendix A - The Interview Guide) does not represent the complete set o f
questions that I asked. On many occasions I asked additional probing questions to
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glean more information to aid in understanding the participant’s response. Since
there is little information in existing studies o f marriage and divorce about multiply
divorced individuals, I first asked a series of questions to gather demographics. I
asked for such information as their age, education, and childhood family structure.
I also inquired about how many children they had and who had custody o f their
children. These questions were designed to put the participant at ease early in the
interview, as they are relatively easy to answer. The information also gave me a
composite picture of their circumstances. Through my questions I followed their
process from their earliest thoughts of marriage to their current state, and I
explored the substance o f all their marital experiences, including the children
involved and the children’s significance to the participant’s experience. I
discovered the presence and impact of obstacles on them and o f their sources of
support. The participants’ responses to these questions produced a huge map of
the marriage and divorce terrain through which they had traveled with their
children and which led them to their current state of being multiply divorced.
Based on human development literature (Chodorow, 1978; Cooley, 1909;
Dinnerstein, 1976; Freud, 1968; Kohlberg, 1981; Mead, 1934; and Piaget, 1932), I
asked questions about the participants’ experience as children. I wanted to know
what personalities, events, and opinions were introjected into their development
and socialization. I asked questions that explored the participants’ standards and
beliefs about marriage and divorce (Furstenberg, 1990; May, 1980; Riley, 1991). I
asked, specifically, “How important is marriage?” I asked what messages, or
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stigmatization, they have received from society (Ahrons, 1994; Gerstel, 1987; and
Gofiman, 1963).
Trust and the Complete Membership Role
Because the participants might feel hesitant to talk to someone about their
stigmatized experience (Gerstel, 1987; Goffinan, 1963), I chose to disclose to
them my own similar divorce status. Adler and Adler (1987) call this approach that
o f an opportunistic complete membership role (CMR). This is the role held by a
researcher who-prior to developing the study-is involved with, and is a member
of, the group he or she is now studying. Oakley (1981) suggests that self
disclosure is imperative in order for trust to develop. As she states:
I had found, in my previous interviewing
experiences, that an attitude of refusing to answer
questions or offer any kind of personal feedback was
not helpful in terms o f the traditional goal of
promoting 'rapport.' A different role, that could be
termed ‘no intimacy without reciprocity,’ seemed
especially important in longitudinal in-depth
interviewing, (p. 49)
Building trust and establishing rapport with the multiply divorced
population turned out to be a much more sensitive process than other researchers
or I had imagined.7 This is one place where I found that revealing my own
7 A Florida study o f the multiply divorced was canceled for lack o f subjects
(Doheny, 1994). This could well have been because o f the issue of trust. My study
worked because I could self-disclose, giving people a reason to trust that I wasn’t out
to hurt or blame those I wanted to interview. Even so, many chose not to participate.
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experience as a multiply-divorced person was essential to the successful
completion o f my research.
Protecting the Participants
To minimize any risk that the interview process might present to the
participants, I followed the guidelines established by the Institutional Review
Board-at the University of Southern California. I offered to conduct each
interview in a mutually agreed-upon place, which often became the home of the
participant or a convenient office. I assured the participants that I would handle
their interview transcripts and any other identifying information gained through our
interaction in a confidential manner. I explained to the participants that 1 would
substitute pseudonyms for their names and change any identifying information
before my dissertation is presented or published. “Individuals may be able to
identify quotations from or descriptions o f themselves. They are extremely unlikely
to be able to identify anyone else” (Lofland & Lofland, 1995, p. 43). I further told
the participants that my recorded audiotapes of their interview would be destroyed
after being transcribed. The participants each signed an informed consent form
(Appendix A - The Consent Form) before I began the interview.
Since the interview guide contained questions about issues the participants
could be very sensitive to, I offered each participant a prepared list of therapy
providers in their area. This seemed especially important as a few participants
experienced some emotional distress during the interview. When that happened, I
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first used my own therapeutic skills8 to attend to their discomfort and to help them
get through the moment. 1 provided more specific referrals9 as necessary, and I
called the participant back to inquire about their well-being a few days after the
interview. The vast majority of participants assured me that the referral was not
necessary. They claimed they were not upset and that they did not want or need
therapeutic assistance.
Since I entered this research with the same experience as my participants. I
let each one o f them know that I have also been divorced three times. I usually did
this while setting the appointment or before the actual interview began. I wanted
them to know this from the start, since the topic of multiple divorce involves very
private and personal experiences that are sometimes painful or embarrassing to talk
about. This means that I entered this research field in the position o f a complete
member researcher (CMR), one who has shared a common set of experiences,
feelings, and goals (Adler & Adler, 1987), similar to Thome’s (1983) position1 0
8 Since May 1996,1 have been involved in helping people through
emotional distress in two arenas: (1) I am registered by the State of California as a
Marriage, Family, and Child Counselor Intern (MFCC).(2) I work for the Los
Angeles County Supreme Court, in Family Law Division, mediating between
parents to help them establish custody and visitation plans for their children.
9 1 provided a referral to a therapy group for adult survivors o f incest for
one female and one male participant. I also suggested two books on male sexual
abuse to a male participant.
1 0 Another who did research as an authentic member is Kath Weston, who
was an authentic member in her research on kin relations in the gay and lesbian
community. Weston conceded that she could have done the research even if she,
herself were not lesbian, but the study would not have been the same (Weston,
1991, p. 13). Weston found that revealing her own identity helped her gain trust
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when she researched the draft resistance movement in the 1960s. In Thome’s
attempt to “avoid disguised research” (p. 217), she disclosed her dual role of
researcher and committed member of the draft resistance group. The group’s
immediate response “ranged from hostility to mild tolerance” (p.217). With time,
in Thome’s experience, the issue was forgotten. I found that disclosing my dual
role of researcher and complete member was essential to put the participants at
ease and gain their trust. Mary, one of the study participants, tells how it made a
difference to her to know about my similar experience, “Just by you sharing your
three-times divorced status, seeing what you’ve done in your life, gave me
courage, told me that I’m not alone. It’s a very touchy subject yet.”
As an authentic member, I came closer than other researchers could to the
emotional stance of the multiply divorced. I did not disguise, but deliberately
disclosed to my participants that I am also multiply divorced, which appeared to
create a sense of assurance for Mary and others. As they, themselves, confirmed in
answering the question “Who do you tell?” most multiply divorced individuals are
likely to be reluctant to talk about their experience and have a tendency to keep
such information hidden or minimized.
Being in a complete member role not only gave me a big advantage but it
also made me vulnerable to participant bias. I had to be on guard against my own
tendency both to take certain parts of the narratives for granted and to over
empathize with the feelings o f the participants, since I have experienced much of
the same feelings and situations as the participants. As I expressed in these field
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notes: “Today I got in touch with the fact that I am storing up the feelings of all
the subjects, particularly those that would not participate: shame, embarrassment,
‘all that shit.’ It felt heavy on my chest.” On further reflection I was surprised-as a
researcher-that I was encountering a greater amount o f pain and resistance in
multiply divorced individuals than I had expected, and I was saddened-as a
therapist-that they would not or could not talk about their experience.
A very critical edge that I had in conducting this research was having ten
years o f experience counseling in the field o f chemical dependency and in the
practice o f marriage and family therapy. Having this experience meant that I was
accustomed to helping people talk about their personal lives in confidential
settings. I was accustomed to helping people feel that I was supportive, sincere,
and empathically listening to them. This experience was equally critical as it
prepared me to maintain an ethical and professional boundary which separated
myself from them. That boundary helped me remain detached from the
participants.
Another strategy I used to prevent my membership role from corrupting
my data was to bring my findings and my feelings to confidentiality-bound
reviewers, such as my dissertation support group, who would help me maintain my
focus.
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Sampling Methods
The participants for this study were recruited by snowball, convenience,
and selective sampling methods (see Appendix G - Sampling Response). The
sampling methods used are not random. Therefore the results cannot be presented
as truly representative of all multiply divorced individuals and their family
structure. Caution must be exercised not to generalize from the following findings.
I used selective, meaning that 1 intended to use only the data from certain
multiply divorced individuals. Those I targeted were those who had at least three
divorce experiences from at least three different spouses. It is my belief that the
dynamic is different when someone marries and remarries the same person. 1
wanted to include only people with children, as I found in my preliminary study
that the presence o f children appeared to affect the experience o f the multiply
divorced. I wanted people with at least three divorces to clearly set the sample off
from other research literature which talks about people with only one or two
divorces. From my preliminary study it appeared that, because o f the increased
stigma of each ensuing divorce, there is a substantive difference in the way people
feel about speaking o f one or two divorces and how they feel when speaking of
three or more divorces. It was clear from my preliminary study that people were
much more guarded, since they felt much more shame. Since the multiply divorced
have deviated from the marital norm-to remain married-they are paying the price
of breaking a norm-bearing the attached stigma.
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Snowball results when one participant refers another, who in turn refers
another, until the research sample is complete. At the end of each and every
interview, I asked the participant if he or she could refer me to some other
qualified individual (Bogdan & Taylor, 1984). Only three participants (9%)
referred someone-a sister, an aunt, and a friend-who constituted a snowball
sample of three. In most cases, however, participants did not know others who
both fit the criteria and lived within the accessible area. The multiply divorced do
not appear to engage in group formation, the banding together behavior of
stigmatized people as described by Goffman (1963). This means that 1 contacted
the vast majority (28) of my participants through a convenience method (Arendell,
1986; Arendell, 1995).
With convenience, participants are contacted in a variety of ways that make
up a modified snowball technique (Arendell, 1986; Arendell, 1995; Rubin, 1976).
Some participants responded to a memo sent out at a university, some to a flier
distributed in offices and at a parenting workshop, some to a verbal referral from
someone they knew and trusted. My main method of contacting participants was
to make use o f my own personal network of colleagues and friends. I asked
everyone I talked with-including all the faculty, staff, and students o f every
institution with whom I was affiliated— if they could refer me to anyone who had
been divorced three or more times. Over and over I asked people I met1 1 in casual
"It was not only the multiply divorced who appeared to distance
themselves from this subject. Some people could not immediately think o f anyone
they knew at the time that I first asked them. Then, after being asked several times,
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encounters, “Who do you know that has been divorced three or more times?” As
difficult as it was for me to repeatedly ask the same question of the same people
over and over again, it did pay off.
I chose to canvass university populations rather than specific divorce or
single parent groups because I thought that the university mailing would reach a
wider, more general population. I began by distributing a memo throughout
sociology departments I was associated with-both the University of Southern
California (USC) and California State University-Los Angeles (CSU-LA)-briefly
describing my research and asking for referrals. I followed that memo with a
similar half-page memo in a mass mailing-2000 to USC; 2400 to CSU-
LA-reaching faculty, staff, and students. I placed advertisements in the student
newspapers of both USC and CSU-LA. I reasoned that if every person receiving a
memo would scan her or his list of extended family and friends, the memo would
serve to reach ten times more people than the number o f memos sent.
The people I contacted who knew o f an eligible person voluntarily became
my representative, a go-between, the “middle person.” I asked them if they would
approach any person they wanted to refer to encourage the potential participant to
they would suddenly come forth with a name, reinforcing my need to continually
ask and re-ask people. One woman, who heard my plea at several successive
monthly staff meetings, suddenly brightened up and said, “Oh, I do too know
someone! In fact, I know several!” And after actively handing out fliers for me for
many months, another friend “suddenly” remembered that she had a friend who
qualified!
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call me, or to obtain permission for me to call them, whichever worked better for
the person being referred.
In my employment as a part-time mediator, I received permission to
distribute both memos and fliers to the approximately 30 family mediators at the
Los Angeles County Superior Court. I turned each o f them into a potential middle
person by asking them if they would screen their clients to see if anyone met the
criteria for the research and if they would then provide that client with a flier that
briefly described the research and supplied the necessary phone number for the
person to respond. I provided copies o f a similar flier for an all-day parenting
workshop.
I began to supply a letter for the middle person to give to their thrice-
divorced clients or acquaintances. This sealed letter contained my phone number, a
brief description of the study, and my similar divorce status. The letter had the
advantage o f allowing the potential participant to respond directly to me without
requiring them to respond to the person who handed them the letter. Both Dave
and Dan responded to this kind of letter.
After my tenth interview I reflected on the fact that the man I had just
finished interviewing had been referred by someone he knew. I quickly figured out
that all but one of the people I had interviewed to date had also been referred by
someone they knew. I was shocked to realize that only three o f all the multiply
divorced (n=22) that I had interviewed to that date1 2 had been self-referred. By
I2 Twelve o f the 22 were participants in the preliminary study.
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self-referred, I mean that they contacted me after reading a memo, a flier or an
advertisement without another person being involved. The final tally showed only
one of the 32 participants I selected for this study was compelled to pick up the
phone and volunteer to participate without being urged to do so by another
person.
Kari shared with me her initial reaction to seeing the research flier: “I was
really intrigued by it, because I have the same conversations most people have
about multiple divorces.'’ Kari picked up a flier at a parenting workshop, and she is
one who volunteered without any urging.
I had just met Leah, 56, and was just getting acquainted with her when she
revealed that she fit the criteria for my research and agreed to participate. The
remaining 30 participants were all referred by others, responding only after a
person they knew encouraged them to participate. Ruth, for example, was clear
about the role her friend, LuAnne, had in her decision to participate in this study:
“Lu Anne’s a friend o f mine and we do favors back and forth for each other, so
where I might have dismissed it, I looked into it because she was the one asking.’’
Likewise, when Kyle, a 42-year-old professional, was approached by Daren, he
immediately decided to participate, because quite simply: “I trust Daren! I’ve
known him for a long time.”
It was also a big move for Brad to consent to participate in this research.
Brad is bitter, full o f hurt and shame and tells no one about his divorce history
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(Imber-Black, 1998; Mason, 1993). Brad told me he was invited to participate in
the research by a family mediator:
I said, ‘Nahl’ Then I talked to [the mediator] and
she kinda sold me on it. It’s not what I thought it
would be. She just said that she had a friend that
was doing research for people that had been
divorced more than three times and would I be
interested? And I said, ‘Well, yeah, I guess so.’
When she said it was a friend, I didn’t think it was
just some kid who put a thing on the wall.
Other participants reiterated what Bob, Kyle, and Ruth expressed. It was
clear that they were more likely to participate after encouraged by someone, but it
was also clear that they would not have participated without the invitation and
encouragement of a trusted person. This was not an easy sample to collect. People
on a number o f levels were reluctant to get involved. I never knew how or where 1
would encounter the next participant. This is only one more indication of how
difficult and hidden the subject of the multiply divorced remains.
Sampling problems
Reaching the 32 people who participated in this study required
considerable creativity and persistence. Ten of the participants were contacted as a
result of the 4400 memos sent through the two universities. Ten participants came
into the research as referrals from the 30 court mediators. The remaining twelve
participants were contacted through various chance encounters with a middle
person or myself. The various methods used make any attempt to compute a
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response rate impossible. The Hiders and the Refusers demonstrate part of the
difficulty o f this process.
The Hiders: They never heard, never responded
According to Goffinan (1963) one way to manage stigma is to cover it up,
not to let anyone know. Undoubtedly, there were silent, unknown men and women
who heard about this study through reading a memo, picking up a flier, reading an
ad, or hearing about it through word of mouth-just from talking with someone-but
who never let themselves or their divorce status be known to me. I speculate that a
minimum o f 75 multiply divorced individuals heard about this study just from the
memos. While there are many valid reasons why more did not respond, it would
appear that, in spite of the confidentiality offered and the assuring knowledge that
the researcher had the same divorce experience, some individuals chose not to
identify themselves as multiply divorced. I call these people the Hiders.
Sometimes the middle person was uncomfortable handling the topic. As a
result, some eligible people never heard about the study. A friend employed by a
major research university, volunteered to deliver fliers to three or four
acquaintances, but returned in ten minutes with the fliers still in hand.
Apologetically, she said, “You know, I’m really sorry, but I would be so
embarrassed. I would be afraid I would offend someone by mentioning this to
them.” There is no way for me to know more about the Hiders; however, I am able
to speculate more about the next group, the Refusers.
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The Refusers: They Would Not Participate
Another distinguishable style is demonstrated by those who refused to
participate after they were asked. I call the group using this style the Refusers.
These are the individuals whose negative responses were reported back to me by
the middle person who had direct contact with them or by the candidates with
whom I was in direct contact. When they were asked by this middle person or by
me, they refused to participate. From the responses they gave to our invitation to
them to participate, it is clear that shame and embarrassment played a major part in
their refusals (Imber-Black, 1998; Mason, 1993).
“I’d rather not go into it, it’s a pile of shit and I’d rather let it lay. I’m
happy and life goes on,” one man told me. A young woman told a middle person
that she would not get involved, explaining, “I’m too embarrassed about it. There
are people in my family who don’t know about it.” A middle-aged woman was
outraged that a friend o f hers had referred her to the study, because she didn’t
want her current husband to be aware o f the true total o f her previous divorces. A
co-worker transmitted her friend’s response to me, “He would never do that,
would never talk about it.” Leah asked a male acquaintance who responded, “No,
absolutely not! It’s none o f your business!” A university colleague asked the
mother o f his friend, and she replied, “No! It would be too demoralizing. I could
not talk about that.” Mary asked three qualifying friends who each declined,
stating respectively that, “It is too personal,” “It is too private,” “It is too
uncomfortable to share my failures, my put-downs.” Several others initially agreed
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to participate, but then were repeatedly unavailable for interviews, perhaps
passively avoiding what must have felt threatening: putting their lives under the
spotlight o f a researcher, even when they knew that the researcher had a similar
experience and even with the assurance of confidentiality.
This made me wonder even more why people were avoiding the subject or
refusing to participate. The Refusers are mostly people who responded to the
research by sending an unmistakable message of “Shut the door, the subject is
closed!" I suspect that they feel an enormous amount o f pain, shame, guilt, and
embarrassment, and that they continue to be the victims o f extreme stigma from
society and from within themselves.1 3
The Grounded Theory Method
In the tradition of grounded theory, I developed categories as the data
emerged throughout the interview process. My field notes, written after each
interview, generated new theories. During the interviews, while writing the
fieldnotes and editing the transcripts, I watched for critical moments in which the
multiply divorced participant was treated in ways that redefined who this person
was and how those moments were captured and dramatized in the mind of this
participant. I also looked for, and found, flashpoints that gave rise to new ideas
about the phenomenon of being multiply divorced. At least three different times
1 3 The process of learning stigma from society and then taking stigma on
themselves is discussed in Chapter 5 - Stigma.
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during the interview phase o f this research I added new questions, each emerging
from an issue that surfaced in the preceding interview.
I invited others to look at the data from many vantage points to weave the
emerging categories into an analysis leading to further interview questions, topics,
and evolving theory (Charmaz, 1983; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). [ regularly
discussed the data with others, including my committee chair, Elaine Bell Kaplan,
and members of my dissertation support group.
After each interview I wrote field-notes, summarizing key thoughts and
observational details about what had just occurred. I coded and analyzed these
field-notes using the grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). This
tradition lays the foundation for emergent theory through the use of
methodological and theoretical memo writing, open coding, axial coding, and
selective coding. In this vein, I incorporated methodological and theoretical memos
into field-notes throughout the data analysis process. As Strauss and Corbin
(1990) explain, the purpose of these memos is to provide written records of
analysis that are related to the formulation of theory. In particular, theoretical
memos provide the beginnings of grounded theory, and “contain the products of
inductive or deductive thinking about relevant and potentially relevant categories,
their properties, dimensions, relationships, variations, process, and conditional
matrix” (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, p. 197), while methodological memos provide
reminders or raise new questions that may be addressed in the course o f the
research.
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The interview tapes were transcribed verbatim by professional transcribers
screened for, and committed to, the same confidentiality as the researcher and paid
a competitive rate for their work. Once the interviews were transcribed, I
personally edited them by comparing the original recording with the transcript to
ensure that the interviews were interpreted accurately.
Open coding involves reviewing my fieldnotes and interview transcripts for
emergent themes. According to Strauss and Corbin (1990), open coding is a
process that involves “breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing, and
categorizing data” (p. 61). Axial coding takes the process to a new level and
involves putting the data back together in new ways, after open coding, by
specifying relationships and interactions between categories. The final phase,
selective coding, allows particular dimensions of the data to be targeted as core
categories that are related to other core categories. All steps allow for the
development of an emergent theory.
When these steps are actually performed, the process of memo-writing and
coding is more reflexive than linear (Charmaz, 1983; Straus & Corbin, 1990). In
my analysis, I wrote theoretical and methodological memos throughout my
fieldnotes and made further memos upon later re-reading them. I then coded each
set o f fieldnotes, and, as I conducted more interviews and coded later notes,
frequently came back to modify the coding on earlier notes. It is important to point
out that this type of data analysis is a process rather than an event, with new
findings developing at any given point.
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Using interviews that rely on people’s memory and their objectivity about
their own lives has some drawbacks. People have trouble recalling the exact time
period in which events occurred, the frequency of events, and their personal
reactions to earlier events (Sudman & Bradbum, 1982). People giving oral
histories also attempt to make themselves look better. How can I know how much
of what the participants told me is true? Is it human nature to embellish or trim a
story to look good? Lily describes her struggle with being truly honest:
Lily. I was trying to think how I could possibly make this
scene better than it is. And then I thought, ’No, I
can’t fake it. I have to be real.’
R1 4 : But you did have a feeling o f trying to make it
better?
Lily: To put me in a better light.
I cross-checked the participants’ responses from those given early in the
interview to those they gave later in the interview, to see if information and
attitudes correspond. I asked questions from several different angles. Both my
complete member role and my experience as a trained therapist gave me insight on
face validity. While I observed that the subjects were most often being as honest
and open as possible, the attitudes or feelings expressed by a few did not ring true
for me. For example, Irene and Glory’s responses did not truly sound genuine.
They did not appear to be grounded in reality. Some o f their answers came a little
too quickly; they sometimes appeared a little too glossy. Both Irene and Glory
frequently answered questions about feelings with “It didn’t bother me”-a
1 4 R stands for researcher.
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response which did not sound appropriate for the situation. When that happened I
tried other questions, probing for deeper, richer explanations. Glory resisted the
probing, “I’m the type of person . . . I don’t think nothing of it. I can just block it
out and I just go ahead and do what I gotta do.” She claimed that she didn’t
remember many events, but she also seemed proud of not being closer to her
feelings. More than any other subject, Irene tried to project a very positive and
upbeat image, “I’m a positive person anyway. And then something negative
happened in my life, I just got over it. I said, ‘Well, I’m going to start on from
here. I just try to think positive all the time.’” Her smooth, positive pose made her
appear overly glib when describing obviously difficult circumstances.
The responses and affect o f most participants did appear genuine and
appropriate for their interviews. The reliability of the subjects’ willingness or
ability to have accurate recall is one noted drawback o f qualitative in-depth
interviews or of narrative histories.
SUMMARY
For this research, I conducted 32 in-depth interviews, with 20 women and
12 men, to see how their lives were affected by the context o f the family and
society in which they lived. To accomplish the research I first developed an
interview guide and then went about gathering my sample. As soon as I had
contacted a potential participant, I began to establish rapport, build a trusting
relationship, and create a safe and comfortable environment. From directly
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observing and listening to the participants and from frequent probing for further
clarification and amplification I was provided with the rich and detailed
information. I was given the opportunity, through these interviews, to know the
participants intimately, to see their world through their eyes, and to enter into their
experiences vicariously (Bogdan & Taylor, 1984). I was humbled to be allowed
into their minds and hearts in such an intimate way.
In Chapter 3 ,1 look at the marriages o f the participants. I look at their
background to marriage, namely their parents’ marriages, and the teaching or
training they received. I look at their beliefs about marriage, their motivation for
each marriage, and what they had hoped to achieve through marriage.
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Chanter 3 ■ I’M GETTING MARRIED IN THE MORNING
My mother-in-law spent the time dragging me all
over town, getting furniture, picking out what I
liked and wanted which they paid for. You know,
my husband had not done anything about an
engagement ring and she dragged me out and went
to her favorite jeweler and had a ring designed for
me. And so it was all very . . . exciting and
wonderful! It was make believe and fairy tales and
honeymoon plans with travel agents and picking
sterling and china patterns and getting them! [We]
got gifts from Europe and Chicago. Dozens of
people from his family came out. So, it was all just
very-Ooooh!-it was a fairy tale! Rose
Rose was an only child. Rose’s mother confided in her, treating her as her
best friend, making Rose feel like an old person at the age o f four. Rose’s very
traditional parents would not support their daughter’s education beyond high
school. They did, however, support her first marriage-at 22-to a man 10 years
older and o f a very different religion.
Rose’s marriage did not last long as her husband was sexually inactive and
refused to get help. When she divorced him, one o f his friends stepped in. Rose’s
quiet, stoic father confronted them and insisted that they marry. The young couple
lived a hippie lifestyle until they had two small children and their money was gone.
Reality quickly hit Rose. She divorced her husband when he would not share the
fiscal and parental responsibilities.
Years later, Rose’s third husband encouraged her to get the college
education she wanted by offering to help with the housework and childcare. She
divorced this husband when-within just a few years-he had lost his job, lost his
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business, filed for bankruptcy, owed the IRS, and owed back child support.
Additionally, he appeared unconcerned about the whole situation. Rose was
surprised and outraged to find that she was held accountable for those debts, a 5-
year commitment for her. Afier being single for six years, Rose had resumed dating
but she no longer believed in marriage as she once had and she did not want to
remarry. Her concept o f marriage and her beliefs about marriage have undergone a
major transition since she approached her first fairy-tale-like wedding.
THE MEANING OF MARRIAGE
The Wedding Pav
Is there anything quite as exciting as one’s own wedding day? In this
society, people think or dream, consciously or unconsciously, o f being married as a
part of being grown up, as being an adult. Most white middle-class Americans
prefer to be married and 90 percent of white Americans marry eventually (Cherlin,
1999; Giick, 1984). If to be married is the norm, to not be married in our society
can be viewed as sick, selfish, immoral, or deficient (VerofF, Douvan & Kulka,
1981). In the popular wedding fantasy, all of the family and friends gather together
in their best festive clothes (Ingraham, 1999). There is pageantry. Music, food,
dancing and romance are all in the air. One of the “packages” that guests bring to a
wedding is the expectation that each marriage is comprised o f a willing and eager
bride and groom, so in love and fully aware of what they are doing, completely
ready and able to take on the responsibilities of marriage. Seldom do the onlookers
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consider the context from which these marriages evolve. If they do, they hold the
same belief as the newly married do, that they will be able to overcome any
obstacles and will “make it work.”
Society has not taken into consideration the many reasons why people
marry. Some would argue that people many for love, stability, choice, and to be
cared for by a man. But in my sample, women-and men-marry for many other
reasons. They want to give their unborn child a name, to leave their dysfunctional
parents’ home, to gain financial stability, to provide a father for their children, or
to form a more normal family. They may also look to marriage to provide a cloak
of protection for them from the stigma of divorce, from the demands o f caring for
their children by themselves, or from the financial strain of lowered income in
which they find themselves.
Couples before the twentieth century and couples of lower socio-economic
status often married for very pragmatic reasons. They entered into the institutional
marriage, involving economic security, goods and services, social status,
childbearing, and child-rearing. Over time the purpose of marriage has changed.
Cherlin (1999) writes that the institutional marriage in pre-industrial Western
nations, “with its emphasis on male authority, duty, and conformity to social
norms” (p.275) was guided more by law and custom than by affection and
emotional stimulation” (p.274). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, however, the institutional marriage had been transformed into the
companionate marriage, “with its emphasis on affection, friendship, and sexual
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gratification” (p.275) wherein people valued “the personal, emotional satisfaction
they could gain from [marriage]” (p. 274). In the 1960s, according to Cherlin, the
cultural ideal and the demographic reality transformed the companionate marriage
into the independent marriage. In this marriage both husband and wife worked
outside the home, and “people evaluated how satisfied they were with their
marriages . . . in terms of individual satisfaction, as opposed to the mutual
satisfaction gained through building a family” (p. 276). Today people living in
good economic conditions are more likely to marry for personal satisfaction, for
love, for companionship, and for the satisfaction of their emotional needs (Gergen
& Gergen, 1988).
Throughout history, the expectation was that men and women would
couple and marry. Marriage remains the preference o f most white middle-class
Americans (Cherlin, 1999). We grow up hearing stories that are filled with
weddings, and with men and women becoming husbands and wives that come from
the beginning o f time-as does the Bible story of Adam and Eve. In White
Weddings. Ingraham (1999) asserts that the event of the wedding itself, not the
couple’s post-nuptial life together, is often the primary focus. The wedding is a
norm so compelling that it becomes an irrational obsession, taking on a life of its
own. The wedding has become symbolic of successful attainment of a cultural
norm, a social status, and o f an economic well-being. Ingraham ties the importance
o f the wedding to the social, cultural, and economic structures that maintain and
enhance the importance o f weddings. By Ingraham’s account, it appears almost a
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non-issue that these weddings inevitably result in a man and a woman entering into
the state o f matrimony. If a couple focused only on planning the wedding for
periods o f up to six months or even a year, they can and often do find themselves
wondering, “What do we do now?” once the wedding day is past. Most o f the
participants had small, understated, simple weddings. They went to the local
courthouse or to Las Vegas for a quick ceremony. Nan and Ellen were
embarrassed when their grooms’ families insisted that they each have a really big
wedding for their third marriage. Both Nan and Ellen wanted a more simple
wedding that would not draw attention to their marrying “again.” However, for the
majority o f marriages covered by this study the big, important wedding day was
not the norm. As Toni-after four marriages-told me, “[I] never had one traditional
wedding.” Rose can reminisce about her first marriage as such a big, beautiful
wedding.
Rose entered her first marriage with blissful, excited, anticipation o f her
happy married life to come. Rose had a beautiful wedding dress, many bridesmaids
and flowers, and was married in a religious ceremony with many happy guests and
many gifts. She and her groom were the smiling bride and groom, unsuspecting of
what was to come. As I sorted through the 112 marriages entered into by the 20
women and 12 men in this study, I realized how atypical Rose’s big, planned
wedding was for the multiply divorced. This chapter talks about how the
participants o f this study experienced marriage, and it examines various elements
that influenced their marriages.
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Single is Not the Norm
To be married and to be within the norm means to be accepted by society.
To be single-not married regardless of the reason-is to be deviant as society views
people who are not married as sick, selfish, immoral or deficient (Veroff, Douvan
& Kulka, 1981). To be single has been particularly difficult for women, because of
discriminating social and economic policies and practices (Schwartzberg, Berliner,
& Jacob, 1994). For example, in the 1950s and 1960s banks discriminated against
women by not allowing them to take out loans without a man’s signature as Lily
found out. At the time of her first divorce-1956-she was not able to get an
account in the same bank in which for years she had a joint account with her
former husband. That particular practice has changed, and it is slowly becoming
more acceptable for people to remain single (Schwartzberg, et al., 1994).
Participants remained single between marriages for varying amounts of time. In
fifteen cases (17% of marital transitions) the participant had no lapse time between
marriages as the myth keepers might suspect. Yet, even adding those who waited
no time at all with those who waited for periods o f up to 15 years before
remarrying, the average lapse time is 2.3 years, indeed, at the time o f the interview
seven (22%) of the participants had been single for a period o f time ranging from
seven to 24 years-an average o f 12 years. When t include the other nine
participants (28%) who had been single for periods o f time o f four years or less,
the average single time is still 6.3 years.
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Marriage is the Norm
The multiply divorced, like everyone else, believe in the importance of
marriage, want to be married and expect to be married. Kyle, for one, said, “I like
being married! I enjoy being married! You don’t get married four times unless you
like it.” Fay expressed that she wanted to follow tradition, “Marriage was what I
was going to do because everybody did it, it is just a tradition.” Irene said that she
intended marriage to give her the same circumstances that her friends had, “All my
friends were married. I just said, ‘I want my own home and I want to be married.’”
Polly yearned for what looked like the norm to her, “I wanted to have what it
seemed everybody else had or what one should have.” Dan took the cultural norm
as an imperative: “Being married is what you’re supposed to do.” They wanted to
be within the norm, to do what everyone else does, to fit in, and to be accepted.
Marriage is Doing Gender
Marriage, to the participants, is not only the norm, it is what men and
women do and what they are expected to do as they do gender (West &
Zimmerman, 1991). Even as the men and women above came into marriage
thinking that it is the norm, men and women each are thinking differently about
marriage. What did they each want in marriage?
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What the Women Wanted in Marriage
The women in my study typically had stronger and more specific ideas
about what they wanted. They remembered having more family-oriented,
relationship-oriented thoughts in their girlhood of what they wanted in their
marriage long before they entered their first marriage. Carla reflected, “I was going
to be married forever. Stay at home. Have a nice family, that lifetime commitment.
I was hoping that 1 would have a good loving marriage and friendship with the
partner I chose.” Ruth said her dreams were, “That the person [I married] would
be faithful, they wouldn’t play around, that we would have hobbies and things we
did together. I would just assume you got married and you went on with what you
wanted, to plan for your life even when you were married.” Mary’s hopes-as the
others’ hopes-revealed what it was that she wanted to get away from. She hoped
for, “Non-violence. More o f a communication. Being able to work things out. talk
things out. More of that 100 percent companionship. Support. Physical as well as
emotional support for each other, and work together as a unit.”
The women’s early thoughts extended beyond the norm of marriage; to
them the norm o f marriage included building a family. Eve said simply, “I just
wanted to get married. Have kids. Be a loving family. And that was it! I probably
wouldn’t even think o f marriage. I just thought family . . . that rosy glow and my
children would be the perfect children. Never fought. They [would] love each
other, and [be] happy.” Polly agreed with Eve’s desire, “I wanted it to be together.
1 wanted it to last. I wanted the kids to get along. I wanted to have family
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occasions, holidays. . . a warm, loving, safe, nice place to be.” The norm of
marriage included a loving, friendly, family enjoying group activities with each
other.
What the Men Wanted in Marriage
As the participants talked about being a youth, looking forward to
marriage, differences emerged by gender. The men typically had not thought much
about it. Men were a little more apt to say they had not given marriage much
thought as they were growing up. As Dan said, “I really don’t remember just
thinking about being married.” Ron agreed, “1 wasn’t particularly focused on
marriage when I was young.” Dick confessed, “I don’t think I really had any clue.
Just people got older and got married.” Brad had not given it much thought: “I
don’t know if I had any great expectations. I just thought it was the thing to do.
just to care for someone and live [together].” Some men said that they had serious
thoughts about marriage from the beginning. Ed had permanent intentions, “I
married with the intent to be married for the rest of my life.” Dave wanted to
follow in his father’s footsteps, “One marriage for life. I’d get married just like my
dad did, real young, and have the obligatory two kids and really be happy.”
Many o f the participants, who had a mean age of 52, turned 18 years old
before or at the same time as Betty Friedan’s book was first released in 1963.
What the men and women thought about or wanted in a marriage after they were
grown was quite typical. For these participants there was no question that girls
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would stereotypicaily spend more time thinking about, planning or preparing for
relationships and marriage and that boys would not. In spite o f the works of those
such as Chodorow (1978) and Dinnerstein (1976) urging dual-parenting as a way
to broaden gender options for children, boys were often expected and thought to
be much more focused on adventures and activities in the world around them
(Lester, 1993; Thorne, 1993). After the participants married, however, both men
and women took marriage very seriously.
Not Their Parents’ Marriage
They knew what they did not want even better than they knew what they
wanted. They did not want much or all of what they saw in their parents’
marriages. The first major influence on any marriage is the model the bride and
groom have from their own parents’ marriage. Their parents’ marriages were
tremendously influential in the process of the multiply divorced even if only by
pointing out what they did not want to happen and in some way blinding them
from what they needed to see.
Only a few of the participants mentioned qualities o f their parents’
marriage that they would like to have in their own marriage. Kyle said he wanted
to duplicate the cooperation, discussion, enjoyment and laughter shared by his
father and step-mother. Dave said he admired how his parents were devoted to
each other and Lily envied how her parents were fun-loving, adventurous,
spontaneous and had an open attitude toward life.
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Other participants identified parts o f their parents’ marriage that they
appreciated and wanted to replicate, while-at the same time-they were clear that
there were other parts that they did not want. Dean wanted to replicate the equity
he saw in his parents’ home-his father cooked and helped with housework-but
Dean also wanted to eliminate the continuous stress o f their stormy relationship
that he experienced as a child. Lily was enthralled with many o f the characteristics
of her parents’ relationship, still Lily did not want to repeat her parents’ alcoholism
and violence, which she knew would affect her children.
The multiply divorced did not want just any marriage. The participants
were very clear about what they did not want to happen in their own marriage,
which was frequently the key to what they had experienced or perceived to have
happened in their parents’ marriages. They clearly rejected the dysfunction they
had experienced in their childhood home. At least eight women and four men (37%
of sample) answered, “Nothing!” or “In no way!” when asked, “In which ways
would you want your marriage to be similar to your parents’ marriage?” They
immediately responded, “In no way, not anything like it!” Dave said, “Not similar,
I didn’t want it to be as chaotic.” Ron said, “I didn’t want a life anything like my
parents,’’and Toni said, “In no way did I want a marriage like my parents.” In fact,
like Rose and Dick, many of them were quite emphatic: they wanted to create a
very different model o f marriage. Rose said, “I didn’t want my marriage to be
similar to my parents’ marriage in any way at all!” Her parents were immigrants
who were very controlling toward Rose and who did not communicate. She
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wanted to leave their home and their ways behind her. Dick’s mother remarried
after divorcing his father early in Dick’s life. Then she introduced a step-father into
the family who was verbally abusive to Dick’s mother-and to Dick and his siblings.
“I saw my step-father putting my mother down in such a subliminal way that my
mother never even realized it. So I didn’t want it to be like that at all!” They were
emphatic and clear about what they did not want. The majority o f participants
rejected much or all of their parents’ model of marriage. Dean’s and Lily’s
sentiment about their parents’ marriages imply that they had good reasons why
they felt so strongly about wanting their marriages to be different from their
parents’ marriages. Some serious problems had manifested in the homes o f the
participants’ childhood, and they did not want those behaviors included when they
became married. To many o f the participants, their parents’ marriages constituted a
model o f what marriage was not to be.
For most o f these people, home was not a safe and comfortable place to be
and, as stated above, it did not serve as a model for the way the participants
wanted to live their lives or to create their marriages. The serious problems found
in their accounts o f childhood included parental alcoholism, domestic violence,
raging anger, unstable personalities, physical abuse o f their children, psychological
abuse o f children, divorce, death, and patriarchal family structure. Their childhood
homes also included more benign accounts of absence o f any emotional expression
or absence of discussion of issues.
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Nearly 20 percent of all children grow up in alcoholic homes (National
Institute on Drug Abuse, 1998), and seven o f the 32 participants (22%) in this
study mentioned that they grew up with the alcoholism o f one or both parents.
Bryn, Ruth and Kari lived with parental alcoholism as a defining feature in their
homes. Bryn remembers, “My parents sat in the living room-my mom in her
rocking chair and my dad in his chair-and drank their drinks, two alcoholic drinks,
or three, and they made their decisions between five and eight p.m.” This scenario
is very similar to Ruth’s, “My father became the traditional alcoholic, where he had
the DT’s and all that stuff with it... And my mother made a conscious choice that
if she wanted to keep her family together, she would drink with him and she
became an alcoholic. In the end they both were.” While Ruth’s mother joined her
father, Kari’s took another route, covering up and manipulating:
My dad’s an alcoholic. He’s a sober alcoholic [now],
but back then he drank. They were pretty quiet
about it. A lot o f behind-the-door stuff. I think my
mom tended to like us to believe she had my dad
make the decisions, but she was mostly the one
there. She also manipulated a lot... I love my
mother dearly, but that’s part of the whole alcoholic
thing.
Lily describes the effects of her parents’ drinking:
My parents were periodic alcoholics. They would go out to
dinner. They both came home drunk, but my mother was the
one who was always sick and had to be taken care of... I
was the one to do that. I was always afraid to bring people
home .... I never knew what state the house would be in.
[My parents] would go in their room and have arguments,
especially when they were drunk. Neither one o f them knew
what he or she was saying to us and in front o f us when they
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were drinking. I had a childhood that I would not wish on
anyone.
In the families with alcoholism there was frequently violence. Lily’s and
Kyle’s alcoholic parents became more argumentative and sometimes even
physically violent when they were drinking. Physical violence occurs annually in 16
percent of marital relationships, which means that 8.7 million couples experience
marital violence each year (Straus, 1999). Five participants (16%) talked about
their parent’s violent behavior in their childhood as Fay does here:
My dad was real violent. So we just dealt with my dad. He
was our problem! . . . We sort of patterned our day after
when Dad was gonna show up and when he wasn’t. As
soon as he’d pull up in the driveway, we would all look out
the window to see what kind of mood he was in. What was
happening with our school, our education, our own
priorities took an entire back seat to everything besides him.
He just absorbed everything.
Toni was one five participants (16%) whose parents had unstable
personalities, emotional or mental conditions that affected their children’s lives.
Toni works in the medical profession and suspected her mother to have been
schizophrenic. As Toni says, “It wasn’t so much how [my parents dealt] with
problems. It was how to deal with everyday life. [My mother] has a very erratic
kind of personality, very unpredictable behavior.” Children of parents with
personality disorders or any sort o f mental illness-such as schizophrenia or
depression-struggle in the same way as do children of alcoholic parents (Black,
1980, Whitfield, 1987; Woititz, 1985) to define what is the norm:
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To have a severely ill parent is really to live in a
nightmare world you can’t get away from because
your parents are the people you look up to and on
whom you pattern yourself.. . . Schizophrenic
mothers have difficulty responding emotionally to
their offspring, are unable to provide structure and
stability to their offspring; mothers with affective
disorders [depression] can also find the demands of
child-rearing overwhelming, their tolerance for
stress can be nonexistent and the normal needs of
the child can catapult them into despair or fury.
Depressed mothers tend to experience more friction
with their children and judge them more negatively
than do other people who know the children.
(Secunda, 1997, p. 43-44)
While not mentioning alcoholism, domestic violence, or other such
dynamics, Ellen said her parents dealt with problems with anger (Tavris,
1989)-“by screaming and yelling.” At least seven participants (22%) recalled the
extreme anger o f their parents-the screaming, yelling, and arguing that in Dean’s
case seemed to go on and on:
It seemed that our parents argued more than other
parents appeared to argue. They fought a lot. I
wanted not to have the continuous stress .... And
they would go on for days, two and three to four
days at a time. And then just stop! Sort o f like the
winds out here, the Santa Ana winds . . . it really
was crazy-making. It was just bizarre!
Polly is one o f two men and two women who experienced physical abuse
afflicted by one o f their parents. “[My mother]’s form of dealing with problems
was [to] beat the crap out of me, punishment, grounding, very little conversation.
Things were her way or no way . . . a lot o f physical and verbal abuse.” Talking
about her childhood home elicited painful memories from Sally, who said: “I got
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spanked all the time by my mother, with a belt! Seems like every day.” Gary
graphically described being physically abused by his mother:
Mother dealt with problems one way. If you were a
problem, you got the hell beat out o f you. You
know, she used to beat me up about ten times a day!
I was the problem!. . . Sometimes, she tied me up in
the cellar. In fact, there was a steel post in the
basement, and [my mother] took the vacuum cleaner
cord-only back then, they were bigger-[and] cut my
back open with it.
Five o f the women and one o f the men (19% of sample) experienced
psychological abuse: pressure, manipulation, or harassment from their parents. Eve
told talked about how her father treated her brother:
My brother was in high school. He’d be ready to go out on
a date. He’d be dressed and he’d be ready to walk out the
door to go pick his date up and dad would [ask], 'Where
are you going?’ ‘I have a date with so and so.’ ‘Well, before
you go anywhere you’re to unload that truck.’ George
would have to go back, change his clothes, unload the
truck. And dad did it just to be mean. He knew it would
upset mother.
The parents o f 18 o f the 32 participants (56%) maintained intact marriages
until the time of the interview or the death of one parent, but the parents of 1 1
(34%) divorced.1 5 Seven (22%) were quite young and impressionable at the time
of their parents’ divorce. Dick, Ed, Brad, and Rod were under five years old.
Eleanor, Polly and Sally were adolescents. These children grieved over their
parents’ divorce (Lansky, 1996, Ricci, 1980).
1 5 The fathers o f three of the participants (9%) had been multiply divorced.
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Four participants (l% )-as young children-grieved over one o f their
parent’s death. Leah was only eight years old when her father died, but she still has
memories of her parents together.
Even in homes where there was no alcoholism, violence, mental or
emotional problems, divorce or death, there were other factors at play that affected
the participants’ self development. Some described little or no communication in
their homes and little or no expression of emotion.
Children who are primed early in life for emotional
abandonment will react strongly every time they
sense anything remotely like it, protecting
themselves as they move through the years with
increasingly intricate layers of psychological armor.
(Secunda, 1997, p. 51)
How did the participants experience this emotional abandonment? Nine
participants (28%) recall the emotional distance and lack o f open communication
in their childhood homes. Chris’ father did not express emotion, i t wasn’t until 1
was 18 that I knew how deeply he loved me, because he was always afraid we
would use his love for us against him.” Ruth recalled her family’s lack of
communication, “I really can’t tell you [that] I knew what they thought about
anything because we didn’t talk to each other.”
Laura’s family sounds like a patriarchal family-in which the father acts as a
totalitarian head o f the household and assumes authority over all other members of
the family, including the mother (Orloflf, 1993; Rice, 1999; Thome, 1993). As
Laura states, “Marriage [to me] was what my mom and dad had-a male figure in
the household that had all the power. That the mother cooked and cleaned and
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raised the kids and you better listen or you will get into a lot o f trouble-my parents
didn’t talk about problems; my dad made the decisions!” Fay described it as, “I
definitely got the message that marriage was more or less a way o f life-there
weren’t a lot of choices in it-the wife was owned; the children were owned;
everything was owned.”
Irene still appeared unaware o f the vast impact her father’s authoritarianism
had over her entire life. She had left high school early, announced she was eloping
at 18, and moved across the country. She did not communicate to her parents
important information such as her pregnancy, marriage, domestic violence or
divorce. However-in her forties-her aging father was still able to dictate to her
how she should live her life.
At least seven men and thirteen women (63%) talked about their family
having a strongly patriarchal structure-Baumrind’s (1971) authoritarian style-in
which their father exhibited patterns o f dominance and control with rigid and
judgmental attitudes. They did not want this behavior included in the norm of
marriage that they sought.
The participants witnessed and experienced their parents’ neglect,
parentification, or abuse of their children plus the sarcasm, ridicule, harsh criticism,
yelling, screaming, intimidation, manipulation, and the physical abuse of their adult
partners. With these experiences behind them, how did they approach their own
marriages?
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WHAT MOTIVATED THEM TO MARRY
Some themes reoccurred when participants identified one or more
advantages to each o f their marriages. In the place o f what others might expect as
the reason people marry-love, family, and stability— the men and women in my
study found the advantages to marriage were that:
1. their children-bom and unbom-would gain a father
2. there was an opportunity to form a family
3. they would get childcare help
4. they would achieve financial security
5. it provided a way to leave their parents’ home
6. it was a means to rescue another, to make another happy
7. it was a business-arrangement, for mutual advantage
Table 2 - Advantages of Marriage
Six Reasons for the Sake of the Children
The marriage out of concern for the children does not show up in the
myths and stereotypes about the multiply divorced, but it showed up as a major
factor in this study. The participants adopted or gave birth to between one and six
children1 6 each, for a total o f 72 children and the women listed six clear advantages
for marriage that related to their children. Women whose children were living with
them1 7 at the time o f a marriage were clear that the advantage o f marriage was that
1 6 Neither Ron nor Dean ever had children of their own. Dean developed
significant relationships with his stepchildren in two marriages; Ron did not have
stepchildren, citing his belief that he would not be able to parent any better than he had
been parented.
1 7 Over 90 percent o f children in single-parent families live with the mother
(Statistical Abstracts o f the U.S., 1990).
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it offered advantages to their children. These advantages included financial
security, a father for the children, and assistance with parenting. In contrast, men
did not mention their children when they spoke of the advantages o f the marriages
they were entering,1 8 primarily because their children did not live with them and so
would not be impacted on as greatly by their father’s marriage as children living
with their marrying mothers. Women with children were primarily motivated to
marry by the perception that marriage would provide them with financial security,
a father for the children, and help with parenting responsibilities, results similar to
the findings o f Arendell (1986) and Kurz (1995). One of the myths o f marriage is
that the bride and groom marry for love-that is, “I was in love, I enjoyed this man
or woman’s company, we shared similar interests.” It is interesting to see that love
took second place-at least with the women participants. Women in this study
reported that the advantage o f their marriage(s) was often to accommodate the
needs of their children. In their marriages subsequent to their first children’s birth,
women mentioned (financial) security or a father for their children as the most
important advantage at the time o f the marriage.
I8Fathers are less likely to receive custody of their children. Only 2-3
percent live with a single father. While the number of fathers receiving custody of
their children has increased, so has the total number of divorces involving child
custody, which means that there has been no change in the proportion o f children
living with single-parent fathers since I960 (Arendell, 1987; Gerstel, Riessman &
Rosenfeld, 1985; Statistical Abstracts o f the U.S. 1990).
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A Baby Carriage
One o f the norms in our society is for pregnancy to occur within a
marriage. We learned the proper order o f life from reciting the elementary school
rhyme, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Susie with a baby
carriage.” Yet pregnancy precipitated the wedding in twelve (10%) of the
marriages in my sample. In the 1950s, 70 percent of unwed pregnancies in the
nation resulted in marriage, but from 1985 to 1989, only 34 percent o f those
pregnant got married (U.S. Bureau o f the Census, 1991). The sequence became
reversed for the six participants (19%) in my study who were pregnant before their
first marriage, four participants before their second marriage, and two participants
before their third marriages.1 9 Eve told what an impact her pregnancy had on her
decision to marry, “The only reason I went ahead with the marriage was because I
got pregnant. I never would have married him had I not been pregnant.” Bryn’s
father told her that he did not care how she felt, “I just didn’t want to be married.
Didn’t want to be pregnant, either.. . [My father] could care less. You do the
honorable thing. You get a girl pregnant, you marry her.” For other members of
the study like Eve and Bryn, the unplanned pregnancy became a large and
compelling-if not the only-motivation to get married.
1 9 Norton and Moorman (1987) found that 27 percent of women with a
premarital birth or conception had ended their first marriage in divorce, compared
to 22 percent of women with no premarital births or conceptions. Bearing or
conceiving a child before marriage gives only a 5 percent increase to the likelihood
of eventual divorce.
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The women felt that they needed to many the baby’s father “to give the
baby a name.” It was not unusual for these women, like Chris, to state that they
felt pressured, usually by their parents, to marry not only to ensure a legal or moral
position for the baby but also to maintain the family’s social standing. “I was
pressured into the marriage, gently pressured into it [by] my parents. Dad told me
[come home with or without the marrying the father], right away, without even
hesitating, but my mom was in the Order of the Eastern Star, and pretty well
known. My dad was a sheriff and very well known. Social pressures in 1966 were
still [that] women married fathers.” The parents’ pressure also came out of the
cultural norm that expected a marriage if there was a pregnancy.
In that year it was still common social practice to refer to a baby o f an
unmarried woman as “illegitimate.” If the pregnant woman subsequently
married-as Chris and others did during those years-the marriage was thought to
legitimate the child. In the years since then, society has accepted the fact that all
babies are legitimate, and do have a name, whether that be the name o f the father
or some other name. Chris explains, “Well, the advantage was that I had a name
for my child, and that was it. I went home to my parents, [and did] not embarrass
them.” For Nan the impetus was similar, “Because I was having a baby. That was
the thing that you did in those days. Our parents were at the embarrassment level.”
It is interesting to note how both Chris and Nan mentioned their parents’
embarrassment, which leads me to question whether the marriage was for the child
or for the parents. Bryn’s tale also sounds like the marriage was for her father’s
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comfort. “I just didn’t want to be married. Didn’t want to be pregnant, either ....
My dad [said] ‘You get pregnant, you marry the dad.’ That was that! He could
have cared less. You do the honorable thing. You get a girl pregnant, you marry
her!” Glory’s third marriage resulted from her pregnancy, and even though her
parents had been dead a long time, their influence was still alive. Glory explained
“It was the right thing to do because I was pregnant. I think that goes with my
upbringing.”
Pregnancy was the entire reason for the marriage ceremony in Chris’ case,
and the marriage did not last much longer than the legal ceremony. The couple met
in basic training in the army and dated very briefly before she became pregnant.
Chris’ parents “gently” pressured her to get married, but they never lived together.
Soon after the ceremony Chris was home with her parents, filing for her first
divorce. Mary’s first marriage included a child from a previous relationship whose
well-being strongly influenced Mary’s decision to marry. “I was more concerned
about my baby, and my baby was safe, and all I really cared about was the safety
and security o f my child.” These pregnancies influenced the marriage of these
women to their first husbands, and there was not necessarily any love involved.
The Children Need a Dad
The norm-or at least the ideal-for children is still to have both a father and
a mother. Divorce tends to keep fathers incidental to families (Furstenberg, 1990),
which leaves the children under the mother’s care and responsibility. There is
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plenty o f rhetoric that talks about the problems and troubles o f single-parent
families, most often headed by women. The conservative faction o f sociology-such
as Blankenhom (1995), Popenoe (1996), and Whitehead (1993), and from politics,
religion, and media such as Buchanan and Quayle-continue to voice the message
that children without fathers have problems. So it is not surprising that women
were particularly prone to say that the advantage of a marriage was to gain a father
for the children. Sally replied “The boys would have a father.” Irene’s child was
bom before she married the father, but she claims that “I just wanted to get
married basically for [my daughter] so she could have her dad.” Mary was thinking
of her child’s father who was absent. “It meant she would have a dad that would
be there to care, since her dad was not in the picture a lot, didn’t make the effort.”
Laura was both consistent and persistent in wanting a dad for her only child. About
the advantages o f her first marriage, she said, “That [my child] would have a dad.”
About the advantages o f her second marriage, she said, “That [my child] had a
dad.” And while she spoke o f the advantages of her third marriage, Laura said that
“we would be married and not living together, [my child] had a dad and [my third
husband] did adopt [my child].” Bryn’s explanation went beyond just wanting a
dad: “[The advantage of my second marriage was] a family for [my child], a dad
for [my child], [My second husband] and [my child] got along for the most part.”
The women speak of the purpose of providing their child with an opposite-
sex parent as part o f the norm; however, that purpose did not carry over to men
when they spoke o f the advantage to their marriages. For one, the men’s
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children-with very few exceptions-aiready lived primarily with their own mother.
Even after the increased demand for joint custody in the late 1960s, most divorced
women still shouldered the principal responsibility for childcare (Ahrons, 1994;
Ahrons& Rodgers, 1987; Arendell, 1986; Arendell, 1987; Furstenberg, 1990;
Guttman, 1993; Kitson, 1992; Wallerstein & Blakesley, 1989; Weitzman, 1985).
Dave is the only man who expressed an advantage to one o f his marriages that
even loosely approximated the child-focus given by the women. Gaining “a real fun
stepmother” for his children was an advantage to Dave’s his second marriage, even
while his children still lived primarily with their mother.
A Two-Parent Family
In their desire to form a two-parent family, the participants are in
collaboration with-not in rejection of-societal norms. If the participants want a
father for their children, they also want to look like a family that is within the norm
and a father is an “essential” ingredient. A father for their children completes the
parental team that-even in the conservative factions-our society sees as the desired
norm for children.
For more o f the women, the emphasis was to be part o f the norm by
forming a family. They yearned for it: family was a norm worth working for. The
implication, of course, is that a family is not complete without a father in it. Not
only the women but some o f the men-like Rod in his third marriage-stated they
wanted to be a father and to form a family, “I thought we could have a family. . .
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we had a child on the way, she had a son and we could put this together and it
could be good.”
The women made similar statements. About her second marriage. Eve said:
“I would have a family. [My second husband] was geared more towards the kids ..
. and 1 thought maybe . . . I can turn things around to where this would be a good
thing.” About her third marriage, Mary said: “That we have a family unit, and [my
third husband] was committed to that.” When Chris remarried after her brief and
unfortunate first marriage, she thought she “was forming that family unit that I
always wanted.” Nan brings out what they all desire, what they work so hard for,
that which seems to elude them, “The advantages [to my second marriage were]
that o f being able to do things and be more like a family, and [to have] more
normalcy.” Marriage is the norm. Family is the norm. The multiply divorced want
to fit the norm.
Help with Parenting
Some mothers were really looking for help with the enormous task of
raising the children. Sally felt relieved by the possibility of help in her third
marriage. “1 would have someone to help me with my girls.” and then again, in her
fourth marriage, “Because o f his promises that he’s going to take care of me and
my four children.” Rose entered her third marriage with the assurance of help with
child-rearing. “I went to school every other weekend and we had my daughters
and his daughter who’d come up and spend time with us. He’d take care of all of
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them, look after the house, everything.” The promise o f that help encouraged her
to marry and enabled her to reach for her education goals. The women were
definitely feeling alone and overburdened. They wanted help. Men in this same
situation are apt to feel similar feelings, but Glick and Lin (1986) state that single
fathers are spontaneously offered more sympathy and help than single mothers.
A Caring Relationship
Caring relationships are a necessary ingredient for the companionate
marriage, but they are not a necessary component of the institutional marriage.
Mothers in my study-more than fathers-were prone to mention that an advantage
o f their marriage was to provide a caring relationship for the child with the new
spouse. Eve initially appreciated her second husband’s way with her children. "[My
second husband] was geared more toward the kids. He was affectionate with the
kids which their own father wasn’t.” And Chris’ third husband really became a
father to her daughter. “[My third husband] loved [my daughter], he adopted [my
daughter]. That was the final adoptive father. He never let her go, even though
I’ve been married several times since. He never gave her up.” Both men
demonstrated a strong affinity for the children-something that impacted the
mother’s decisions to marry. Mothers were aware that their children would have
advantages they, themselves, would not be able to give them. Nan speaks “[My
second husband] was the type that would go for the week-end and take her to the
San Diego Zoo and advantages like that.” and Ellen gives credit “[My second
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husband] was fantastic with my daughter.” The appearance o f a good relationship
between the new spouse and the children is very appealing-but it can also be
misleading. The apparent good relationship between Kyle’s second wife and his
two children supported his desire to get married. After he was married for a while,
however, he learned that the children were protecting him by not telling him how
bad she was to them.
Financial Security
In general, men placed more emphasis on physical attraction when seeking
a mate, but women put a greater emphasis on earning potential (Buss, 1985).
Finances were an important issue, particularly for women during the life stages
when they had their small children living with them. During that period, the women
were looking for security, particularly financial security. There is a reason for this.
According to Rowe (1991) researchers from every state with primary data have
documented a direct relationship between the impoverishment of women and
children and economic decisions made at the time of divorce: the determination,
valuation, and allocation of assets and the amount, duration and enforcement of
support. More than half of women with court awards were not able to collect the
child support they had been awarded (Arendell, 1986; Arendell, 1987; Weitzman,
1985). O f all the fathers who do pay, about 20 percent o f fathers are in full
compliance with support orders and 15 percent more pay irregularly (Arendell,
1992; Arendell, 1995), leaving a possible 65 percent that pay nothing. Divorced
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mothers are likely to experience a drop in standard o f living and may drop under
the poverty level, according to the theory of the feminization o f poverty (Pearce,
1993). This is further supported by the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1997) figures
that show one quarter o f poor families in 1960 and more than half of poor families
in 1996 were households headed by divorced, separated, never-married or
widowed mothers. They not only are poor; they remain poor longer (Duncan,
1984). As Hochschild (Arendell, 1986) said “It is not simply that women drop
down a social class as they experience the psychological trauma of divorce. The
class drop IS the trauma!” (p. ix). Even when finances were an issue, however, it
was soon clear that taking care o f the child was closely connected. Divorced
mothers are likely to be living with financial strain which in turn puts their children
at a disadvantage.
When participant mothers decided to marry, finances were a major issue.
Irene expresses how she found the ability to be home with her children a big
advantage of marriage. “The advantage of [my fourth] marriage was that he wore a
suit, looked good, and made a good income. [I] was hoping that I would be able to
stay home, be a stay-at-home mom.” Chris concurs, “(My third husband) had a
prestigious job . . . I didn’t have to worry about money. 1 quit my job. 1 got to be a
mom, which I had wanted to do all o f my life is stay home and be a mom.” Mary
was in desperate financial straits before her first marriage-trying to support herself
and her baby son by cleaning houses to remain near him. She related the advantage
of this marriage. “It was only security for my child. To be very truthful with you-it
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85
was a roof over our head. It was security. And I wasn’t having to work at the
time-and I felt good about that-because I could spend more time with my son.”
Her financial situation became more complicated when she entered her second
marriage. “[The advantage was] financial security. [My second husband and 1 ]
were both working, and it seemed to be easier to raise two babies, now, with two
jobs than [me] having just one job with two kids. The day care was expensive.”
Not only did women with children look for more financial security in
marriage. Dick was the custodial father o f two young sons, and he talked about his
second marriage. “I was getting married to her because 1 wanted insurance
[coverage for my children] and she had a great job.” No other men gave financial
security as an advantage to their marriage.
The children appeared to be one of the primary considerations when
parents married. Whatever their conscious motivations for their marriage, it was a
combined case o f hope for a better life for themselves and their children and of
desperation over their current financial situation that drove mothers to marry. This
concern for their children shows a more serious and responsible side o f multiply
divorced women than the myths and stereotypes of the multiply divorced allow for.
They just want to be within the norm-to be married-and they want their children
to be in a caring and secure environment.
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Leaving Home
Besides manying out o f concern for their children, participants in my study
also married because of their parents. For many first marriages in this study,
getting away from their parents’ home often represented more than the expected
developmental need to individuate (Bowen, 1978; Goldscheider & Goldscheider,
1994; Nichols & Schwartz, 1991). For a number o f the women, as for Toni, the
first marriage was a deliberate ploy to get away from their parents’ dysfunctional
home. Toni married-at 25-to leave her mother’s schizophrenic-like behavior: i f
you want to talk about the worst possible role model, 1 grew up with it. I almost
could not wait to get out of that family. I know I couldn’t wait to get out of that
family! Even as a young child, I knew something was wrong!” Escape from one
seemingly unbearable situation often led them, immediately or eventually, into
another. Lily married at 21 years of age to get away from her parents’ alcoholism.
“It was important that I escape the life I was living and getting away from my
mother and father-marriage was one of the acceptable venues.” Women more
often than men used their first marriage as a way to leave home. Men-who are
culturally expected to be more independent o f their parents-tended to find other
ways to leave home.
Rod: Yeah, I started running away when I was 13 [to get
away from my mother’s alcoholism and my parents'
domestic violence] and I joined the army when I was
16 and then when I got out o f the army, I never did
go back home.
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Joining the army or other branch of the service was another way the men in
this study could leave home. Both Rod and Gary took this route.
Here Comes the Rescuer
While some, above, married initially as an escape, some others married to
rescue someone else. While some people marry to escape from something, some of
the men, like Dean and Gary, married to help their spouse escape from their home
situation. Bowlby (1979) said that one of three patterns utilized by children to
protect themselves is “compulsive caregiving.” While in therapy Dean discovered
that he needed to be a rescuer, and that need was a large reason for his being on
the road to multiple divorces. “My theme, which I have learned after two and a
half years . . . o f therapy is that I have a pattern of being a rescuer-which was
really to protect my mother. [A] woman doesn’t have to be in need of being
rescued-I have a need to rescue. In each of the cases . . I’ve seen [a woman] that
I thought [was] in [a] vulnerable situation and I could save [her].” Gary married a
woman to prevent her from giving up her child. “[This young woman] is telling me
she’s gonna give this baby away, and I said, ’No way!’ I said, ’I have a two-
bedroom place, you and the kid can use one room.’ She said, ‘No, I want to be
married.’ Gary was impressed that this woman would spend her entire welfare
check on baby food and felt sympathy for her plight. Gary now knows that “I
would not marry someone again just simply to help them because they’re gonna
give a baby away.”
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Some men, such as Ed and Dick, entered their first marriages to help their
brides leave home. Only 18 himself, Ed married his 16-year-old bride to rescue her
from her alcoholic parents’ home, “We both wanted out o f our homes. Her mom
was kind of an alcoholic, along with her dad, and she pretty much just wanted out
o f there.” In marrying his first bride, Dick helped her out of an incestuous
situation. “I found out things about her life, living in that home that she was in,
that she must have wanted out o f really badly .”
Of course, women also get involved in rescuing-or caregiving-as well as
men do. However, these rescues are not about helping a man leave his parents’
home. Three examples (9%), Toni, Leah, and Polly, stand out from the rest. Toni
married her first husband to prevent him from carrying out his threat to commit
suicide. (Years after their divorce he did carry out his threat.) Wrapped in the
rescue is the hope that the rescue will contribute to the success o f the marriage.
Rubin (1983) described how men and women use helping or rescuing-nurturing-as
a way to build intimacy. But the nurturing that Rubin spoke o f and the nurturing
that was done by the participants in this study is a means of care taking. A
caretaking person can become bound to another because the caretaking creates a
dependency on the giver, not a real affection for the person. As Rubin (1983, p.
90) said, “Nurturance is not intimacy.” Leah entered her third marriage believing
that it would cement their marriage if she helped her third husband care for his
children who had special needs. “My thinking was that [my third husband] needs
me. He has these kids to raise because evidently the mother had some pretty severe
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problems, and the kids did, too. So my mind was going, ‘This one will work
because he needs me.’” That was what Polly thought when she married her third
husband, a man she thought was her soul-mate, except that she knew he was on
drugs. Polly said, “I found somebody who needed me incredibly.” The participants
in this study really wanted intimacy but used nurturing skills to provide a quasi
intimacy. The intimacy they wanted was a mutual experience o f open
communication and affection.
For the participants and those they rescued, getting away from home often
represented more than the usual developmental need to individuate. For these
participants home represented a negative force from which to escape. It was not a
model for how they wanted to live their lives and create their marriages.
The Business Arrangement Marriage
Historically, satisfaction in marriage was achieved by each spouse fulfilling
his or her expected role. Cherlin (1999) called this the institutional marriage.
Marriage expectations have changed dramatically over this past century to be more
about personal fulfillment, which is what Cherlin called independent marriage
(Cherlin, 1999; May, 1980; Skolnick, 1991). But for some o f the marriages in this
study, the men and women involved knew that their marriage was not based on
love. For this marriage they planned a trade-off to get something they needed, a
bargain which resembled the institutional marriage (Cherlin, 1999). In at least five
of all marriages (4%), one each for three men and two women, the participants
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were quite matter-of-fact about calling this a marriage o f convenience or a business
arrangement. For example, Brad married his third wife so that they could qualify
for a home loan.
We got married to buy a house, because neither one
o f us could afford one without each other. We didn’t
have a down payment unless we were married. We
tried to buy a house separately and didn’t have
enough money. They weren’t making loans to
people that were living together at that time. So we
got married .... with the understanding that we
were going to sell the house, in probably three years
.. . and just go our own way.
Jack married for an airline ticket for his girlfriend whom he had not
intended to marry. “Because in order to get the company to pay for [my girlfriend]
and her daughter to come overseas, you had to be married. So it was just a
marriage o f convenience.” Dick camouflaged his real reason for his second
marriage by making the marriage appear as if it was only intended for fun, but he
was also very pragmatic about getting his wife’s insurance coverage. This was
important to him, since he had primary custody of his two growing sons.
I always thought of [my second wife) and I as
cohorts in crime. (Laughs) You know? Like
comrades. We were just out to have fun. And she
used to convince me that we would have fim. And
so, you know, hey! I wanted some fun!... it was
just a game.
Two women, Nan and Eve, voluntarily entered into business-arrangement
marriages. Nan was motivated by the desire to have another baby. “His big thing
was he wanted to stay in the United States and he had to obtain a green card. My
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big thing was I wanted [a third] child. I wouldn’t have a child outside of marriage.”
For Eve, the bargain was about taking care o f her children.
It was really a business arrangement. . . I didn’t
[have the means]-being a waitress-trying to support
my [five] kids . . . I had gotten sick, strep throat, and
I just plain old got scared and so he offered me
security in exchange for raising his [seven] kids.
The business-arrangement marriage was typically not a first marriage. For
both Nan and Eve, it was their fourth marriage and it involved their children. For
Eve, it was a desperate attempt to get the security she needed to take care o f her
children. For Nan, it was a last-ditch opportunity to get a child.
This arrangement also led to some trauma. Brad related that his third wife
was hurt when it was time (approximately three years) to sell the house and
divorce. In spite o f the way each one presented their marriage as a mutually-
beneficial arrangement, there was some emotional investment. Before their
“business-arrangement” marriages were over both Nan (after eight years) and Eve
(after ten years) expressed disappointment and hurt feelings.
Make Someone Happy
Some participants married because they thought marriage would make the
other person happy. Kyle and Ed are two men who tried hard to make other
people happy, to prevent anyone from being hurt, including their children, current,
or even former wives.
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Kyle: There wasn’t any [advance time] really. I told [my
third wife] one day, ‘Look, if you [still] want to..
.get married, and it’ll make you happy, I’ll marry
you. But let’s do it now... [Betsy], I’m happy. I’ll
be happy married. I’ll be happy single. If you really
think that would make you happy, let’s just do it.’
Ed: I was getting married for a wrong reason, that she
wanted it, not because I wanted it... We got along
very well. I didn’t mind the gold-digger side of her. I
didn’t mind giving her all those things; I enjoy giving
things. And, she was always like a little kid at
Christmas every time I gave her something, so I
enjoyed that!
It is undeniably a good characteristic to want to help others and to give of
one’s self to others. It is especially a good characteristic if the giver or helper is
able to ensure that he or she receives what he or she needs at the same time,
establishing and maintaining a balance between self-care and other-care. It may not
be so beneficial if the helper or the giver is unaware of, or unable to ask for, his or
her own needs-to keep a balance. Many o f the men and women in this sample
were never encouraged or empowered to take care o f themselves or to ask for
what they need as much as they were trained to protect themselves by being
watchful o f what others need. In situations from their childhood, some participants
learned that they could improve on their own well-being if they paid attention to
the needs o f their parents. While the men and women in this study obviously and
truly made significant efforts to engage in and maintain their marriages, what they
did not know how to do, and were not empowered to do, was to maintain their
own sense o f well-being, their own fulfillment, and their own happiness. The
“make someone happy” marriage is a clear example o f how this group was not
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focused on their own feelings. They appeared to be totally alienated from their
own entitlement to stability and happiness. The participants appeared oblivious to
their real self, or to any possibility, entitlement or responsibility to maintain that
true self.
OBSTACLES ON THEIR WAY TO MARRIAGE
While many more of the participants did not want a marriage like their
parents and in spite o f the fact that they did not know how to do marriage
differently, five men and women talked about how they had made efforts to have
their marriages be different from their parents’ marriages. Irene, for example, said
that she was “going to talk to my children more because [my parents] didn’t talk.”
Laura was “not going to have arguments, fear, fights or drinking. I wanted
everybody to love everybody and be affectionate.” Kari’s idea was that she would
“probably do it a little different. I’d stay married forever, except I’d do it better.”
Remembering his own father’s absence. Brad said “I didn’t want to be away all the
time. I wanted to be a family.” And Gary expressed the one desire they ail had, the
hope that kept eluding them all with each ensuing divorce “I wanted it to work!”
No Teaching or Training
These men and women acknowledged that they, not unlike many people in
our society, had not received much training about marriage. When asked what they
had been taught or told at home, in school or at church, four men answered
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bluntly, “Nothing!” Three participants (9%) said “I don’t recall that I was taught
anything about marriage.” And Polly reflected “I can never remember a
conversation with my mother about how to be a good wife or what to do or
anything like that.” Kyle remembers being taught “from church, a lot! [But] from
family, nothing!” Rod added that “it was more from modeling. [I] didn’t have
definitive overt messages.”
While it was more typical of the men not to have had any thoughts or
discussions about marriage, the women tended to have been told more and with
more explicit information. The messages that they heard reflected the need for a
woman to be a virgin at marriage, to stay married, and to suffer. Chris remembers
simply that she should “marry the right guy and stay together.” Kari, raised in a
fundamentalist religious community, added a little more detail. “You couldn’t have
sex before marriage.” Lily-who married in the 1940s-said she heard the same
messages, but added: “You put up with whatever you had to put up with.” Irene
told how she got her concept o f marriage from her father. “My dad would read us
the Bible . . . telling us that we were to get married and to stay married. Make sure
we married the right person, take our time-’cause he wanted it to last. He said
that’s what its supposed to do-is last.” What the women were taught about
marriage primarily involved their sexuality-no sex until marriage-and their ability
to put up with “whatever.” Lily defined “whatever” with a fairly broad sweep as
“whatever you had to put up with.” From the examples of their mothers, it was
clear that what the women were expected to put up with, among other conditions
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in their lives, was alcoholism, domestic violence, anger, screaming, yelling, and
controlling husbands. Several participants saw their mothers “put up with” a hard
life. Having seen their mothers suffer this hard life did not, however, serve the
purpose o f reinforcing the necessity of that long-suffering lifestyle in the
participants. They had vowed that they would not put up with a situation similar to
the one they wanted their mothers to leave. That vow helped them to reject the
lesson given them. Their vow was that they would not “just put up with
whatever.”
Hochschild (1983, p. 182) described two methods that airline stewardesses
have traditionally utilized to improve their work situation. Although Hochschild
was speaking o f women as employees improving their lot with the airlines, women
also learn to use these same methods to improve their success in getting married
and in staying married. They learn to use (1) their capacity to mother, or nurture,
to respond to the needs of men and children, and they learn to use (2) their sexual
attractiveness, their virginity before marriage or their monogamy, faithfulness, and
their service, sexual and other, to their husband after marriage. The women have
learned these functional techniques as the way to get and keep a marriage. Under
these guidelines, all of the complexities o f marriage get collapsed into
unquestioning longevity and sexual faithfulness. There was no mention from any of
the 32 participants of having learned how to communicate, how to resolve conflict,
and how to respect their own needs and feelings.
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They Knew They Did Not Know
They had no teachers and no lessons, and they had very poor role models.
Those who lived with difficult issues, such as domestic violence, in their youth
were surprised to find the same issues in their own marriages. Mary said, “It’s
amazing how you want to get away from that stuff and you end up walking right
into it.” When and how were they ever taught the difference between love and
domestic violence? Did they take a class on “living in a well-balanced, openly
communicating marriage?” The same could be asked about alcoholism, verbal
abuse, or absence of emotional expression. Love as expressed by a blow to the
body, or by insults, or not expressed at all, had become the norm o f marriage,
learned in their childhood, for many of the men and women in this study. As a
result, they told me they did not know what a good marriage looked like while
they were still children. Dick did not know. “I don’t think I really had any clue.”
Toni was confused. “If you want to talk about the worst possible role model, I
grew up with it... Part o f me realized that I really didn’t know what a marriage
was like.” Ruth was perplexed. “When he’d fight I’d go out sometimes just to get
away. I’d go walk around the block and I’d look in the windows and think, "How
do these people live together, how do they do it? What are their secrets?’” Kari
was reluctant. “I’m afraid to start a new relationship because I don’t really know
what one is supposed to look like. I think I got it all worked out. But yet, so far I
only have my past to build on and I’m afraid.” They were all cognizant o f the fact
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that they just did not have the information, that they did not have an accurate map
to tell them what a good marriage is. They just knew that they did not know.
The multiply divorced individuals were able to recognize the dysfunction of
their parents’ marriage. While they knew clearly that they did not want to replicate
that type o f marriage, it was still the only marriage model that they knew. It was
the norm o f marriage for them. It did not teach them how to achieve the kind of
marriage that they did want. The marriages they were familiar with did not
represent the model they wanted, but neither did they have anything else to
acquaint them with a working model of what it was that helped keep peace in
relationships and cement marriages together. Having never witnessed or
experienced any “other” kind o f marriage, they would not know how to do it.
They were not nearly as knowledgeable about how to get what they did want as
they were clear about what they did not want.
Blind Spots
Sometimes they did not know that their marriage was a problem. Not only
did they not know, but-as Bryn tells it-some of them were not able to see that the
role model they had was not a good one to follow. Bryn confessed, “I didn’t know
that there was something wrong for the family. I didn’t realize that it was my
family of origin that was causing so many problems for me.” Larsen (1985) has
written, taught, and counseled adult children of alcoholics on the effects o f their
alcoholic family life. Larsen explains how it could happen that Bryn and
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others “do not know.” Larsen teaches that, “What you live with you learn. What
you learn, you practice. What you practice, you become.” Bryn lived with her
family all o f her life. She learned to become a member o f her family, and she
practiced how to gain the acceptance and security that children need. Following
this model, Bryn focused on satisfying her family’s needs, and she became blind to
other ways o f being. She melded with her family. She was not able to see her
family in an objective way, and she accepted their ways as her norm. By this
model, she could not have known that following her family’s ways o f thinking and
doing would create problems for her. It follows that she would not see the warning
signs to know when she married that her marriages were a mistake. She had
become a product of her family. Not every child becomes such an unquestioning
product o f their family. Several of the participants had siblings who had maintained
intact marriages. Children of different temperaments (Saposnek, 1998), different in
birth order (Toman, 1969), different in gender (Chodorow, 1978) will have
different experiences with and effects from their parents and their surroundings.
Children who do not become a product of their family may have found an
independent source to teach them to think for themselves, to have self-respect,
self-esteem, and self-worth.
Ignoring the Still Small Voice
Some weddings occurred even though the participant-bride or
groom-clearly knew that their decision was not a good one. Some participants had
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some warning signs, but they married in spite o f knowing that it was a mistake. In
manying to escape, or to help someone else to escape from their unwanted
environment, the participants may have overlooked some warning signs. Both men
and women told me o f situations in which they would “go on with the wedding,”
even though they knew deep down inside that: (1) this marriage was not a good
union; (2) that they really did not love the other person; (3) that they really did not
want to marry at the time. When I heard them say that, even in retrospect, I
wondered, “What made these people act against their own better judgement?”
Some said they knew the marriage was a mistake before the ceremony began. Ruth
was not the only informant who told me that she knew on the day she married,
that the marriage was wrong. Ruth and Sally either did not recognize their own
small voice of truth or did not trust it:
Ruth Right afrer the invitations went out. It was about a
month before. I knew it was the wrong thing to do. I
had a dream that, before my eyes, he turned into this
huge brown bear. It was going to eat me up! But it
was too late, the invitations were out (laughing) and
I didn’t have the strength to be able to turn around
and face everybody and say, ‘Hey I can’t do this.’ I
wasn’t sure o f my own intuition. I thought maybe it
was just jitters. I didn’t trust myself! But I knew
things were going wrong.
Sally The night before we were married, he went out on a
bachelor party. About midnight, when he came
home drunk and he tore the door down .... I knew
at that time that I should not marry him, but I
couldn’t go tell everybody that, ‘Hey it’s off!’ I
didn’t have the nerve to do that. I had all my family
there, my bridesmaid, maid of honor, everybody was
there. At that point I knew that I should not marry
this man, but because of the fact that everybody was
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there, the wedding was planned .... I felt, 'I have
to do this,’ but I knew in my heart that I should not
marry this man.
Ruth and Sally were not alone. Three other women all had similar
premonitions and each told me what made her go through with her wedding. Fay
said: “It was a real rocky relationship. I’m not sure why I married him .... I think
I was feeling obligated.” Ellen had a premonition. “I was making a terrible mistake.
And I knew it two weeks before the wedding.” Bryn’s instincts told her, “There
[were] some things going on that I was [thinking], This is icky!”’ She went on to
give her rationale, “I think that I got married because I didn’t know how to get out
of it, cause all these plans and money had been spent. It was kind of [like] being
on automatic pilot.” While these women were able to verbalize this process, I
suspect more o f them lived it but couldn’t describe it.
It wasn’t only the women who had an inkling of doom before the wedding.
Some of the men also knew in advance that the outlook for their marriage was not
good. As Andy said, “Was I aware o f it at the time? Yeah. But not admitting it to
myself.” In describing the disadvantages of his fourth marriage, Ed admitted that
one was that “I was getting married for a wrong reason. That she wanted it, not
because I wanted it.”
These nine participants (28%) talked o f being unable to stop the
proceedings because all the invitations were mailed, the hall was rented, and
everyone was assembled. They said that they were too embarrassed to cancel the
wedding. And sometimes, as Brad expressed it, the participant was just as baffled
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as anyone else. “I don’t know why we got married. I don’t know why we moved
in, I don’t know! This is a frustrating one, very frustrating ‘cause I don’t know
why!” He simply had no reason at all. Other times, as Dean admitted, he knew that
“I was making a major mistake.” It was not in the back of his mind, he said, but
“on the front of my mind.” Still he could not tell his bride until after the wedding,
“On the honeymoon.” Why was Dean not able to tell his bride that this marriage
was a mistake for him before he married her as easily as he did afterwards? I offer
four axioms to explain what made individuals like Dean go through with their
marriage: (1) They did not know how to stop the ceremony without hurting their
intended’s feelings; (2) they were too embarrassed to cancel the event when their
friends and family were already congregated; and (3) they compensated for their
unease by pledging to “make it work.” They were, in short, unable to understand,
to honor or to act on their own feelings.
They Pledge to Make it Work
These men and women appear to have been trained by their society, and
particularly their family of origin, to manage their feelings in certain acceptable
ways, similar to the way the airline attendants were trained in The Managed Heart
(Hochschild, 1983). They were taught to be watchful for and to take care of
others’ needs, not their own. According to Hochschild, women do the “feeling
work” o f willing themselves to love someone. In the process of doing this feeling
work, women, and men also, had learned to put aside their own “true self.” Like
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the airline attendants, they had learned to first take care o f others’ well-being and
others’ feelings. They had not been empowered to trust their own intuition, to take
care o f their own feelings, or to value themselves enough to say, “Stop! This is not
a good plan for me!”
I Can Make it Work
The participants believed that they would be able to make their marriages
work. They wanted the marriage to work. “I can make it work” was often the
rationale o f the determined person who married in the preceding scenarios. Some
married to get away from home, and some married, in their words, to “give the
baby a name.” Some, like Andy, married in spite of the fact that they knew the
marriage was not a good idea. “I thought things could work, hoping they’d work.”
In their minds they believed, like Brad, that despite the disadvantages they were
aware of, “I thought we could have worked it out.” Toni expresses the determined
spirit of this method: “I knew walking down the aisle that I was making a mistake
of sorts, but I just said [to myself], ’Well, I’m just gonna do this and I’m gonna
make this work.’” Toni believed that her determination, effort and perseverance
would be enough to keep her marriage going.
Some segments o f the population believe that sheer grit and determination
can keep a marriage together and working well. Society encourages women (and
men) to value relationship and marriage at any cost (Hotaling, Straus, & Lincoln,
1990). It is not only the individuals I interviewed who speak o f “making” a
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marriage work. Friends, family, and other onlookers wonder why the couple could
not make a marriage work. As Lily noted, other people told her, “You can work it
out.”
Reflecting on the traditional role o f women to be responsible for building
and maintaining relationships, more women than men participants expressed that
they had tried to “make it work.” Chris, for example, said she was, “Trying to. .
make this thing work.” Mary’s comments imply just how frustrating it was for her
to maintain her determination. “I was trying to make something work that didn’t
want to work; I didn’t want to be married, but once married, [I] wanted to stay
and work it out.” Fay had another difficulty to deal with in order to make her
marriage work: “I kept trying to make [my first marriage] work because this was
[my child’s] father. I wanted to make this one work; he didn’t.” Sally faced
another pressure to make it work: “I wanted it to work. It’s number four already
and I’m only 35 years old. I was determined it was going to work.” Jack said
simply, “This is what I wanted to do-make it work.” The mind-set o f needing to
“make it work” implies these three premises: (1) that the marriage was not
working, (2) that any marriage would work if even one of the two people works at
it, and (3) that for a marriage to work requires some kind o f unnatural force or
pressure to coerce the situation into being something other than how it is in its
natural state. These individuals attempted to keep questionable or mistaken
marriages together, a feat they strongly believed possible. Gary reflects back on the
difficulty of believing that “it will work,” “At those times, I was young, foolish and
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naive, and I always looked at a woman and believed, ‘It’s gonna work.’ Now, only
an idiot thinks that you’re gonna put a divorced woman with a divorced man,
neither one of [them] stable, whether [they]’re drinking or [they]’re not drinking
and .. .make something work.” Gary sees in retrospect what he and the others did
not see at the time of their marriage: the fallibility of the belief, supported by most
religions, that one person can make any marriage work, regardless of who is
involved and what their circumstances are.
SUMMARY
The multiply divorced-like all other people-enter each marriage with the
same high hopes and optimism as other people do-that this marriage will be happy
and will last forever. I have not interviewed any multiply divorced person who
hoped at the time o f their marriages that the marriage would end (except Fay in her
second marriage who said she married her husband to get rid of him). They
married to be married and to stay married. They wanted a lasting marriage, a good,
sharing, communicating marriage, the kind o f marriage they thought others around
them had, and the kind that their parents did not have.
The multiply divorced saw marriage as the norm, just as others do.
Marriage was a way to look like other people and to do what other people do, to
not be left out-to avoid the stigma c f being single in a married world
(Schwartzberg, et al., 1995). They saw marriage as the step that men and women
take to fulfill their gender expectations. To be an adult woman or man was to be a
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married person. They believed in the institution o f marriage. Marriage was very
important to them.
At the time o f their marriages, many o f the women found themselves
dealing with the economic reality of supporting themselves and their children. They
were motivated to marry by one or more of several advantages the marriage would
provide to their children. They found child care as a single-and often poor-parent
daunting. They wanted their children to be part o f the norm-the norm of having a
family, with both a mom and a dad. They wanted financial security and help with
childcare. Because of their desires for their children, some consciously or
unconsciously compromised themselves to enter “business arrangement” marriages
for the sake o f their children’s well-being-in order to offer their children something
better.
In viewing their parents’ marriages, they knew they did not want to
replicate those relationships for themselves or for their children. They wanted a
different kind o f a marriage, a different kind of family, a different kind of life than
what they had seen and known as children. They wanted their future relationships
to be different: warmer, more satisfying, more peaceful, but they did not know
how to build a relationship or be in a marriage. They knew that they did not know
how. They had not been taught in school or in church. Their role models did not
teach them: they lived in the “hard-living conditions” o f alcoholism, drug abuse,
domestic violence and child abuse, mental illness and personality disorders. People
with these conditions are known to have poor communication skills, poor emotive
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skills, poor conflict resolution skills, poor self-esteem and poor self-worth building
skills. Their role models were not able to model or teach these skills to them, and
furthermore, the more that their parents beliefs and attitudes appeared to be the
norm, the more the pending relationship problems with their spouses-to-be became
invisible, overlooked or downplayed.
They wanted very much to make their marriages work-just as others
do-and just as others urged them to do. They strived to make their marriages
work-far beyond the point where others might have given up or wanted them to
give up. They did not always see that point where they should have ended the
relationship-be that before or after the marriage. They did not always trust
themselves when they did begin to see the problems. They did not always trust
their own intuition, their own instincts, when they intuited or felt instinctively that
something was not right. With the twin pressures o f the stigma o f being unmarried
and the ubiquitous norm o f marriage, and to avoid the public embarrassment of
calling off the wedding, the prevailing response to their doubt or fear at the time of
the wedding ceremony was to go on with the wedding and “make it work!” They
continued on with their relationships with the thought that they could “make it
work.”
Many have come to a point where they now realize that, as Toni so aptly
put it, “It takes two people to make a marriage work. It can take only one person
to break it up. But you can’t have only one person working on a marriage. It takes
two people to work it.” What Toni and many participants found-in spite o f their
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determination to “make it work”-is that it will not work unless both parties are
willing and able to do their part.
Some felt very depressed and hopeless in their situation and have taken
their last divorce as a sign that they cannot do relationships. They either remain
depressed about that conclusion; or they have resigned themselves to singledom
and have happily adapted themselves to their status. Indeed, eight participants
(32%) have been single over seven years each, with an average o f eleven years.
Others have doggedly persisted in believing that they still can and will find a mate.
True, there were nine individuals who-like Chris and her sixth husband-were
happily married. They demonstrated that-in spite o f the belief that the multiply
divorced are doomed to do poorly in relationships-the goal of the multiply
divorced to attain a good marriage is still reachable.
In Chapter 4 , 1 look at the dynamic of the multiply divorced who want to
have a good marriage, who want to “make it work,” and who-in spite of their
intentions and desires-find themselves engaged in divorce, not just once, but three
or more times.
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Chanter 4 - I’M GETTING DIVORCED IN THE AFTERNOON..
The marriage was impulsive. The divorce was
thought out. Mary
Divorce happens in your head, you know. The court
is just letting the paperwork catch up with what’s
happening. Dick
Fay, a 51-year-old systems analyst, was five years into her fifth marriage.
She openly joked about her past marriages and divorces, acknowledging that they
did help her build her self. She believed that, although her marriages may have
failed, as a person, she did not.
Fay’s violent, domineering father dealt with problems arbitrarily, and that
behavior influenced her. She developed the view that marriage meant “you’ve
made your bed, now lie in it;” but she definitely did not want a marriage like her
parents.’ At age 17, pregnancy led her into her first marriage. She said “[I] did not
know how to do marriage.” This husband abused substances and battered Fay. He
was unfaithful and unemployed. However, she felt the marriage helped her find
herself and to increase her self-esteem, since she became a responsible parent to
her child. She divorced this husband after seven years o f abuse. Fay’s mother
supplemented her welfare income by giving her money and babysitting. Three years
later Fay married again; her boyfriend’s mother did not want him to be alone.
Thinking that marriage would resolve the couple’s power struggles, Fay realized
that she “married him to get rid of him.” She divorced him after three months. By
this time she was off welfare, owned her own home, and worked in the computer
field. After seven single years, feeling flattered, she married an engineer. Even
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though she also doubted the three-year marriage, Fay felt rejected when the
engineer filed for divorce. Her fourth marriage, at 38, was to a 28-year-old man.
Now Fay felt confident, and believed it “really, really important to do the marriage
right.'’ But this husband also lied, intimidated, and battered her. This time divorce
left her questioning her bad judgment; but also assured her that she no longer had
to experience this man’s anger. As Fay realized the value of serenity, she found her
old acquaintance-violence-unacceptable. I found her married to a man she had
first known and worked with for ten years. This marriage offered her
companionship. Fay told me that she had benefitted from all these “teachers”-her
divorces.
WHAT IS DIVORCE?
Divorce is something that we avoid thinking of, dreaming about, planning
for, or taking as seriously as we do marriage. To believe that all divorces can be
avoided is to believe all marriages have the ingredients to make them good,
working relationships. This chapter challenges that thought.
To divorce, like to marry, is to do gender, as it affects men and women
differently. Women file for divorce more often than men, and women have day to
day responsibility and primary custody of the children more often than do men.
Women need and get more help post-divorce from their parents. Women are more
apt to talk about the benefits to their children when they speak o f the advantages
of each divorce. When they speak o f disadvantages brought about by each divorce,
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women speak o f the disadvantages to their children and their financial situations.
Still women file for divorce more frequently than do men.
Although the myths abound that the multiply divorced are uncommitted,
quitters, impatient, uncommitted people who divorce quickly and easily, I did not
find that to be the case. I found women who divorced for the sake of the children,
to protect the children from dangerous situations, to remove them from stress. I
found men who divorced for freedom from difficult relationships. Divorce was not
an easy action for the participants to consider because they had been taught that
divorce was wrong, they had not planned on divorce and, in fact, did not want it.
Many were dissuaded from divorce by the definition o f failure that accompanied it.
Others had not given any thought to divorce.
Several had heard very sexualized and gendered views of divorce, that is,
divorced women were much more denigrated than men. While they heard how
terrible a divorced woman is, they did not hear similarly degrading statements
about divorced men. Those participants with divorced parents remembered the
experience as very negative and did not want to replicate it. Whether the
participants’ family histories were full o f divorce, or whether they were completely
clear o f divorce, the participants agreed on one point: they did not want to
divorce.
Some participants encountered their parents’ opposition to divorce, others
had parents who were supportive-especially in violent situations-and helped them
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to get out. The participants sometimes felt extremely alone, cut o f from this
support.
Women, who filed for divorce more frequently than did men, suffered
disadvantages from their divorces. They became a single parent, their children had
no active and present father, they had no childcare help, they experienced financial
difficulties. To make ends meet, they may have taken one or more jobs, and they
may have had the children’s father take advantage of them. The men talked about
the disadvantage of divorce as the loss of their relationship with their children.
Contrary to the myths surrounding the multiply divorced, they did not
quickly leave their marriages, but deliberated a long, painful time before taking
action to divorce. The decision and the action to get a divorce got harder, not
easier, with each divorce. While they did not want a divorce, they often wished
that their parents had gotten a divorce. They could wish a divorce for their parents
because o f the dysfunction that they experienced there, while that same
dysfunction, appearing in their own marriages, became grounds for their own
divorce. So they could have felt that they were going in circles, but the fact
remains that many found their way out of that circle, are currently married, or are
contentedly single.
Filing the Petition for Divorce
Divorce is a legal action that begins when one person files appropriate
forms with the court. This chapter looks at the 111 divorces (see Appendix E -
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112
Times Divorced) experienced by the 32 multiply divorced participants o f this
study. Women filed for divorce in this study more than the men did, which agrees
with other research that shows women file for divorce more often than do men
(Arendell, 1986; Goode, 1956; Gunter, 1977; Kitson, 1992; Kurz, 1995; Spanier
& Thompson, 1984). These figures for this study agree with other research:
Divorces filed bv Women Divorces filed bv men
87 24
78% 22%
Table 3 - Divorces Filed by Gender of Participant
Analysis o f the interviews revealed that only twelve participants
consistently were the ones to file for each of their divorces (see Appendix F - Who
Filed?). The other twenty participants might have each filed for one or more of
their divorces while their spouses may have filed for others. For example, Ed
appeared to take turns with his spouses. In his first and third marriage, Ed’s spouse
filed for the divorce, while Ed himself filed for the second and fourth divorce.
Another example is Toni who filed for her second divorce from George, then-after
she remarried him-George later divorced her. The participant’s role o f “leaver” or
“left” (Emery, 1994) switched back and forth in 16 cases (50%, depending on their
differing circumstances and dynamics. In the other 50 percent of the
cases-inciuding the case of four male participants-the woman filed for all o f the
divorces. Kyle explained gallantly that he allowed his wives to file, as he believed it
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would look better for the woman if she did the filing rather than if the man filed
against her for the divorce.
Parental Support for Divorce:
Women tended to receive a great amount of post-divorce support from
their parents. These tended to be women with children who needed physical,
material and financial help as well as emotional support. Men did not mention
getting help from parents. Chris was one of the women who did: “My parents
always supported me because they knew, by the time I got to where I was, what
was going on. It was not like I hid things from my parents. So, by the time I was in
those situations, [my parents] were supporting me.” Her parents helped her with
childcare, room and board, and extended family relationships for Chris’ child.
Bryn and her children continue to live with Bryn’s father-she is taking
college ciasses-and Nan and Lena are in constant contact with their supportive
parents, who continue to help them and their children. Kari only recently became
closer to her parents and now receives emotional support from them.
Advantages of Divorce for Women
The participants’ advantage in each divorce was often punctuated by
concern for their children. Divorcing parents-especially women-justify their
actions to be “for the sake of the children.” These parents want to save the child
from danger, anger, fighting, or any other abuses that they perceive to be eminent
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in the marriage. Women were likely to mention security and safety for their
children as the advantage o f their divorce. They do this sometimes in spite of being
unaware o f their own needs. As Bryn told me, “I left him for the safety o f the child
because weapons came into the house and the drugs were coming into the house.
It was dangerous!” Mary said she wanted her son and herself to both be safe, “For
me, I didn’t have to get beat any more. My son was safe.” Safety was also
important to Glory: “Safety. It was the top o f the line and . . . there’s a lot of
damage there in that I knew [my husband] wasn’t gonna get help with his alcohol
and help us out. I couldn’t live in that with my two kids and so there was no
hope.” Safety for themselves was almost an afterthought, but when their children’s
safety and security were at stake, the women became mobilized to take action to
remove their children from the threat or the reality of danger.
As much as the women wanted their children physically safe, they also
wanted them to be safe from stress. Mary explains, “The advantage was there was
no more verbal disagreements to the point where our children were constantly
under stress listening to the arguments.” Eve wanted peace o f mind for her
children and herself, “The advantage was the fact that it gave us peace of mind.
[The kids and I] didn’t have to run around like chickens with our heads off because
this tyrant was home.” Irene put it similarly, “Just to have peace o f mind with [my
daughter]. You know, she didn’t even want him coming around . . . She’d say,
"Mommy I was so scared! Daddy was drinking a beer coming down the freeway.’”
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The women would recognize their children’s stress level growing and take action
to modify or eliminate it.
Advantages of Divorce for Men
The most common advantage of divorce cited by the men was freedom.
For his first divorce Rod said simply that the advantage was, “Freedom” and Ron
said, “I was free of a relationship I had no business being in.” Kyle felt freedom in
different ways with different divorces. When he was divorced from his first
wife-with whom he had a more positive experience-he felt the advantage, “was
freedom of feeling now [my wife] can get on [with her life] .” When Kyle divorced
his second wife-with whom he had a more negative experience-he said the
advantage was,“Freedom! Getting rid o f her! There was nothing but advantages
with that divorce.” In divorcing his third wife-an alcoholic woman-Kyle saw the
advantage was, “Just to regain my freedom.” Other men used a broad concept of
freedom, but did not use the word. For example, Andy implied that his divorce
gave him the freedom to do, “Not extravagant things, but to do nice things, be able
to go buy something at the mall, because we didn’t do that.” The advantage Dick
gave of his second divorce was, “I’d be away from her.” About his divorce from
his third wife, who was addicted to drugs, Dan said, “I was able to get out of a
situation that was turning worse by the minute.”
Five o f the men said that an advantage of one o f their divorces was related
to their own personal well-being-as Dick felt after his first divorce, “I would have
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my self back.” Dick said his divorce record “is making me face what I really need
to find in my life, which I haven’t found so far.” Dick referred to the fact that he
was “never invited into the men’s group, this inner circle” where he would have
developed relationships with other men. Dave said his first divorce was “time to do
some quiet thinking.” O f his third, he said it was for “survival-[to] look at [my]
health.” Four men found there was no advantage, as Ed said, “None, I didn’t want
the divorce.” Even though he married more to please his fourth wife than himself,
when the time came to divorce her, he found “no real advantage” because “I
wanted it to work.” Rod’s second divorce left him “unhappy, I thought we could
work it out.” and Phil said, “I would have tried to work it out.”
While the women often mentioned the well-being of their children as an
advantage o f their divorce, only three responses from the men reflected concern
for their children. Ed said an advantage is that he and his former wife would “Not
[be] fighting in front of the children . . . the children are safe.” In his third marriage
Ed found it awkward to spend time with his children since each time his wife
would give him grief. After this divorce he found the advantage to be a “lack of
guilt for being with my children.” After Andy divorced his second wife, who had
objected to the time Andy spent with his son, Andy found the advantage was “to
have a good relationship with my son.” Both Andy and Ed are relating to friction
they experienced with their wives over their children from a previous marriage.
The advantages o f divorce were different for the men than for the women.
This again reflects the different economic situations of men and women and the
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different relationship men and women have with their children after divorce.
Typically the women were the custodial caretakers and the men saw their children
according to voluntary or court-ordered parenting plans.
THE OBSTACLES THAT HELD THEM BACK
Divorce is not what the participants believed in or wanted, but in most
cases they felt that was what they needed to do. As Rose said, “I think [divorce is]
a wonderful safeguard that we have in our system to separate people that are not
getting along, but divorce is wrenching! It makes you question every aspect of
your own personhood. It’s certainly not something that should be undertaken
lightly, but kind o f as a necessary evil.”
Their Beliefs and Teachings about Divorce
Their beliefs and teachings about the wrongness and failure o f divorce
tended to discourage them from divorce, yet they divorced in spite o f this. When
the participants talked about what divorce meant to them when they were growing
up-what they believed and what they were taught about divorce-it was not evident
that they themselves would ever end up divorced and certainly not three or more
times. Sally is a 53-year-old office manager in a large film studio whose parents
divorced when she was 12 or 13. Not only Sally, but also both her father and her
brother, have since divorced three times. Sally, however, had originally planned her
life differently. At an early age she had dreams for her life, “I hoped to get married,
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have four children, and live happy ever after. I did not want to ever divorce.” At
the time of our interview, Sally had divorced six times. When Sally was young, she
believed that to divorce was simply to, “Dislike one another.”
Divorce as Failure and Badness
For some, divorce equaled failure, giving up, or abandonment. Carla was
55 and retired. Carla’s mother had divorced twice but was still in her third
marriage. In church Carla heard that marriage was for life, that divorce was terrible
for families. She wanted her own marriage to be like her own parents in that-even
after their divorce, they were still friends-but unlike theirs in that they did divorce.
Like Sally, she had ideas o f what she wanted her life to be, “I was going to be
married forever, stay at home, have a nice family. [I believed] that commitment
was a lifetime commitment.” In spite o f her mother’s experience, divorce equaled
failure to Carla. Several others thought of divorce as failure. Dean thought,
“Before I actually went through it, I really think I saw divorce as a failure on the
part of one or both people in the marriage. There was that unwritten taboo,
growing up at a time when divorce was still fairly uncommon.” As a youngster,
Fay said, she also believed divorce to be, “Failure.” Kyle, whose mother died when
he was 5 years old, believed that divorce was, “Just giving up and walking away.”
Jack did not really think about it, but feels he probably saw it, “As an abandonment
and I guess back then there had to be serious cause to even get a divorce.”
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For some, divorce represented something bad, nasty, shameful, or sinful.
Mary originally tried to distance herself from the unpleasant experience o f divorce,
“[I did not] think about divorce because my parents made it sound nasty. It was an
ugly thought and it was something that I didn’t want to have happen to me, so
therefore I wasn’t gonna get married.” To Ellen, divorce was “Very shameful.”
Laura’s childhood beliefs were absolute in the area of divorce, “I’m sure that it
was shameful and a sin and I’d go to hell.” Dave believed, “That something bad
must have happened. That either somebody was unfaithful, or someone committed
a crime, or someone did something very, very bad and the result of the bad was the
divorce. The divorce bore some relationship to some evil that was lurking around.”
Nan reflected on her beliefs about divorce, “I never gave it much thought. I never
came close enough [but my impression of divorce] was that it was a bad thing.”
Kari saw divorce as, “Not even something you would do. You wouldn’t do it. It
was not acceptable in our religion [Jehovah’s Witness], and it just, you wouldn’t
do it.” Lena’s view o f divorce was that, “It hurt. It was ugly.”
No Thoughts of Divorce
Many had never thought about divorce. As a young man, Jack, like others,
assumed his marriage would last in the same way as he had seen the marriages all
around him last. “When you get married it’s forever,” Jack said simply “I didn’t
really ever think about it.” Brad is another who never thought o f the concept of
divorce. “I didn’t really have divorce thoughts in my mind. I really didn’t.” Dan
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and Rose both echoed that, “I never even thought about it.” As Ron remembered
it, “I didn’t think about [divorce] one way or the other. I think when I got married
I intended to stay married.” Steve, as the others, was unaware, “As a child, I never
thought about those kinds o f things.” For Bryn also, thoughts o f divorce did not
come until later, “[I] didn’t know what divorce was till I was eighteen.” Toni
didn’t think about it, “Not until after I got married.” In Eve’s life divorce was so
invisible that, “I didn’t even know about divorce until I got my first one.” But Leah
had the same to say, “I guess I didn’t think about divorce. For years and years I
thought people got married and they lived happily ever after and I kept doing it
again and again thinking that was the case.”
Some were taught that to be divorced was to be a bad person. Kyle was
taught that, “It’s wrong to get a divorce and you should get married once and
that’s it. If you made a mistake you live with it.” Carla learned a similar lesson,
“We heard what a terrible thing it was and divorced families weren’t as good as the
family where both were at home.” Dave’s comments convey how abhorrent
divorce was to his family. He said, “I think that the idea was marriage is good;
divorce is bad. That was a clear rubric and people that were divorced were
probably not as good as people that were married. It was somewhere between
cancer and treason.”
Several said what they were taught about divorce was, “Nothing.” Gary
said, “Nobody talked about divorce in those days. It was a taboo subject,
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especially if somebody in the family was divorced-at gatherings, you didn’t talk
about it.”
Divorce as Unspeakable, a Solution or About Children
There were a few who were taught or believed that divorce is only a
solution to a problem. Chris, contrary to those who heard about bad people and
sin, claims she was taught and she believed that, “Divorce is and always has been:
if it didn’t work, you needed to do something to fix that.” Ruth is more like Chris,
“I always considered it as an acceptable thing to do. If you weren’t happy, you got
a divorce.” Rod joins Chris and Ruth. He believed that divorce was, “Something
that you did when it didn’t work out. It was pretty simple.”
The participants also told me that, even at an early age, divorce made them
think of children. Andy-at 28 the youngest person I interviewed-thought about the
children. To Andy, divorce meant, “Splitting families apart. If there’s children, then
one had to go with one and people didn’t necessarily get along with each other
once they got divorced.” Ed was taught by being a child o f divorce. Divorce meant
something personal to Ed as a child, right then and there. “I really didn’t give it
much thought as to what it was to be-just more of what it was on the children of
divorce.” Ed said that being a child of divorce [in the SOs and 60s] made him feel,
“Different, it made me feel inadequate and just not normal. The normal was to
have two parents at home and I always questioned why I was different, why my
family wasn’t that way.”
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The Double Standard of Divorce
Hochschild commented that the modem version o f the “fallen woman” is
the divorcee (Arendell, 1986). Nan is one who had learned a very gendered view
o f divorce. “When I grew up, there was a woman in our neighborhood who was
divorced, and she was kind of like looked down upon. There was still that stigma.
It was not a good thing to be a divorcee.” Lily remembers learning a gendered
view from her family’s attitude before her 1946 marriage, “Divorced people were
really looked down on. It was something to be said in a hushed voice, kept from
the children. Morally they were simply disgraceful if they divorced. There was
something really wrong with him or her, or both. Divorced women were looked at
as being cheap, easy. They were simply scorned; they weren’t our kind of people.
We didn’t associate with people like that. There weren’t any o f them in our
family.” Ron talks about women’s predicament: “There was a certain amount of
shamefiilness connected with it... in the sense that a woman who was not
married was looked down on in those days. A woman’s badge of
accomplishment was measured by her husband." Dean’s mother was judgmental
o f divorced women: “Usually [my mother] would be harder on the woman than on
the man. It would [be] the harlot kind o f a syndrome. The loose morality. ‘I don’t
know how she could do that to her children’ would be a very dominant kind o f a
thing that she would talk about.” Laura’s father was also critical of divorced
women, “That [divorced women] were somehow immoral, except that wasn’t the
word that was used. My father might call a woman who was divorced a slut or not
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123
a nice person. I remember about the woman being not a nice person more than the
man not being not a nice person.” Further, Laura said, “My father would say that
the woman was either a slut or a whore. I remember him-after he played a minor
part in a movie-saying something about an actress . . . she was loose! I know that
it was derogatory.” Mary: “[Divorce] was an ugly word. It was something that
wasn’t even supposed to be thought of. If you divorced, it made you look like a
used-up woman or something. Very old, Gothic-sounding ways, but it was
something you just didn’t do. Mainly because it was an insult or a slap in the face
to the family. I know that sounds crazy, but that was just how we were raised.
You just don’t get divorced. No matter how bad it is, you stick with it until the
very end.” A divorced woman is a woman who is known to have had sexual
experience. Then it is assumed that she will not be able to make moral or rational
choices about her sexuality-as if all her restraints are removed by her prior
marriage and divorce.
The participants are relating not just gendered messages, but sexualized
messages as well. These messages reinforce an ages-old double standard: Its fine
for men to want sex, but a woman who wants sex-or is not satisfied with her
mate-is somehow sick or bad. There is a definite undertone o f the double standard
of sexuality in the participants’ accounts, which makes divorce that much more
undesirable to the participants.
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Learning from Their Parents
Some participants learned from their parents’ divorce experience. Ellen was
one. “My mother had such a horrible childhood and her mother and father
separated so many times and then they got divorced. That was really hard for her.
Divorce was negative, very negative. Then, on my father’s side, they were very
religious . . . nobody got divorced.” Rod learned from his mother’s experience,
“My mother’s family [sent her] to a Catholic school. When she divorced my father,
she was excommunicated from the church. We heard about that from time to time
so that had it’s own subliminal message . . . . I picked up more by the modeling
around me . . . I didn’t really have any definitive overt messages.” Fay was taught
by her mother’s example, “I recall some people having a discussion, not about
divorce, but about decisions, “You’ve made your bed, lie in it.” My mother’s bed
was horribly terrorizing, living with my dad. I think she had asked for help from
her mother and father. They more or less told her to go pound sand, "cause they
could see that she wasn’t going to leave my dad and there wasn’t much they could
do to interfere with his dominance. So it was pretty much an acceptance on her
part. She was just gonna have to put up with whatever he dished out.” That
changed with Fay’s generation. Not only Fay, but also three siblings and her father,
have all divorced three or more times. In Polly’s childhood, divorce took on more
reality than it did for other participants, “In my family’s situation, my mother didn’t
have too much o f a choice. My father was in and out o f Camarillo three times. He
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125
was a crazy person. She wasn’t that much better, but she was functioning as a
human being.” To Polly, divorce meant, “The end o f a marriage that went South.”
Mary’s parents continued to teach her about marriage and divorce right
into her marriage, “That stigma about divorce [that I heard] growing up, I was
worried o f what my parents would think. Maybe because my mother lived in that
abusive situation, and they thought it was OK to do that. In fact, [my father]
would come to my husband, and say. T he only way to keep a woman submissive
is to beat the shit out of her.’”
Their churches had a role in what they learned and what they believed. Kari
was taught about divorce by her church, “You just didn’t. In Jehovah’s Witnesses,
you wouldn’t be divorced. That would be really frowned on.” Laura talks about
the threat perceived by many in the Catholic church, “All that I knew was that you
were excommunicated from the church if you got a divorce.” Carla learned in
church that marriage was for life, divorce was terrible for families with one, not
two parents.
What the participants learned and believed about divorce in their early
years leading up to their first marriage is similar to what most working class to
middle class Americans learned about and believed over the last 50 years. Certainly
what they learned and believed would not make them want to take divorce lightly
or enter into it easily. Quite the opposite, the participants did not want divorce and
often put off the necessity of divorce longer because o f what they were taught and
what they believed.
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Family History of Divorce
They divorced in spite o f their family’s history o f divorce. The theory o f
intergenerational transmission o f divorce (Glenn & Kramer, 1985; Pope &
Mueller, 1976) would imply that the multiply divorced would likely come from
families of divorce. However, that was not true for all participants. The
participants’ family histories revealed that as many as seven (22%) o f the 32
participants were from a completely divorce-free family. Bryn admitted, “I was the
first divorce in the family.” These participants are sensitive to the family legacy
which ended with them. Toni proclaims, “I broke the mold!” Dan owns that,
“Nobody divorced! Nope. I initiated it!” As the first in the family to divorce they
felt as if they have done something that affected the whole family. Dave said, “I’ve
done that enough for everyone in the family.” The tone and words they used
conveyed how badly they felt about breaking a valuable family tradition-like a
favorite heirloom antique vase. Mary said, “I’m the only one. . . . I broke
tradition!” Rose tells how her deviation from her family’s history o f intact
marriages tended to increase her sense o f stigma, her sense that she was seen as
bad, “I was not only the first one to get divorced, but I was the first one to get
divorced three times! (She laughs) Certainly, I was naughty! Naughty!! Naughty!!!
Being the first in the family added a special weight to their divorce.
There were previous divorces in some o f the other participants’ families.
While the parents of eighteen participants (56%) remain in legally intact marriages,
the parents o f thirteen-less than half-(41%) had divorced. At least one person in
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127
the last three generations o f families of 242 0 participants (75%) had experienced
divorce at least once. Twenty-two (69%) of the participants had divorced siblings.
A total o f seven siblings of participants had divorced three or more times. Twelve
(38%) o f the participants had at least one divorced grandparent.
Two participants (6%) each had a sibling with four divorces. Three fathers
(9%), those of Kyle and Sally, as well as the father of siblings Dick and Fay, had
each divorced three or more times. Six participants’ families (19%) had someone
in all three generations who had divorced, but the most divorced family in this
study is that o f Dick and Fay-who had two more four-times divorced siblings as
well as their three-times divorced father. The most-divorced relative o f a
participant was Rod’s eight-times divorced brother.
No Parental Support for Divorce
Some participants divorced in spite of the fact that they had little or no
support from their parents for their divorces. Those who did receive support
typically were the women with children, who could not financially support
themselves and their children (Arendell, 1986; Arendell, 1987; Kurz, 1995; Pearce,
1993; Weitzman, 1985). Irene and Glory had moved to California from the
Midwest, separating from their parents. Irene did not even tell her parents when
she got married, or when she had a child. Polly had little support from her parents.
Toni still does not have a relationship with her parents today:
Z 0 The parents o f one o f the participants (>l% ) had never married.
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128
[My first divorce was] lonely, because my parents
were really not supportive at all. And when I say
‘supportive,’ I mean emotionally. They’d sometimes
take [my son] out on a Sunday or something, but
that was about it... . They don’t even know [about
my last divorce]. I have nothing to do with my
parents .... I haven’t been in touch with them for a
long time.
Toni and Polly are not the only ones who did not receive any parental
support. Others of these women had to make their own way when they became
single. The men-who seldom had the same around-the-clock burden of childcare
or the same financial challenges as the women-also seldom spoke of parental
support. The parental support grew less likely as the dysfunction of the parents
increased in severity. Considering, also, that the participants’ mean age at the
interview was 52, many of the participants’ parents were no longer alive.
Disadvantages of Divorce for Women
The women divorced in spite of some disadvantages they encountered.
Kurz (1995) studied divorced women and found that:
By far the most difficult aspect o f their divorce
according to the women she studied, ‘Was living on
a reduced income and managing as a single parent..
[A mothers’] income drops sharply, with the result
that 39 percent of all divorced women with children
live below the official poverty level’ (p.77).
The multiply divorced women in my study-similar to the women in Kurz’
study-spoke o f the disadvantages o f their divorces as: becoming a single parent.
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not having a father/stepfather for their children, and having all the responsibility for
the children with little or no help, and financial difficulty. Single mothers faced
financial difficulty. Being a single parent required an ample income to meet the
children’s needs. As Mary expressed, the disadvantage of her divorce was:
“Financial. Just financial. Having to really go out there with two children this time
and really trying to make ends meet.”
Kurz (1995) talks of several different strategies divorced mothers come up
with to try to make ends meet. One of the most common was to get a second job.
It is harder for women than for men to earn enough to support a family. While the
earnings difference was greater in the past, since 1980 women’s average earnings
have increased faster than men’s. It has now reached 74 cents for each dollar a
man earned in 1996 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1997). Mary is one who had to
take a second job, “I worked two jobs but it was worth it because we were happy
and safe.” Mary’s inability to generate a larger income by herself put her in a
position where she took the drastic action o f granting the full guardianship for her
son to his step-father-Mary’s second husband. She explained:
[My second husband] has always used finances and
trips here or ‘I’ll pay for this’ or ‘I’ll buy you that’
to keep [my son] more or less in sync with him. I
believe there’s a love and there’s a bond, but there’s
also that financial. This is why [my son] moved back
in with him at sixteen-and-a-half years old. As a
single mother, I was providing everything I could. I
would meet my son even half-way if he could meet
me half-way on some really fancy shoes that cost
over $200-things you don’t really have to pay for,
but they have to have ‘cause it’s style. ‘I’ll put in a
hundred, you put in a hundred, everybody’s happy.
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Otherwise, you’re gonna stick with the one hundred
dollar shoes if you want me to buy them.’ But the
thing was [my second husband] was able to convince
[my son] that he could financially give [my son]
more of what he wanted materialistically as a
teenager than [his] mother was able to give him. So
[my son] felt that it was more advantageous for him
to move back at home [with his step-father]. So I
asked my son, ‘Is this what you really want?’ He
said, ‘Yes.’ And I signed over the guardianship
papers.
Mary’s situation demonstrates a point that Kurz (1995) makes: fathers
sometimes take advantage of a mother’s lessened financial situation to get what
they want from the mother. Kurz notes that fathers use “custody blackmail” to
bargain for lower spousal and child support payments. According to Kurz, fathers
might also use custody “as a tool o f harassment.”
The mothers in this study would get a divorce in spite o f the fact they knew
they would become a single mother with no help. Women-even when the divorce
was their own decision-did not want to become single parents. They were
concerned about having all of the responsibility, having to watch the children,
provide care for the children, and having to support the children. They were
concerned about how their children would deal with losing a father-or a step
father. Women overwhelmingly noted that becoming a single parent was a big
disadvantage o f their divorce. Just the idea o f becoming a single parent was
distasteful to Ellen:
Definitely did not want to be a single mother. Pissed
off! I remember when I was young I would meet
other single mothers and say, ‘I’U never be a single
mother. This will never happen to me.’ So it was
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131
just like, ‘Oh my God!’ And in those days, there
wasn’t as much support, there wasn’t as much talk
about single parents.
For some women, becoming a single mother meant hearing discouraging
words from others, similar to what Bryn heard from her father, “My dad told me I
should put my son up for adoption because being a single mother was impossible.”
Mary and Bryn both gave “being a single parent” as the disadvantage of
divorce and Ellen elaborated even further: “Having to be a single parent. Not
having a father in the same city to share. For both o f us, I was tired!” For some,
like Rose, becoming a single parent presented a very frightening prospect:
I was very scared. I had two children. They were six
and seven years old, and [my second husband] never
gave me any money-ever, ever, ever! I was terrified!
1 was frightened, raising his children, although I
knew I’d stay involved with him. But still it’s scary
to be 100 percent responsible for everything. I could
call him and he would come right over, but that was
difficult.
This feeds from the popular belief that children need two parents because
supervising activities and giving emotional support is very stressful for one person
alone. There are o f course, those who do not believe it takes two parents. June
Stephenson (1991), author of The Two-Parent Family Is Not The Best is one of
them. Stephenson’s studied 368 women who were raised either by single fathers,
or by single mothers, or by both biological parents, or by a step-parent and
biological parent. One of her conclusions is that there is “no family composition,
that by its structure, is better than another family structure” (p. 2). Still, people
continue to believe that children need two parents. Mothers such as Ellen, feel that
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132
a disadvantage o f the divorce was that she would not have a father to help with the
children. For Nan, the disadvantage was a combination o f having all the
responsibility plus her daughter’s loss of a step-father relationship. “Oh, tons [of
disadvantages]! Here I was alone with this. Not only did I have a handicapped
child, my other daughter . .. had become very close to [my third husband]. I had
two kids. Just everything!”
Ellen felt sad for her daughter when she saw the emotional impact of her
third divorce on her child. She claimed this was “another disappointment, another
abandonment for me and my daughter. No more step-dad, you know, that kind of
thing.” As Ellen said, the women filed for divorce in spite o f the fact that the
children would have no father-or stepfather.
Similar to, but not exactly the same as, the focus on the mother having no
help is the focus on having no father-child relationship for the child. Sally
explained that it was “just that the boys would never get to really know their father
because he was sick. Bryn added, “My daughter. .. really missed [her] dad. She
missed him.” Sadly, these mothers may be right. The reality is that many children
see their father much less, if at all, after divorce. Kurz quotes the National Survey
of Families and Households figures when she presents that “roughly 30 percent of
divorced fathers did not see their children at all in the previous year, 60 percent of
divorced fathers saw their children several times or less during the year, and only
25 percent saw their children weekly” (Kurz, 1995, p. 149).
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133
This was not just for biological father-child relationships. In addition to the
biological or adopted children, 20 of the 32 participants (63%) had from one to
seven step-children visiting at some time or living full-time in their home and under
their care. Dean, like Ron, did not have children of his own. Dean did, however,
have meaningful relationships with four step-children who lived with him, two
during his third marriage. “[My step-son] was a handful. I was one of the people
that could really relate to him. [The step-children] were shattered [by the divorce].
They made the decision for me much more complicated, much more difficult. I
remember [my step-son], the night that I said that I was divorcing [his mother],
there was this rage, scuffling, and he was just crying and saying, ‘What about me?
What’s gonna happen to me?’ He was in high school at the time. Just fifteen-
sixteen years old. It just pulled it down around me and it really, really put [my
step-daughter] down a lot. She was a senior in high school.” Dean clearly was
disturbed by the effect the divorce was having on these children. His relationship
with them had become very important to him and losing contact with them was a
big disadvantage of this divorce. He tried to maintain contact with them but it was
difficult under the circumstances. “I tried real hard [to maintain a relationship].
[With my step-son], it was difficult. He became real self-protective. We made
arrangements, a couple of times to meet at lunch. He would call at the last minute
and say that.. . something else that came up. So I quit trying to push that. . . . I
stayed in contact with [my step-daughter] up through college graduation and have
not been in contact since then. It became difficult for her to maintain a friendship
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134
because o f the stress it put on her mother.” Nan mentioned the fact that the
divorce meant that she was losing “that broken dream of having the family like the
marriage like my parents. That was already broken.”
Disadvantage of Divorce for Men
Divorce happened in spite of the disadvantages the women saw. There
were disadvantages from the men’s standpoint as well, typically different from the
disadvantages cited by the women. One unexpected finding in my research is the
number of men who immediately noted the disadvantage for them was their loss of
relationship with their children. Men were almost unanimous in voicing that to
them the disadvantage was the distance it placed between them and their children.
This was the first and the biggest disadvantage of their divorce that came to the
men’s mind. Rod reflected that “the only disadvantage was my daughter, the
relationship that I didn’t have with my daughter. . . . Not being able to guide the
kids.” And Dan added that he “wouldn’t see my kids. I wouldn’t be with them very
much. That was about the main disadvantage.” Dave saw his kids regularly, but he
missed having the everyday contact. “Although I saw my kids every time I wanted
them, there was not waking up with your kids everyday.
Dan was very consistent. After his first divorce he said the disadvantage
was that he “wouldn’t see my kids. I wouldn’t be with them very much.” After his
second divorce he said the disadvantage was “not getting to see [my son] all the
time.” Andy recognized his loss was his relationship with his son; he had not
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expected it. “My son. But I don’t think [I was] truly aware o f it until [I]
experienced] it.” Brad’s separation from his children was more recent, and more
poignant:
I’m dying for the kids . . . I don’t know what’s
happening with the kids right now at all. I have no
clue what to do. I’m leaving it up to them when they
want to come over here because they’re totally
bored here. This whole place is the size o f my
bedroom over there and my living room. They have
no friends here; they have no toys. I’m trying to get
toys, but I don’t have enough money to buy enough
toys to occupy them or a place to put it. They want
to see their friends. My son is old enough that he’s
got friends he sees every night, and my daughter has
friends she sees every night, and they’re totally
bored here.
Fathers spoke o f their emotions related to the concept o f being a divorced
father. As Dave relates, “I used to hate Sundays. The thing I hated most about it
was having to take the boys to dinner and it would just be me and the two of them.
I used to think everyone in the restaurant must know what’s going on .. . Just me
and these two kids. I’m sure they [knew I was] a divorced person. So I used to
hate Sunday nights.”
The disadvantages were not limited to biological parent-child relationships.
As noted above, Dean related, “The disadvantage was losing contact with [step
daughter] and [stepson], knowing that it was a big risk. I was well aware of it at
the time.” Dick and Ed both decry their ability to be with the kids.
Fathers were just as likely to mention the disadvantage o f their kids not
having two parents together. Dick said, “[It is] just about the kids. I felt really
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136
guilty about them not having their mother and father together.” And Ed echoes
that sentiment, saying the disadvantage is “that I lost everyday contact with my
children. For myself and my children, [that they are not] having a mother and
father that lived together in the home.” And Dick talked about the impact divorce
had on his relationship with his children: “Well, it’s affecting my relationship with
my children right now . . . I’m alienated from them to a degree.” All of the fathers
felt alienated from their children and all grieved this loss of contact.
EFFECTS OF THE OBSTACLES
The effects of the participants’ anti-divorce sentiments caused these men
and women to stay married longer, often deliberating a long time before filing for
divorce. How long did they think about each divorce before acting? The public
perception o f the multiply divorced is that they quickly run for a divorce at the first
tweak of discomfort, but that is not what I found-even in cases where the decision
was made hastily. The participants in this study often were thinking of divorce for
several months or years in the face of the stress and difficulty in their marital
conditions. Those who deliberated for years spent anywhere from one to seven
years in discomfort before making a decision. The multiply divorced often
deliberated over long periods of time, from several months to several years, before
they decided on divorce as a course of action, as the following table2 1 shows:
2 1 These numbers do not equal the 111 divorces in the study because
nineteen o f the men’s divorces and eight o f the women’s divorces were not
initiated by the participant.
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Quickly After Months AfterYears
Women 14 29 23
Men 6 12 4
Table 4 - Time Participants Deliberated Before Taking Action
Other studies report that women suffer greater personal disruption during
the pre-separation phase o f divorce (Colburn, Lin & Moore, 1992; Kaslow &
Schwartz, 1987). In this study, the women said that they decided very quickly to
separate and to file for a divorce not because o f a tendency to make flip decisions.
On closer examination it appeared that these women were often acting quickly in
order to get themselves and their children out o f the personal disruption in their
homes that had turned dangerous. Most of the 111 divorces in this study were
drawn out and very painfiii-not easy at all-ffom the time of the first thought of
divorce until the time that the divorce was concluded.
This [myth] says that most couples have not tried
hard enough or long enough to save their
relationship. While this may be true in some cases,
many couples have tried hard and for a long
time-sometimes as long as six or seven years. When
children are involved, separation is a particularly
powerful and drastic step. Most people realize that it
will change their life forever. They don’t do it lightly
(Ricci, 1997, p. 17).
The question of how long the participant considered divorce was not
fruitful or meaningful in all cases, as the one who did the deliberating and
deciding-the “leaver” (Emory, 1994) may not have been the participant, but their
former spouse. Typically, the one who receives the news-the “left”— is shocked and
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138
does not have time to adjust to this news before the other, who has had time to
plan, has filed the petition and the divorce is on its way (Bohannan, 1970; Fisher,
1981; Kitson, 1992). Multiply divorced individuals may be looked upon as if they
had been the ones to initiate all their divorces but the stories of these individuals
show that neither the leaver nor the left is consistently the same person. Very few,
if any, of these divorces could be characterized as impulsive and ill-begotten. Eve
agrees, “Yeah! It took me three years before I reached the point that I figured,
‘Hey! This is really getting bad!’” The participants, as Eve, were well aware of the
stigma attached to their status (see Chapter 5 - Stigma), and did not want to create
further cause for self- or other-rebuke.
Like Eve, it appears the women were willing to stay and try to salvage the
marriage-still trying to “make it work.” Mental health professionals or personal
support systems might have questioned them or asked them to question
themselves-maybe using Ann Landers’ famous question, “Would you be better off
with or without (your spouse)?” As mentioned earlier, some were thinking of
divorce even before they entered their marriage.
Likewise, the deliberation does not get easier (Chapter 1 - Introduction, p.
4) or shorter with the next divorce. The experience o f the participants reveals that
reality is just the opposite. It js difficult and gets more difficult. They know the
legal steps to take, the number to call to retain an attorney, the legal papers to file
and where, but what is not easier for them is to face the comments and attitudes of
the general public, as well as their friends and family (see Chapter 5 - Stigma). It is
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difficult to face those who do not understand, do not offer support. It is difficult to
face themselves, to face their own negative self-talk and self-deprecating attitudes.
As Toni’s conversation with herself before her second divorce demonstrates,
practice does not make getting a divorce any easier for the multiple divorced.
It was hard and it was a more difficult divorce. I
must have thought o f this one for seven or eight
months. I really did not want to do it, but I kept on.
I remember driving to work and riding home every
day going, ‘I should! I shouldn’t! I should! I
shouldn’t!’ It was [a] much more difficult kind of
decision to have to make. There were kids involved
and they were older.
In most of the men’s cases, their former wives had initiated the divorce.
When men did file for divorce, they tended to decide and take action quickly. They
might say the words, and then immediately leave or file the papers. Ron said he
“Just told her.” Dean thought about his second and third divorce for less than a
month before he filed the petition. Kyle took a different approach:
I just felt that it looked better [if my wife filed]
because it gets printed in the paper. It’s a very small
town and it looked better for her, than if I filed,
because I didn’t want her to be hurt. She had to be if
I filed. With both my wives . . . we agreed on
everything and worked it out. I just didn’t want it to
come out in the paper like I dropped them.
Kyle appeared to put more thought into the process, wondering what the
effect o f the filing would have on each of his wives.
Instead o f asking why the participants left their marriages, one could
wonder why they stayed in them so long. Like Chris, they sometimes lacked the
financial means to leave:
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Four years! I was in a miserable marriage for four
years. My daughter wanted me to move into her
one-bedroom apartment with her [and her] live-in
boyfriend and her baby child. I said, ‘[Daughter],
this is not going to work.’ I could not afford to
move out!
Sometimes they stayed for the security the marriage provided in spite of
abuse within it. They sometimes stayed because they were not in touch with their
own feelings, needs and rights (Hochschild, 1983), the feelings that could protect
them from what is happening to them. Ruth describes how it was for her
throughout several different stages o f her third divorce. In the beginning of her
third marriage, she and her husband adopted a child together.
Well, it was too late. . . . By then, we had the baby. It was
almost like the wheels were set in motion by then and-for
whatever reason-I have never wanted to say that [no],
brave enough to say that, ‘No!’ I’ve never really had that
confidence in myself to stand up and say [no]. I always
think, ‘[It] could happen. We could make it work. [It] could
be a miracle.’ (She laughs.)
Ruth describes how her feelings would alert her that something was not
right in her marriage and her process of denial prolonged her third marriage, which
was not working particularly well.
Every once in a while I’d get a twinge that.. . he’s very
passive-aggressive. So every once in a while something
would creep up and I’d think, ‘What does that mean?’ You
know? Then I’d put it back under and we’d keep trudging
along.
Her ability to “put it back under” started to change for Ruth when she
began having health problems and a trip to her doctor forced her to become aware
of her situation and her choices:
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I started getting stomach problems and when I went
to the doctor, he asked me, ‘What’s new in your
life?’ And he was so cute! He said, ‘Dump him!’ But
it was true. After that I could see! Just after I’d seen
the doctor, about a week later, I was driving to
work and my thought process went, ‘What if I stop
pretending and I admit that this marriage isn’t
working? How would I feel, if I were asking for a
divorce and I was out of it? YES!!’ And I did.
When she became able to hear what her true feelings were telling her, then
she was able to move out. They stayed in the marriage, as Eve tells next, for the
children and then came to realize that their children needed or wanted the marriage
to end.
I had 5 kids in 5-1/2 years so [my oldest daughter
was] 12.1 sat them down and explained that things
weren’t working out too well, and this is not what I
had hoped for in a marriage and [my husband]
certainly wasn’t being the type of father that I felt
the kids needed and we had decided to break it up.
They just looked at me. 1 said, ‘He moved out last
night. He won’t be coming home.’ They looked at
each other and they looked at me. [My oldest
daughter] got up and ran into the bedroom, opened
the closet door, and saw that his clothes were gone.
She came back in, ‘It’s true! He’s gone! It’s true!
It’s true!’ The kids started dancing and laughing,
clapping! Yeah! Celebrating. I really felt bad. If I
knew they were that emotional about it I would have
done it sooner!
This, of course, harkens back to Chapter 3 - Marriage, which outlines the
participants’ strong belief in marriage and their belief in their ability, against all
odds, to “make it work.” Eve, who was being abused in this marriage also-once
again-demonstrates how mothers end a marriage more quickly when it is for their
children’s welfare than if it is “only” for their own welfare.
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Wished Their Parents Had Divorced
One impetus for divorce was their wish that their parents-with the same
kinds o f issues-would have divorced. While the best interests o f the children are
generally believed-when safe and stable-to be met by the intact marriage o f the
parents, the eighteen participants whose parents remained together, troubled or
not, remember wishing that their parents would have divorced. Toni said she “sort
o f grew u p . . . feeling sorry for [my father] and wishing that they would have
gotten a divorce because it was a very unhappy childhood and a very unhappy
marriage and it still is.” Dean acknowledged, “My parents should not have stayed
together.” Even if the wish was not clearly stated, they still questioned their
parents marriages, as Mary does, “We never understood why our mother stayed
with this man. We could not understand why she just didn’t get up and move with
us kids, and get us out o f that violent atmosphere.” Ron wondered why his father
did not see his mother the same way that he did: “I never got along with my
mother, and I never saw what my father saw in her.” When Brad’s parents
discussed the subject o f divorce, he and his siblings were blamed. “They told us a
lot that they were staying together for us.” But, Brad added, “I didn’t really see a
marriage there.” Rose quite bluntly told her mother she should have divorced,
“After all, [my mother] was married to my father for fifty years, and it wasn’t easy,
and she didn’t divorce him. Me and my typical bad mouth fashion [told my
mother], “Well, maybe you should’ve! Maybe you wouldn’t have had migraine
headaches and ulcers!”
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Like Rose, other participants who observed their parents as staying
together through many difficult problems went so far as to believe-and sometimes
to tell their parents-that they should have divorced. Living through the travesty of
their own parents’ marriage may have encouraged the participants to consider their
own divorce. This may have created the resolve on their part, as in Mary’s case: “I
wasn’t gonna allow myself, like my mother, to be so submissive and so scared that
we were gonna be beat to a pulp till the day we died.” They did not want to
tolerate the same dysfunction in their own marriage.
Not Mv Parents’ Marriage
While the participants preferred to be married-as do most other
people-they do not want to replicate their own parents’ marriage. They do not
want to "sit and take it’ as their parents did. Not only has the threshold changed for
what constitutes good (married) life (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983; Schwartz,
1994; May, 1980), but the threshold has changed for what is not acceptable in
marriage. The participants vowed not to tolerate the serious problems o f their
parents marriage in their own marriage. Colburn, Lin & Moore (1992) say that
amongst women seeking divorce the most frequently-used justifications are sexual
incompatibility and lack o f communication; but women will also and often cite the
individual pathologies-drug use, alcohol abuse, physical abuse, or infidelity-of
their spouse. My research supports the findings of Kaslow and Schwartz (1987),
Kitson (1992) and Kurz (1995), in that it shows that when women seek divorce it
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144
is often because o f the hard-living characteristics (Rubin, 1976) of alcoholism or
drug abuse, domestic violence or infidelity of their husband.
Grounds for Divorce
Sadly, the multiply divorced often get divorced for the same problems that
they had seen in their parents’ marriages. In spite of the fact that they did not want
to replicate their parents’ marriages, they often found themselves in the same or
similar predicament in their own marriages, as Mary puzzled, “It’s amazing how
you want to get away from that stuff and you end up walking right into it.” The
difference is that, having witnessed the dynamics in the former situation, they
chose not to stay in a marriage containing the same or similar dynamics as their
parents’ marriage.
The problem issue for the 60 divorces for the 14 divorces
in the marriage was: filed bv the women: filed bv the men
substance abuse 27 or 45% 4 or 29%
infidelity 23 or 38% 5 or 42%
financial problems 22 or 37% 2 or 17%
parenting 22 or 37% 3 or 25%
battering 21 or 35% -
communication problems 17 or 28% 5 or 42%
intimidation 12 or 20% 1 or 8%
controlling/dominating 12 or 20% -
child abuse 10 or 17% -
jealousy 9 or 15% -
anger/arguing 7 or 12% 5 or 42%
dishonesty, lying, mistrust 7 or 12% -
irresponsibility, immaturity 7 or 12% -
poor sexual gratification 6 or 10% -
Table 5 - Problematic Issues that Preceded Divorce
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With very few exceptions, the participants cited very serious issues,
including the circumstances that Rubin (1976) calls hard-living characteristics:
alcoholism, drug abuse, infidelity, and domestic violence. Usually more than one of
the dynamics in Table 5 were present, making the total number o f presented issues
greater than the number o f divorces filed by the women (60) or by the men (14).
Substance abuse, usually alcoholism with or without the presence o f any
other drug, impacted the dynamics o f the participants’ marriages and divorces.
One-fourth of all people live with their own substance abuse or dependence
(National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1998). Even though both men and women
participants reported marrying an alcoholic, it was more common for women
participants to have been married to an alcoholic. Only two (17% of the men)-Kyle
and Dick-married alcoholic women whereas alcoholism was a significant problem
for the husband in the first marriage o f Lily, Eve, Fay, Kari, and Chris, in the
second marriage of Carla and Irene, in the third marriage o f Glory and Laura, and
both in Sally’s third and fourth marriage, and in all three o f Leah’s marriages. In all
there were 11 women (S5%) who had been married to an alcoholic at least once .
Five participants (16%) each acknowledged that they themselves became
an alcoholic. All but Bryn had achieved twenty years of sobriety or more; while
Bryn had reached six years. Ron was a drinking alcoholic throughout his first three
marriages. Gary was drinking throughout his first two marriages but sober through
his last two marriages.
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Six (50%) o f the men reported the drug use, abuse, or addiction of one or
more o f their wives. The second wives o f both Ron and Kyle used drugs. Dick
reported that he and his first wife used marijuana together. Brad’s fourth wife used
drugs. Dave’s second wife used cocaine, and Dan’s third marriage was totally
destroyed by his wife's increasingly destructive drug addiction.
Seven (35%) of the women reported the drug abuse or addiction of one or
more o f their husbands. With the women, drug addiction was a significant factor
for the third husband o f Sally, Laura and Polly, the second husband o f Mary and
Kari, the first and second husband of Bryn and Chris’ fourth husband. The women
did not acknowledge personal drug use.
For some couples in our society, repeated aggression leads to marital
discord and contributes to the likelihood o f divorce (O’Leary, 1999). While men
did not report domestic violence in their marriages,2 2 domestic violence became an
issue for 16 (50 %) o f the women in one or more of their marriages: Irene and
Polly’s husbands were violent with them in just one marriage: “I could not subject
[my children] to . . . I could not allow them to be affected by the insanity anymore.
Myself, nor them. And-I was hiding a black eye.” Six (30%) o f the women had
domestic violence in one marriage, seven women (35%) had domestic violence in
two marriages, one (5%), Leah, encountered domestic violence in her first three
marriages, and two (10%), both Chris and Sally, had domestic violence in four
marriages.
“ Dick admitted that he once pushed his second wife-who was drunk at the
time-during an argument.
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Leah told what made her realize the danger she and her daughter were in:
It wasn’t until he came in the room one night and my
daughter yelled out, ‘Don’t hit my mommy,’ that I
realized I was not doing her any favors. And then
also, right around that same time he took one o f his
guns and . .. threatened to kill us all.
Mental or emotional disturbance played a part in Sally’s third marriage:
I did not know this when I married him, but
apparently before we were married he had smoked a
lot o f pot, he had taken LSD, he had taken
mescaline, so when he had the breakdown, or
flashback, or whatever you want to call it, wigged
out, he had to go to the state hospital. His mother
told me, ‘I never told you [about] this [because] I
never thought it would ever happen.’ So here I was,
[with] four children, a husband mentally ill. I was a
mess. . . . So, it was back and forth to mental
hospitals . . . They diagnosed him as acute
schizophrenia, manic depressive. So he took lithium.
As long as he took the lithium he was ok.
Many of the women claimed that they had experienced and tolerated
manipulating, intimidating, blaming, belittling, criticizing, domineering, and
controlling behaviors from some or all of their past partners. There was generally
little talk by the men o f experiencing intimidating or controlling behavior from their
wives, but it did exist. Dean was intimidated by his third wife, and Dick by his
second. However, Dick acknowledged that he was the intimidator in his first
marriage.
Some women talked about being teTibly depressed themselves: Rose in her
second marriage, Lily in her first and fourth marriage, Bryn in her second, and
Sally in her third marriage. Polly’s third husband and Toni’s first husband were
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each terribly depressed and both eventually committed suicide years after they
were divorced. Sally’s third husband developed schizophrenia during her marriage
to him. With the exception o f Dave’s first wife-whom Dave described her as
significantly depressed well before they married-the men did not talk about their
wives as having mental or emotional instability.
The participants did not like the anger, the shouting, screaming, arguing,
and temper tantrums displayed in their parents’ relationship. However, some
participants acknowledged that they had reproduced the display o f anger (Tavris,
1989). Four (33%) o f the men-Dick, Dean, Jim, and Brad-each had one or more
marriages which contained screaming and yelling behavior. At least eight (5%) of
the women-Chris, Irene, Polly, Fay, Rose, Carla, Bryn and Lily-experienced this
chaotic communication style of screaming and yelling in one or more of their
marriages.
It is not likely that the marriages of this study’s participants would have
good communications skills. First o f all, the role models they had-the world map
they were given-did not communicate well. The participants’ parents did not talk
about problems or issues between themselves nor did they talk about problems or
issues with their children. Not surprisingly, most o f the participants characterized
their own marriages as also lacking in communications. Seven o f the women and
eight o f the men felt their marriages suffered from lack o f communications. Their
role model showed them how not to do it. But as children they accepted what their
parents were doing as the normal way o f the world.
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SUMMARY
People sometimes divorce again and again-not because they do not believe
in the value o f marriage-but because they do. They are not willing to settle for less
than what a marriage could be or should be, a definition which does not include
“hard-living characteristics” (Rubin, 1976) and other dysfunctional dynamics that
were behind the divorces about which the participants spoke. The participants had
been taught-and they believed-that divorce was terrible and they did not want or
believe it would happen to them. The multiply divorced believed that divorce was
unthinkable and many never gave divorce a thought until it happened to them.
While they were still young, approaching the age o f marriage, they had not spent
time thinking about divorce; they had other plans for their lives.
The multiply divorced dread divorce as much as, or more so, than anyone
else. They have known the pain and disruption of divorce and they do not want it.
They do not want to divorce because their families before them did not divorce;
they had a divorce-free history or a divorce-free belief. They do not want divorce
because their families held very negative views o f divorce-especially for women
who divorced. They do not want to divorce because their churches condemn those
who divorced-especially women. They do not want divorce because of what they
learned in church and school and from their parents’ hushed voices, their parents’
scandalous whispers that “divorce is bad” and “divorced people, especially
divorced women, are wicked.” They had been given some powerful sexualized
images o f women who divorce. They do not want divorce because divorced
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women, they were told, were especially bad, sexually loose, and undesirable
persons.
Additionally, the women do not want to be divorced because it would leave
their children without a father or stepfather in the home. They women often found
the disadvantage o f divorce to be that they will be solely responsible for the care
and support o f their children with little resources to do so. As a single parent-they
will not have the time, energy or especially the money to give their children the
kind o f life they want their children to have. The men, on the other hand, found the
disadvantage o f divorce to be that it separated them from their children.
Because o f all their reasons not to want divorce, the multiply divorced may
consider filing for divorce for a long time-months or years-before they take
action. Again, they do not trust their own instincts, their own judgment. They
cannot see their own needs or feelings as creditable enough to take action. Often it
is only when they see the needs or feelings of their children that they can make a
change. Women participants often found the advantage o f divorce to be the way it
benefitted their children.
After divorce, women sought help and support from their parents in order
to survive. Men did not report seeking parental help. Conversely, some women
received no support from their parents after divorce, while the parents of other
women, sometimes the same parents from whom the participants married to
escape, were there to provide them with childcare, housing, financial and
emotional support.
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O f all the reasons why the multiply divorced do get divorced (Gigy &
Kelly, 1992) one is that many o f them wished that their parents had divorced-they
watched their parents “just put up with” hard-living characteristics and they felt the
effects o f their parents’ dysfunctional marriages. They disapproved of their
parents’ decisions to stay in such marriages and that disapproval encouraged some
of the participants to vow that they would not stay in a dysfunctional situation.
Some, like Mary, vowed not to be beaten like her mother was beaten. When they
later found themselves in the same or similar situations in their own marriages, they
were first confounded: “I can’t believe this happened to me also.” Then they were
more apt than their parents had been to eventually confront the situation and leave.
Only a few of the participants were able to see divorce in a positive light-as
a solution to a problem and not as a wicked, terrible travesty and a failure. The
multiply divorced do not find, contrary to other experiences, that divorce gets any
easier with repetition. Indeed they say it becomes harder, especially in terms of
feeling like a failure, and in facing social and internal stigma. Some, like Nan, made
the comment that they felt the multiply divorced were the ones to show courage
and moral integrity:
And actually, I think that, in some ways . . . we’re
stronger than . . . a lot of people out there who stay
married. It’s easier sometimes to stay married . . .
and not put up with the social stigma, the hassles,
the whole thing. It’s easier just to settle and I think
in some ways we’re stronger. I think that deep down
we[‘ve done] what other people wish they had the
nerve to have done.
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After all, they feel that they faced the problem and took care of it. They
had the courage to confront the problem. How many other people, they would ask,
are in marriages that are actually dangerous and damaging to their own and their
children’s well-being? Yet these other people will continue trying to make the
unworkable work, trying to remain within the so-called sanctity o f the institution
of marriage?
Chapter 5 looks into the presence and effect of divorcism-the stigma of
divorce-in the lives of the multiply divorced.
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CHAPTER 5 - STIGMA: Shame on me!
It’s really a horrible feeling like you are marked, like
you have a handicap. I can think I have as much self-
worth and I’m doing great and I feel good about
myself, but it never leaves you. You always feel like
you’re nothing because you’ve been divorced three
times. Ellen
Ellen, 39, was cohabiting and planning her fourth marriage. She grew up
hearing her parents deal with their problems by screaming and yelling, while Ellen
grew more depressed and had low self-esteem. Her wish to leave her parents’
home prompted her to marry at 22. She was scared on her wedding day, unhappy
and not in love. Her husband proved to be impotent, untrustworthy and untruthful.
She felt awful about herself throughout the four-year marriage. Ellen dreamed o f a
lasting marriage without that familiar bickering or screaming. By engaging in
counseling and support groups, she began to feel better about herself, and after
three years, she married a man who was doing well in business. This husband
abused drugs and became unemployed. He then moved out and Ellen again felt
horrible, alone, and abandoned. Another three years passed and she married a
mental health professional. Ellen called this marriage “totally stupid” and said her
parents discouraged it. Her husband-to-be and his parents strongly encouraged the
marriage, and insisted on “the big wedding” since it was the groom’s first. Ellen
was uncomfortable and embarrassed during the wedding. This husband became
verbally and emotionally abusive and intensely controlling, laying down rigid rules
for Ellen and her child. She divorced him after a year and a half.
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EUen felt an overwhelming sense o f shame and failure throughout her life.
Ellen’s father and brother tell her “jokingly” that, “[you are] just like your
grandmother,” a woman who was multiply married. Ellen’s 13-year-old child was
aware o f the stigma attached to her mother’s divorces and was embarrassed by it.
Her co-workers made comments to her about her name changes, which kept her
acutely aware o f the stigma of being multiply divorced. Yet some researchers
believe that the stigma o f the multiply divorced is no longer significant.
An article in The Los Angeles Times is a case in point. Over the article, the
headline “NOT AGAIN!” was emblazoned in large 80-point bold type and a
wedding picture was positioned above the headline-a picture o f a smiling woman
getting married for the fifth time (Doheny, 1994). The message seemed clear-that
smiling woman should not be doing this! The article under the caption contained
the argument that stigma is diminishing for the multiply divorced, while the very
large, bold, dark tone of the words ‘NOT AGAIN!’ chosen by the newspaper
editor indicated just the opposite-the stigma has not gone away. It was right there!
I heard that message from Ellen, and I heard that message from many o f the other
participants in this study. The stigma o f multiple divorce is still very much alive.
Both the norm and the stigma o f not being within the norm serve a purpose
for society. The norm provides a means o f separating people into an in group and
an out group and then determine who will be in the in group. Those who stay
within the norm are in the in group and those who fall outside o f the norm are the
out group. Since everyone wants to avoid being in-or with-the out group, society
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marks the out group with stigma. This mark o f stigma helps people recognize
others who are “different” and “undesirable,” to be avoided or not to be emulated.
The norm separates people; the stigma identifies people who have been separated.
The multiply divorced continue to experience a significant amount of
stigma for being outside of the norm of being married once. Macionis (1998)
defines stigma as “a powerfully negative label that radically changes a person’s
self-concept and social identity” (p. 134) and Smelser (1984) clarifies that “a
person with a stigma is set off from "normal’ people and considered not only
different, but less desirable” (p. 77).
The multiply divorced qualify as stigmatized people. Not having achieved
the societal ideal o f one permanent marriage, they have accumulated a tally of
divorces which in itself is an attribute that makes them different from others. This
stigma will “radically change a person’s self-concept” (Macionis, 1998, p. 134);
the stigma manifests itself in the multiply divorced by prompting feelings of failure
and shame, which in turn, as with Ellen, can affect an individual’s feeling of self-
worth and self-esteem. The stereotypical cycle goes like this;
NORM->DEVIATE->STIGMA->FAILURE->SHAME->LESS SELF-ESTEEM
While I did encounter this downward spiral in some o f the participants’
stories, I found that it does not continue this depressing process in all cases, nor
does it universally affect the self-concept as might be expected. Some participants,
such as Dave, Leah, and others, do continue to be seriously depressed about their
multiply divorced status. At the time o f the interview Dave had been divorced
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three times, but he also considered himself a successful businessman and he was
proud o f having a very good relationship with his two sons from his first marriage.
Nonetheless, Dave was devastated and depressed by the fact that he has not been
able to maintain a marriage, judges himself a failure in relationships and said, “It’s
not something I’m very pleased to disclose.”
Dave had low self-esteem in this area of his life. Some others, such as
Chris, had found a way to cast off or reverse the effects of stigma and were feeling
very good about themselves. Chris is a very cheerful woman, and “in your face” to
others about her history o f multiple divorce. She had divorced five times and was
ten years into her sixth marriage-her longest and obviously, her best. She said that
she was never anything but optimistic about finding a good marriage and that her
siogan-throughout her series of marriages and divorces-was, “I’m just going to
keep on doing it until I get it right.”
Dave and Chris represent two different outcomes o f multiple divorce.
Several, who were more resilient-like Chris-had been able to find a much more
positive place for themselves and were in a place of good self-esteem. Others-like
Dave-were still struggling. This chapter focuses on the participants’ encounter
with stigma.
Jessie Bernard (1973) predicted that no-fault divorce would remove the
last vestiges o f stigma from divorce. Other researchers have said that the social
stigma o f divorce has already disappeared (Spanier & Thompson, 1984; Weitzman,
1985). Everett made the statement that “the stigma [of multiple divorce] is already
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fading, becausue it is becoming more common” (Doheny, 1994, p. E-3/4). In the
same article, Counts, another divorce researcher, also said, “People are not nearly
so embarrassed [as in the past] to come into my office and say, ‘I’ve been divorced
three times.” (p. E-3/4). In my experience as a therapist, however, I have found
that it is a different matter for a client to talk openly about a sensitive issue in a
closed, clinical setting such as Counts’ office, than to talk openly in any other
open, public, social setting. In such a clinical setting a person supposedly has the
assurance of confidentiality and an accompanying sense of trust in their chosen
psychotherapist that would allow him or her to talk about issues that he or she
might be extremely uncomfortable speaking about in other company.
In spite of the researchers who say that social stigma has disappeared,
according to Gerstel (1987), there are two ways in which the stigma for
divorce-even the first divorce-makes itself apparent in the lives of the divorced:
First, disapproval of a divorced individual persists
contingent on specific conditions of their divorce.
Second, the individual who divorces suffers infor
mal, relational sanctions . .. interpersonal controls
that emerge more or less spontaneously in social life.
(p. 173)
Ahrons (1994) further concurs that stigma is still a reality in the lives of the
divorced, and she introduced the term “divorcism” to signify the prejudice that is
still a part o f the perception o f those who divorce:
Once an external label (such as 'divorced’) is
applied, internal feelings may subsequently be
shaped by society’s reaction to the connotations of
that label, (p. 13)
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Goffinan (1963) describes the process society would go through in order
for the stigma to diminish:
When . . . an attribute [such as divorce] loses much
o f its force as a stigma, a period [of time]... when
the [stigma] is more and more attacked, first, on the
comedy stage, and . . . [second] in contacts in public
places until [the stigma] ceases to control... what
can be [easily addressed] and what must be kept a
secret or painfully [avoided] ( p. 137).
There are some signs that this might come about. Multiple divorce is,
indeed, already being “attacked, first, on the comedy stage” (p. 137). Multiple
divorce has been “attacked” several times in the syndicated cartoon “Single
Slices”and in other syndicated comic strips such as “Momma” and “Mary Worth.”
In one Single Slices cartoon, (Kohlsaat, 1993) cartoonist Peter Kohlsaat presents a
man simultaneously talking to-and thinking about-the man sitting next to him.
While he is saying, “You’ve been married four times? I would have never guessed.
You look so normal.” His simultaneous thought is, “My god! What if he is
normal?” This cartoon appears to question what society would think if it were to
be considered within the norm to have been married four times.
Multiple divorce also comes up fairly often in advice columns, such as Ann
Landers’ column. Some o f the participants join the 'attack with comedy,’ using
humor as their shield to defend themselves against the effects o f stigma. With the
growing numbers o f people who have experienced multiple divorces, there also are
more possibilities for “mixed contacts in public places”2 3 (Goffinan, 1963, p. 137).
“ Public places include media reports of the rich and famous persons who
have multiply divorced.
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Fifty percent of all who marry will divorce; seven percent o f all who divorce will
continue to multiply divorce. This amounts to a very large number o f people. In
spite o f Bernard’s (1973) prediction that the stigma of divorce will fade, and in
spite o f Everett and Counts (Doheny, 1994) comments that there no longer is
much stigma for the multiply divorced, the participants in this study say they are
keenly aware that there is stigma, that there is plenty o f it, and that it has a very
significant effect on their lives. The stigma is nourished and embellished by the
myths that prevail in society, mentioned in Chapter 1 - Introduction, those listed
are just a sampling o f the many myths that continually assault the multiply
divorced.
Do the participants still encounter Stigma?
Since this study was conducted in and around Los Angeles-an area which
includes the entertainment industry with its many rich and famous persons who
have multiply divorced-one might think that the stigma is not as great as it might
be in other regions o f the country. However, according to the 32 multiply divorced
individuals that I interviewed, they do experience a significant amount of stigma in
Los Angeles today and they thus take special precautions to protect that
information about themselves. The participants emphatically expressed that stigma
is part o f their experience.
Ruth, 56, and the oldest o f four children, married to escape her alcoholic
parents after she graduated from college. She immediately became pregnant, had a
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son, and then divorced two years later, after months o f marital counseling over
large parenting differences. Four years later, while obtaining the first of the two
Master’s degrees, Ruth married a man four years younger who she loved. Rather
than “live in sin,” she wanted to present a more normal and conventional model for
her young son. This husband verbally abused her child, argued with her, drank and
used drugs. Less than a year later she divorced him, but felt very sad. Single for
the next 15 years, she married a never-married-before engineer. By this time, she
had completed her second Master’s degree and received a Juris Doctorate (JD)
with a license to practice law. She had been in the process o f adopting a little girl,
so her new husband joined, becoming the adoptive father. His mother pressured
them to marry, but the purpose o f marriage for Ruth was to provide a father for
their daughter. Ruth’s husband was very passive-aggressive, but Ruth did not think
o f divorce until her doctor pointed out that her marriage was affecting her health.
She did not want to separate her daughter from “daddy,” but felt a great measure
of relief and peace after the divorce. Ruth talks about stigma as she perceived it in
her employment and community environments:
There is stigma. There is! In some walks and some
circles, there is plenty o f stigma! There are some
more conventional [areas where stigma exists]. If
you work for IBM, [for example]. .. [The stigma
varies] depending on what kind of work you do and
depending on what community you live in. Now I’m
very aware there’s probably some kind of stigma in
this community. The [neighbors are] all die-hard
Republicans. So it depends. If you are a younger
woman still trying to make your way up a corporate
ladder, there’s going to be some stigma that goes
with that.
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161
Ed also knows about the existence o f stigma. 44-year-old Ed is vice-
president o f a large corporation. His parents divorced before he was two, leaving
his father “out-of-the-picture,” Ed fantasized about what it would be like to have
his father, and vowed he himself would be a good father and would never leave his
own children. Ed’s mother physically abused him and his siblings (one of whom
has also divorced four times). The only male, Ed was expected to be “the man of
the house.” Although still somewhat resentful of this role, his entire
family-mother, his two sisters and their families, and his own children-all honor
him every Father’s Day.
When he was 18 and in the service, Ed married his 16-year-old sweetheart.
Believing that she was having an affair, he retaliated with one o f his own. But
when he found that this woman was pregnant, he divorced his wife and married her
to be the good father he had earlier vowed to be. When his two children of this
marriage started to show the effects of their parents’ loud and angry arguments,
Ed finally decided that he had to leave this marriage. His third marriage-“very
good,” “compatible”-ended after this wife became upset and jealous over the time
he spent with his children. Ed’s fourth wife divorced him because she wanted to
have her own children, although he had clearly told her that he did not want more.
Ed, now two years into his fifth marriage, is well aware o f how society looks upon
someone who has his record o f divorce:
The stigma o f a divorce is how many times you’ve
been a loser. You’re not a winner from divorce.
You’re never a winner! No one ever called you a
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winner. ‘Oh yeah! You’re a three-time winner!’ No!
You’re a three-time loser!
In this statement Ed acknowledges the stigma he feels from others and,
possibly, from himself. In fact, Ed said to me, “I’m just not really the type of guy
that should be married. It doesn’t seem to work. I’ve been unfaithful to two of my
five wives, number two and number four.” Ed stigmatizes himself, as though there
were a real flaw in his make-up. What he does not see is that his second and fourth
marriages were marriages that he originally did not want, but went through with
out o f a sense of obligation to someone else (his second wife was pregnant) or a
desire to please someone else (he enjoyed being able to give his fourth wife
expensive things). In these marriages Ed appeared both motivated by and
compliant with society’s messages: “Be nice! Do the right thing!” The messages
appear to keep individuals focused on other’s needs and feelings. But none of Ed’s
marriages-the same as in the marriages of many other multiply divorced-appear to
be motivated by Ed’s knowledge of, or respect for, his own feelings-his true self.
The self of these multiply divorced often appears to have been lost or left behind.
Ed also failed to see how much his strong commitment to his children
played a part in his marrying at least once and in his divorcing at least three times.
Without the ability to discern what is really right for himself, to separate from his
feelings of obligation to other people, and to set boundaries to protect himself,
he-and many o f the other multiply divorced participants-had no recourse but to
believe that there was something bad or wrong about himself, thus further
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internalizing society’s stigma. The multiply divorced, then, become ever more clear
that they are not within the norm of the society in which they live.
Does Stigma Increase with each Divorce
Individuals encounter stigma after any divorce (Ahrons, 1994; Gerstel,
1987), and certainly after two divorces, but the stigma that the multiply divorced
experience appears to increase with each successive divorce. Laura said, “I was
ashamed! It was worse to have [divorced] three times.” Divorcism is part o f the
experience of many o f the multiply divorced, both in the way others respond to
them and in the way they view their own circumstance, as in Ed’s comment, “It’s
just the stigma. If you’d only been divorced once, people don’t make snide
remarks. Even divorced two or three times, then the remarks start. You’re
becoming the butt of the joke!” The amount of stigma they feel varies with their
experiences. Contrary to other experiences that get easier with repetition (see
Chapter 1 - Introduction, p. 11) the multiply divorced tell me that their discomfort
increases with each successive divorce. Kari explains how she perceives it,
“O-o-o-h, it’s really ugly! See, once could be just a mistake. But three times is like
a pattern, and it had all that ugliness about it.” Clearly the stigma experienced by
the participants after their third or subsequent divorce became harder for them to
bear.
Both the external and internal stigma increases with the increasing
experience o f divorce, and this stigma does not discriminate. The stigma will
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continue to apply to each party regardless o f which one initiated the divorce, who
was the reluctant one, whether the divorce happened last week or twenty years
ago. Regardless o f the circumstances, if one has been divorced three or more times
the stigma is there and it does not go away.
Where Does this Stigma Originate?
The multiply divorced do not have to go very far to find stigma. When they
were in mixed groups or with friends, family, and former spouses, they heard
someone making ridiculing or snide comments about their own or others’ multiply
divorced status.
People in general deliver the stigma message to the multiply divorced. Sally
(Chapter 4 - Divorce, page 109), married to her seventh husband for eight years,
knows about stigma. She has heard the way people talk about those who have
been married multiple times:
The other day I was sitting in a group. They were
making fun of someone [who] had been married five
times. They were [saying], “Oh, my God!” If they
only knew (she laughs) I’d been married seven
times, I’m on my seventh husband! “This guy’s
crazy, he’s been married six times. Can you imag
ine?” “No,” someone would say, “I know someone
that’s been married five times and I just can’t
imagine anybody being married that many times.
Those people have to be crazy to be. . I just
thought, “I’m not getting into this!”
The participants also observed how others reacted when they said that they
are multiply divorced right to other’s faces. The participants quickly learned how
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others felt from the gasps and the shocked responses that followed. When 50-year-
old Polly first married at age 18, she was pregnant and wanted to get away from
her physically and verbally abusive mother. Polly made every effort, in each of her
three marriages, to make it work, but each ended in divorce. As o f the time of the
interview, Polly had been single for 8 years, but she still encounters the stigma of
her three marriages:
And then people say, “Oh, you’ve been married
three times?” and raise an eyebrow. They just kind
o f look at [me] in a way like, “You must be a
handful!” [I] definitely get a feeling that people think
that there’s something wrong with [me].. .
Definitely, definitely! And if they do say something,
if [I]’ve given them that information, its like,
“Ooooh!?!”
And Dean, 56, was eleven years into his fourth marriage. A self-described
rescuer, he said he would get involved with a woman while he was still in his
previous marriage, leading to divorce, remarriage and a new woman to rescue.
Therapy revealed blocked-out memories o f childhood sexual abuse and Dean now
understands that this, combined with a difficult childhood relationship with his
mother, fostered his pattern. Right in the middle of our interview he diverted from
his customary jovial and confident self and covered his face, crying openly from
the pain he could still feel. Since Dean is a successful and well-liked professional,
the way he is seen in the world today does not fit the stereotype o f one multiply
divorced.
When people would find out that I’d been married
three or four times-absolute shock! ‘Not you?!!
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You just don't seem like the kind o f person to be
married three or four times.’
To the people Dean refers to, he did not seem like “that kind of person.”
But what kind o f person is “that”? Those who made the comments referred to an
image composed of the characteristics listed as myths (see Chapter 1 -
Introduction, p. 1 l)-an image that people expect the multiply divorced to
resemble-someone very different from themselves. This is an image that they did
not see in Dean. The people expected to see the “other” the “out-person” and
someone they would recognize immediately as someone not like themselves. The
reactions that the participants see and hear when others discovered their divorced
status left them without any doubt that the multiply divorced are not favorably
accepted, nor even closely understood.
For some, like Brad and Fay, stigma came from a former spouse. Fay
recalled, “One time [my daughter] told me that her dad made a comment. She said
I was getting married and he went, "Again!?!’ (she laughs) It was real snide.”
Stigma can exist within a close relationship. Brad no longer felt as invulnerable as
he did in his earlier marriages. Even after those marriages ended he maintained
friendly relationships with his former spouses. He enjoyed a good relationship with
his adult son. Brad was the primary parent much of his son’s life. Brad felt
pressured into his fourth marriage by his wife’s parents, yet after many years of
straining to make this marriage work. Brad finds himself alone because his wife
filed for divorce. He dearly missed his two young children, adopted in this union.
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This parting-unlike his earlier experiences-was an unfriendly one, full o f anger and
incrimination. She was often the source of the stigma he received:
There’s a stigmatism. There’s a lot of stigma
involved with four marriages, there’s a lot! I always
have caught it, every time [my fourth wife and I] had
an argument, ‘Well, you think you’re right? This is
your fourth time, fella.’ How could you be right, it’s
your fault!’
So-called friends delivered messages with stigma attached. Brad and Eve
talked about stigma and shunning from friends on page 176. Chris, 50, in the ninth
year o f marriage to her sixth husband, shared some of her own experience with
stigma received from friends.
Most people think that ‘three-time loser.’ You
know, you get a stigma to it by then. They start
talking about Elizabeth [Taylor] and her divorces.
‘What are you trying to do? Catch up with her or
something?’ There’s [these] comments made [by]
supposed friends.
Family members-including mothers or fathers-were sometimes the source
of stigmatized treatment or words. Ellen’s father (Chapter 5 - Stigma, page 154)
derides her for being like her grandmother. Toni related how her mother “hid”
Toni’s divorce from Toni’s uncle and aunt, which let Toni know that her divorce
was a problem. Chris, Mary, and Bryn each had a brother who was very
judgmental about their divorce status. Mary and Rose both talked about family
sources of stigma in this next segment on internalized stigma.
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168
How Does Internalized Divorcism Operate?
Other people’s reactions were not the only source of their stigma. The
multiply divorced also encountered stigma from within themselves. Goffinan
(1963) explained that: A stigmatized person is . . . like anyone else, trained . . . in
others’ views o f persons like himself (p. 134).
Anyone who entered a stigmatized situation after living within the norm is
very aware of the stigma involved, having learned about it in the same way others
do before acquiring the characteristic for which they now find themselves
stigmatized (Goffinan, 1963). The participants learned their perception o f multiple
divorce from society around them-long before they themselves attained that
status-so the stereotype and the attitude were already there, ready for them to take
upon themselves. I call this “internalized divorcism,” based on Greene’s (1994)
examination o f internalized racism in the lives of African American women. Greene
(1994) argued that internalized racism was observed in African American women
when they internalized both the negative stereotypes about African Americans and
their cultural origins and the idealization o f the White person and their cultural
imperatives, negatively affecting their sense of self (p.20). Similarly, internalized
divorcism was observed in the multiply divorced when they embrace the
idealization of the cultural imperative o f marriage for all time, negatively affecting
their sense of self. As Rose said, “This was all inside o f me. But we start to blame
ourselves for his failures. It’s my fault, if I had done this, or [if I had] been a better
wife.” Leah and Dave also spoke of this internalized stigma:
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I feel a stigma still.... Oh yeah! Well, it would have
to have been out there at one time or another, but as
far as did anything happen today? No! Nothing
happened today or last week or last month or even
last year. But I still feel stigmatized for having been
married four times.
[The stigma] seemed to me an insurmountable emo
tional baggage to be carrying in terms o f presenting
[myself] to anyone for possible consideration in the
future. Yes! [ the stigma comes from myself].
Both men and women felt internalized stigma from multiple divorce. They
could not get away from it; even when no one else was saying anything to remind
them, they continue to cany the stigma within themselves that they were not
within the norm o f society, that they have been multiply divorced and they
reminded themselves whenever they encounter a sensitive situation or whenever
the subject came up. The multiply divorced were aware that they may encounter a
negative reaction wherever they go. The multiply divorced may even have been
very comfortable with their own life, but many o f them always felt a need to be
guarded because they might encounter someone who would not be as comfortable
as they were.
There are some differences in the way that men and women internalized the
stigma. Internalized stigma was expressed by women in the form of asking
themselves and others, “What’s wrong with me?” a question that I did not hear as
often or as clearly from the men. Rose spoke o f situations that cause women to
question their own abilities in the relationship. Rose implied, additionally, that it
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was women who took the responsibility-warranted or not-for the end of the
marriage upon themselves and the women gave it to one another.
[I was] ashamed as far as the family values that I had
instilled in me . . . that you can’t keep a man, that
there’s something wrong with you because you
can’t. Maybe I wasn’t a good homemaker, I wasn’t
a good cook. See the simple basic things we think of
which probably have nothing to do with this man,
who was crazy. It didn’t matter if he was crazy . . .
that’s the guilt you put on yourself and that’s what
we do to each other.
Not only is the marriage that ends in divorce looked upon as a failure, but
both parties to the ended marriage could be stigmatized as a failure regardless of
who did or did not want the divorce, who did or did not fulfill their role as husband
or wife, who was or was not “crazy.” In this case the family held a female member
accountable.
There was a woman cousin of mine who was
[divorced] and [the family] made it feel like it was
such a bad reflection on [them] because this girl just
did not stick with her matrimonial vows, without
giving this girl a chance to say ‘why’ or ‘what for.’
They just [took] a back-stabbing attitude that [said]
‘How could she do that? We just don’t do that in
our family.’
Just as Mary’s family applied their judgement on her cousin for her divorce,
without looking at the circumstances that produced the divorce, Mary knew her
family would apply that same judgement to her regardless o f the circumstances
that drove her to each of her divorces. Moreover, Mary’s family would hold Mary
responsible, accountable, and wonder why she couldn’t “make it work” as a
woman. Women are held responsible for maintaining marriage relationships.
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Mary’s circumstances-the ones that did not matter-were the alcoholism, domestic
violence, and child abuse perpetrated by her husbands.
Since those who live within a society are aware of its attitudes and edicts, it
follows that neither spouse from a former marriage entirely escapes the stigma,
regardless o f the dynamics at play in that marriage. The dynamics o f Mary’s
marriages (Chapter 1 - Introduction, page 1) did not stop Mary from self-blame:
I was upset with myself that it couldn’t work out. I
felt it was a failure on my part that it didn’t work
out. Somehow, someway, I’m sure I was partially to
blame, too, but it never seemed to be that
responsible, mature relationship. Even though I
know it wasn’t all my fault, I just felt really
devastated because I felt, “What’s the matter with
me? I’ve tried three times and it’s just not working
out.”
When Rose described how she took shame, guilt and failure on herself, she
also implied that this is a collective action, something women do (Mason, 1993).
She implies that women will take the blame all onto themselves. Several women
ask themselves, as Mary does, “What’s wrong with me?” Not being able to “make
it work” tended to lead many, like Toni, to feelings o f failure.
What about me? I would go through periods and I
[would] say, "What about me cannot make the
relationship work?’
Many women, including Kari, took the failure entirely upon themselves,
had not expected that their husbands had some responsibility to maintain the
marriage. Some o f the men, particularly Dave and Ed, did feel that they also are
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somehow flawed in that they have not maintained their marriages, but they did not
express it as clearly as the women did when they ask, “What’s wrong with me?”
Kari: I was three times divorced by the time I was 36. So
it was like [1 said to myself], ‘Whoa! What’s wrong
with [me]?’
Other women took up this litany, “What’s wrong with me?” I heard it
frequently during the interviews. Not only the multiply divorced themselves, but
the “others,” as Goffinan (1963) called them, asked as well, “What’s wrong with
you?”
Mary: I would hear remarks from my own personal family,
‘Here we go again!’ The stigmas. My brother would
never say something to me. I’d hear it.. . second
hand, third-hand. I heard that all the time. ‘What’s
the matter with her that she can’t keep a husband?
What is she doing? What is her problem?’
Common knowledge says that marriage takes two, one alone cannot
prevent a marriage from ending. Still, I find it interesting how many women in my
study took the burden entirely upon themselves and themselves only. In assigning
fault, some participants had no mercy on themselves, but spared their former
spouse. Carla was extremely clear that she was bearing-not sharing-the shame:
Carla: This one was ‘Shame on me.’
R: Shame on you?
Carla: Yeah.
R: Shame on him?
Carla: No! On me!
Carla felt shamed because she was pregnant when she got married, and
because she married the father of the baby, who was a known alcoholic, and a man
who left her and their child soon after it was bom to marry another woman.
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Carla’s husband did not pay child support and paid little attention to the child as
the child grew, but still Carla was the one who felt bad that the marriage occurred
and that the it ended.
The fact that women are encouraged to value “relationship at any cost”
(Hotaling, Straus, & Lincoln, 1990), are more adept at enabling and maintaining
relationships (Rossi, 1984), and have been held responsible for relationships and
kin-keeping (di Leonardo, 1987; Waite, 1992) for generations, may contribute to
our understanding o f the way the female participants take the end o f the marriage
as a personal failing. Many of the women, not only Carla, placed the burden of the
end of the marriage wholly on themselves.
Gendered Divorcism - The double standard
Gender played a big part throughout this study. Dean commented. “I think
women are judged more harshly than men are for multiple marriages.” His
comment is significant because he was speaking against his own vested interest as
a male. When the media refer snidely to the “failed” marriages of celebrities such
as Elizabeth Taylor; the multiply divorced Janes and Joes feel the stigma, feel the
divorcism. Such remarks are not lost on the multiply divorced. While Elizabeth
Taylor’s name frequently comes up whenever people are asked to name someone
whom they know to be multiply divorced, there are many men who are rich,
famous, and multiply divorced who do not get mentioned. Mickey Rooney, for
example, has had the same number o f divorces as Elizabeth Taylor. Why would his
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name not come up as often as hers does, even if he is not as well known as
Elizabeth or as some other multiply divorced men, such as Johnny Carson. Johnny
Carson did not divorce as many times as Mickey Rooney, and he may be better
known today than Mickey Rooney, but when groups are asked about the multiply
divorced, they do not bring his name up either. They mention Elizabeth Taylor.
However, Johnny’s four divorces created plenty of jokes for a time and Kyle
referred to the kind of jokes and attention that men are apt to get for multiply
divorcing and explains why he thinks the attention differs for men and women:
I think it is different for men than it is for women.
There just wasn’t much of a stigma at ail [for me].
In fact, I think a lot o f times I got patted on the
back, ‘Ha, ha, ha! So you’ve done it three times???
You’ve done it three times!!! ’ It was almost like a
badge of honor. It was almost like when a guy in
high school screws around with a lot of women,
that’s cool! but if a woman does it, she’s a tramp!
Kyle described an age-old double standard that applies to any issue that
involves men and women’s sexuality. The double standard theory explains how
divorcism does not appear to affect men in the same way it affects women.
Interestingly, it was the male participants, such as Dean and Kyle, who talked
about the gender difference. Perhaps because they are both highly educated men,
they have been made aware of societal patterns o f this regard, and perhaps because
they were men, they did not have anything to lose.
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Women, like Ruth, talked about the ways they have encountered stigma in
terms consistent with Gerstel’s (1987) finding o f a gender-based ideology:
I had to come to terms with being a divorced
person, ‘used goods’ and I had a child, so I had to
get back into the dating world with a child. There
was a certain amount o f stigma that I really had to
get over. I mean everybody I dated, at first, [I had]
to tell them (whispering) ‘I’m divorced, and I have a
child.’ It took a long time. . . . I think people-when
they hear you’re divorced three times-look at you a
little differently. They think you’re a seasoned
woman of the world. That you’re the wicked witch
o f the west or you’re the harlot of the north or
something.
Terms such as “used goods,” “seasoned woman,” and “wicked witch” were
not applied to men. As Kyle implied, men who have divorced several times are
looked upon with more awe and envy, as more valuable in some way. Women are
degraded by such labeling and seen as less valuable in some way. This same double
standard has existed throughout history and still occurs today in some cultures.
Such labeling refers to those times when women were regarded as a man’s
property-either her father’s or her husband’s-and her value was determined largely
by her virginity. In those times and cultures, men had absolute control over their
wives and daughters and husbands had exclusive sexual rights to their “property.”
What that means is that men were assured that their children were really theirs and
their property would not be inherited by another man’s offspring. What that meant
for women is that they had no other value than their sexual value; their person,
opinions, and desires were not considered. Women were merely property. Women
continue to be degraded by this kind o f labeling even in cultures that no longer
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L76
consider women as property of men. Multiply divorced women are labeled by
others-and label themselves-in degrading ways, wondering, “Who would want me
now?” According to Ruth, multiply divorced women are seen as “used goods,”
“harlots,” and “seasoned women o f the world.” This view is supposedly because
they have had sexual experience with more than one man, and they are a “wicked
witch” since they were not able to “make it work” in any o f their marriages.
Men and women do not treat others o f their own gender in the same
manner either. The multiply divorced men might have experienced backslapping
and congratulations from other men, but the multiply divorced women experienced
more painful and unfriendly treatment from other women. According to Brad, Eve,
and Toni, a divorced woman can expect to be shunned by other women. A
divorced woman, a woman both single and sexually experienced, is perceived by
women in a relationship as a threat. Other women assume she presented a
temptation to their men:
Brad: [My fourth wife and I] have a few couples we knew
in common. They all became afraid of [my fourth
wife], because they’re all afraid o f their husbands.
[Her] idea of it is that they don’t want some
divorced woman around their husbands.
Eve: You lose all your friends [when you divorce], in this
day and age. A single woman is a threat to a married
woman. You don’t befriend somebody [who’s
divorced]. You get a divorce, they cross you off of
their list!
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Toni Out o f all o f my friends who were close, there were
only two friends that really stuck by me and included
me in things on a total family type of thing. I had
lots o f girlfriends that would do things with me
during the day, but not include me for other things,
and I had one girlfriend actually come out and say to
me, ‘You do realize that everybody loves being with
you, but you do represent a threat to those of us
who are married.’
When a woman is seen as competition out to get a man, especially vour
man, she can be seen as a threat by another woman. This was made clear by a 1985
country music hit,2 4 “She’s single again! . . . She’s no woman’s friend . . . Watch
out for your man!” (Fricke, 1999). The fact that this song stayed on the charts for
22 weeks is indicative o f how closely it touched a nerve amongst listeners. Eve and
Toni complained about losing their friends as a result of their friends’ suspicions of
them as a divorced woman just as in the song lyrics. Eve and Toni talk about the
shunning and isolation that is enforced upon divorced women by other women
when they get a divorce. This is consistent with what Gerstel (1987) found, that
“marrieds” do exclude the divorced. My study concurs with Gerstel’s work in that
I found shunning is more apt to happen to women. Since women are usually the
more social and more connected; this exclusion from their former friendship circles
cuts women off from some important connections. Men did not speak o f being
excluded or shunned by other men, or by other women, because of their multiple
marriage experience. Because o f the diminishing ratio of men to women
2 4 Janie Fricke recorded this hit song in 1985 for Columbia Records,
#04896. The CD Janie Fricke Anthology that includes “She’s Single Again!” is
available from Ernest Tubb Record Shop, Nashville, TN 37202 (615) 255-7503.
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throughout the adult years, my observation is that any divorced man, even a
freshly-separated, not-yet-divorced man, is welcomed into the pool o f available,
datable men.
The participants, especially the women, have integrated the “make it work”
societal message well, entered into a marriage expecting to make it work, or
divorced while they have simultaneously berated themselves for not making it
work. The women wondered what was wrong with them if they “couldn’t keep a
relationship together.” The multiply divorced felt the blame, felt the disapproval,
and felt excluded from some parts of society more than, Gerstel’s (1987) divorced
participants.
SUMMARY
Neither Jesse Bernard’s (1973) prediction that the stigma o f divorce would
fade, nor Counts’ (1992) belief that the multiply divorced no longer feel
embarrassed to talk about their experience in his office, alters the fact that the
participants o f this study were acutely aware of an abundance of stigma in the
1990s. The abundance of myths that persist about the multiply divorced support
and encourage the stigma visited onto the multiply divorced by society and,
subsequently, by themselves.
These twelve men and twenty women were aware o f stigma from all
around them. They found that-instead o f fading away or becoming easier-the
burden o f stigma became heavier with each divorce. They felt the stigma from
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people who made faces and gasped when they heard how many times the
participant had divorced, they felt it from remarks made in casual conversations
with people in general. They felt it when they overheard others joking about
another who was marrying for the third, fourth or fifth time. They felt it when
former spouses or current co-workers made snickering, snide, or sarcastic remarks
about their marriages or divorces. They felt it even more sharply when it came
from their own family-from their mother-or their father-or their brother, who may
have aligned them negatively with other family members who had previously
multiply married, or who might question them directly, “What’s wrong with you?
Can’t you get anything right?” They received stigma from many directions.
They felt the stigma from within themselves. The multiply divorced are
aware o f the dim view society takes o f their record o f marriage and divorce. They
learned and held the same view o f multiply divorced people long before they
became one o f this harshly-judged group. As a result they also heap the stigma
onto themselves, whereby it becomes internalized stigma. The stigma, with its
accompanying sense o f failure and feelings of shame, became part of the way
several who remain depressed continue to define themselves.
While several participants did continue struggling with this depressing
definition o f themselves, some others managed the feeling o f being a failure by
compartmentalizing their life, and accepted themselves as a failure only in some
areas o f their life. Still others had completely rejected the idea o f being a failure by
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redefining what it means to be a failure. Redefining failure was part o f the process
some used to restore and maintain a higher self-esteem.
Men and women received different forms o f stigma. While both men and
women are held in scorn for not being able to maintain a marriage, the stigma
given to women largely sexualized version. Divorced women-known to have
previously been married and assumed to be sexually experienced-bear the burden
of an assumed greater or looser sexuality than never-married or married women.
Divorced women, and more so multiply divorced women, are looked at as “loose
women” or “used goods.” The words “loose” and “used” when applied to a
woman implies that the woman has no man to protect her honor-that her value has
been reduced. To be a virgin or to be able to pass as a virgin is better than to be
known to be unmarried with sexual experience. Kyle described how stigma differs:
men will slap other multiply divorced men on the back, congratulate them, and
hold them in awe while men will call multiply divorced women gutter names and
hold them in contempt and disgust. The women felt stigma from men, but they felt
it most strongly from other women. Men tend to adulate other men who are
multiply divorced, women, however tend to avoid other women-even former good
ffiends-who are multiply divorced. The former friend will shun the multiply
divorced woman out of fear that she will use her supposed greater power to attract
a man’s attention in order to steal their former friend’s boyfriend or husband away
from them. So the multiply divorced woman is looked upon-as highly sexual,
unrestrained, disloyal and dangerous. She is seen by those who shun her as
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unscrupulous, depraved of any standards or values, and having only one goal: a
new husband.
The stigma comes from the women, themselves. They tended to be harsher
on themselves than on their husbands as a result of being trained in the expectation
that women are kin-keepers and women maintain relationships.
Women-augmented by others who hold the same expectation-expected
themselves to be able to “make” the marriage work. When it did not, most of the
women asked themselves, “What’s wrong with me?” The women questioned and
blamed themselves even when they could see the problems brought about by their
husband that directly resulted in the end o f the marriage.
While each participant had struggled with stigma, they clustered in three
groups at the time that I interviewed them. Some-especially, but not limited to, the
freshly divorced-continued to struggle with the stigma and still defined themselves
as a failure. Some others-including, but not limited to, the currently married
participants-were able to resolve the stigma for themselves, were more
comfortable with their lives, and had been able to increase their self-confidence,
self-worth and self-esteem.
The stigma of the multiply divorced is active, present, significant and
observable. The stigma presents to the multiply divorced as a huge, black,
overhead cloud that never completely goes away or as a blot that can never be
removed.
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CHAPTER 6 - CONCLUSION
Society takes a very dim view of the multiply divorced. In society’s eyes,
the multiply divorced are judged and condemned for their record o f marrying and
divorcing. Society reproaches the multiply divorced for not taking marriage
seriously and chastens them when they do not make their marriage work. Society
chastises the multiply divorced when they seek a divorce as if they are trifling with
the serious subject o f marriage. Society ridicules the multiply divorced when they
seek to marry again. And it is not only society that is hard on the multiply divorced
for their inability to marry and stay married. The multiply divorced, themselves,
share many of the same views, having learned the views from society, and they are,
therefore, often very hard on themselves. In short, society does not hold out much
hope for the multiple divorced.
Ironically, the multiply divorced do not want to be divorced, they want to
be married. They believe in marriage and desire marriage. The vows are important
to them. They pledge to make their marriage work and they stay in a poorly-
functioning marriage a long time hoping and trying to make it work. They not only
do not want divorce, but they feel very pained when they must divorce. When they
do divorce, it is not because they do not want to be married, but rather because
they will not accept the hard-living conditions they encountered in that marriage.
They did not want their parents to stay in such marriages and they vowed that they
would not put up with the same. Some o f the multiply divorced, on the other hand,
did move themselves into a more positive light. They continued to believe that life
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could be better for them. The ability to hold onto this belief led eleven o f them
(34%) to experience marriage. These participants have been married for five, ten,
twenty, or even thirty-five years, an astonishing feat to much of society that holds
such a dim view of their possibilities.
SOCIOLOGICAL EFFECTS ON MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
The multiply divorced are individuals within mutually reciprocal systems,
affected by-and in turn affecting-these systems. As Rubin (1983) said:
It isn't, as some critics have charged, simply
selfishness, immaturity, narcissism, or some other
newly discovered and widespread character flaw that
makes binding commitments so difficult in the
present era. To write such major social changes off
with an analysis that focuses on personal psycho
pathology is to trivialize the impact of the social
world on the lives o f the people who live in it and to
elevate psychology to a cause o f our social malaise
rather than an effect o f it. For as Russell Jacoby puts
it so pithily T h e social does not ‘influence’ the
private; it dwells within it.’ (p. 4)
For just this reason, a study o f the multiply divorced is worthy of
sociological concern. It behooves society to take a look at this phenomenon to
understand it, to learn from it, and to create ways that may prevent or ameliorate
this painful experience for others. The stereotypes, the myths and the hypothesis
(Brody et al., 1988) of the multiply divorced-discussed in Chapter 1 - Introduction
and throughout this document-fail to address how other elements in their lives,
separated from their own personal characteristics, affected their decision-making
processes. The pathological view o f the multiply divorced only takes individual
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184
characteristics into consideration without looking at the environment. They do not
make decisions or take actions simply as individuals, but each had their parents,
their children, the economic and social conditions, and the stigma o f society all
around them, each o f which had a major influence on their decisions.
Their Parents
Their decision-making ability was affected by their parents when-as
children-they needed to survive on the continuum of dysfunctional situations
presented by the participants, which negatively prepared them to be aware of-and
to honor-their own thoughts and feelings. Their decision-making was affected by
their parents when they decided they did not want a marriage like their parents’
marriage and, in fact, wished their parents had also divorced. Their decisions were
further affected by their parents as some of them married for the first time-just to
get away from their parents’ dysfunctional homes. Their decisions to divorce were
affected by the memory of their parents’ marriage when the participant was faced
with the same situation, a situation which they had vowed to handle differently
than did their parents, whose model was to “just take it.”
Their decisions were affected by their parents when the multiply divorced,
usually women, had to return to the nest-sometimes the one from which they fled
earlier-for financial support, housing, child care and for protection from angry or
dangerous former spouses. Their decisions were affected when it was their parents
who put pressure on them-to marry or to divorce-so the parents could avoid
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embarrassment, in the case of their pregnancy, or so they would not have to be
responsible for their adult child, who now had children. Some decisions to divorce
were made with the parents standing by ready to move them out. The participants
were more likely to take these actions when one or both parents were promoting
or supporting it. Parents were sometimes very instrumental in providing financial
and emotional support.
Their Children
Their decision-making-to marry or to divorce-was affected by their
children whom they were able to protect better than they could protect themselves.
Their children’s needs to be safe, secure, fed, clothed and housed-on a survival
level-often had a major effect on the women’s decision to remarry. Whenever a
pregnancy was involved, the status of the coming child affected their decision
making. Whenever a mother or father saw that his or her children were being
physically or psychologically damaged, it affected his or her decision to divorce.
The ability of a single parent to get help in caring for his or her children on a day-
to-day basis affected their decisions. Their perception o f their children’s needs-on
a psychological and emotional level-for a mother or father-figure, a male or female
relationship, or a caring, concerned parental figure also affected the multiply
divorced parent’s decisions. Usually it was the women who had to support and
care for the children, a factor which both created pressure for them to remarry and
impeded their ability to remarry. The multiply divorced men were affected by the
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186
loss of their children because the vast majority o f children in this study-as it is true
nation-wide-were almost entirely in the custody of their mother.
Their Economic Climate and Their Social Stigma
Their decisions were affected by the economic climate in which they found
themselves-which has changed over the years from when the oldest participant
encountered it. Women are under more economic pressure than men, women
attempt to improve their economic situation through remarriage, second jobs, or
help from their families. Both female and-at least one-male custodial parents
found themselves and their children in a situation where money was being withheld
from them, or they needed to make pragmatic marriage or divorce decisions based
on their ability to financially support their children’s needs. This was even into the
1990s still a major consideration for the women-as their ability to get good-paying
jobs, credit, or even bank accounts, affected their decisions. A few made business-
arrangement marriages just to be able to support their children and still care for
them. Gender oppression is evident in the financial situations o f the women, more
than the men, in two ways. The women most often have the children to support,
and the women did not have the same employment or salary opportunities available
to them. That explains why, many times the women with children mentioned that
the promise o f financial security had a large effect on their decision to remany.
Their decisions were also affected by the social climate and the culture
within which they lived. This moved the circle of influence beyond their parents
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and children to encompass their extended family, friends, co-workers, employers,
and other acquaintances on one level. It also encompassed an even larger circle of
influence such as that found in churches and in the media. That social climate puts
an ugly connotation on a person living as a single parent, an unmarried person, or
anyone not fitting into the norm o f married folks. The multiply divorced stayed
married longer, or became married sooner, to avoid finding themselves not only
outside the norm, but in that more unpopular, unmarried state. The stigma that
blots the multiply divorced gets heavier with each ensuing divorce.
For the women the stigma is coupled with gender oppression as they
struggle with a double whammy of not only being divorced multiple times, but they
also struggle with society’s casting of a formerly-married woman in a different and
more derogatory light-calling them a “used goods,” “wicked witch,”or “loose
woman”-than are formerly-married men. The multiply-divorced women are
shunned by their former women friends as dangerous competition, while formerly-
married men receive a clap on the back and adulation by other men. The
men-more so than the women-talked of the effect of stigma on their decision
making when contemplating a new relationship. Should he tell her (Imber-Black,
1998) o f all the divorces-or only some; do it now-or later. In addition to the
stigma they felt, from all of the afore-mentioned sources, the multiply divorced
have internalized the judgment o f society and they are now adept at applying the
stigma to themselves.
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Their decision-making was affected by the social stigma o f any divorce, but
more so the stigma o f having married and divorced multiple times. The stigma
caused them to become more guarded in their words and actions to avoid or
deflect the prejudice they knew existed.
After all the decision-making was done, the women filed for divorce more
frequently than did the men, the women almost exclusively had custody o f the
children, the women had more economic pressure than did the men, and the
women bore more ugly stigma than did the men.
The Development of Their Decision-Making Process
In deciding to marry, the participants did not always value their own
feelings. In escaping from home, rescuing another, business-arrangement
marriages, or in marriages wherein the participants acknowledged that they knew
up front that the marriage was a mistake, they appeared oblivious to the reality of a
self, or the possibility, entitlement or responsibility to be true to that self. Knowing
what life was like in their parents' homes and wanting their homes to be different
did not prevent the participants from getting into similar difficult and undesirable
situations. Peck (1983) theorizes that we each have an “early warning system” that
allows us to discern when we are in the presence o f someone who could jeopardize
our well-being. However, Peck said, if we have grown up in a dysfunctional
environment, this early warning system has become immune to the signal and is not
able to protect us. Hochschild (1983) calls this our inability to access our “true
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self.” According to Forward (1989), adult children o f “toxic” parents who were
“beaten when little or left alone too much, sexually abused, or treated like fools,
overprotected or overburdened by guilt [will] almost all suffer surprisingly similar
symptoms: damaged self-esteem leading to self-destructive behavior. In one way
or another, they almost all feel worthless, unlovable, and inadequate” (p.6). Under
these kinds of circumstances a child “. .. does not receive what it needs to form
relationships with others and esteem for oneself’ (Whitfield, 1987, p. 21).
Characteristics known to be common to individuals who grew up in the care of
alcoholic parents-which are also common in other dysfunctional homes-are ( I) the
inability to know what one feels and (2) an inability to know what is normal
(Black, 1980; Whitfield, 1987; Woititz, J. G ). One’s true self does not develop or
gets lost in these dynamics.
Their Inability to Know What They Feel
The participants began their lives and formed their own emotional system
(Hochschild, 1983) in families that did not provide a positive role model for open
communications and a healthy emotional system. As Rubin (1983) tells us,
The deeper issues lie in the struggle to change what
happens inside ourselves. To see the depth at which
the old ways live inside us, to grasp the power with
which they influence adult life and behavior long
after we have learned about new ways o f being, and
to understand fully the source o f it all, we must go
back to childhood, (p. 37)
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In childhood, the participants were surrounded by non-communicative,
non-emotive role models. They often had experienced shame and low self-esteem
before they left their parents’ home. The people o f this study spent their childhood
suppressing their own feelings and thoughts while, to protect themselves, they kept
close watch on their parents’ feelings and thoughts. To protect themselves, they
learned to be attentive and pleasing to others, to become other-oriented, but not to
become self-aware. In order to avoid offending their parents, they did not develop
the ability to have their own opinion, to choose for themselves, or to honor and
respect their own feelings.
Some o f the participants talked about their lack of access to their self-their
feelings. As Leah said, “By the time I was old enough to run away from [my
parents’ alcoholic] home and get married, I was pretty much out o f touch with my
feelings altogether.” When trying to recall how she felt on any one o f her four
wedding days, Leah first guessed, “I guess on the surface I was [happy].” Then she
quickly added, “Remember now, I had shut down on my emotions a long time
ago.” In retrospect, Dick told me, “The biggest mistake that I made-what I try to
tell my children-is whatever your feelings happen to be . . . you should spiurt it out
way back in the beginning o f your life. Because until you really become really real
with yourself-what I’ve discovered-I don’t think you wind up having much to give
to anybody.”
Hochschild (1983) discusses what happens when a person becomes
separated from his or her feelings-the true self. When that happens, Hochschild
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said, a person will create-in the place o f the true self-a false self, one that is
acceptable to the environment that initially caused the separation. In Hochschild’s
(1983) study, that environment was the airline stewardesses’ work requirements.
In this study, it was the participant’s childhood environment-their parents’ home
life. As Rubin (1983) said:
. . . how easy it is to deny what we know, to
rationalize away the knowledge that rises unbidden
inside us when, for whatever reasons, it is felt as a
threat. It is true, of course, that we can only know
those things that are in our experience, only make
choices from the alternatives that exist in our
consciousness. But when it comes to how we live in
relationships, there’s another truth as well. For, all
too often, we don’t dare to know what we know;
it’s too dangerous to the only way o f life we have
known, to the life for which we have been prepared
from infancy. So we do what we have to do-what
our society tells us is fitting, depending on whether
we’re male or female, (p. 21)
The family dynamics-the only way of life they had known-became an
accepted, unremarkable, normal pattern in the background o f the participants’ life.
Rather than recognizing and dealing with family problems, those problems-as well
as the family dynamics that support the problems-became like the old, familiar
wallpaper. As they grew older and considered marriage, this lack of self awareness
became apparent as they married into unions that they knew, on some level of their
being, were not to their own good. Their other-orientation carried them forward
through the ceremony. Not having developed the critical self-awareness, self
esteem, and self-respect, they were either unable to see that this marriage was not
in their best interest, or unable to be assertive, to stop the marriage. The multiply
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divorced women often focused more on their need to protect and provide for their
children as justification for their marriages and divorces. They needed to be pushed
by pain or danger to their children as they were unaware o f their own right to not
be in danger or pain.
Countering The Mvths. Stereotypes, and Hypothesis
Earlier in this work I asked the question, “Will [exposing] the experience
and attitudes of the multiply divorced challenge previously-held assumptions . . . of
the multiply divorced?” 1 contend that it does in a number of ways. In addressing
the work o f Brody et al. (1988), 1 first argue that their sample included multiply
divorced individuals who wanted, needed or were required to seek therapy. That
sample is not necessarily representative of multiply divorced in general. In my
work with the multiply divorced, I find Brody et al.’s hypothesis and the
stereotypical comments from other sources to be not entirely accurate.
Brody et al. (1988) hypothesize that the multiple divorced have
maladaptive behaviors, such as picking incompatible spouses. 1 found that the
multiply divorced can and do eventually reach a compatible and lasting marriage.
Twelve o f 3 2 participants (31%) experienced stable marriages, having lasted from
2 to over 35 years. Nine were married at the time of interview; two were widows
who reflected that their last marriages had been satisfactory and had endured for
14 and 35 years, respectively.
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Brody et al. (1988) hypothesize that the multiply divorced lack
commitment to marriage and family. I argue that the multiply divorced are very
committed to marriage or they would not spend such time and energy trying over
and over again to realize their own goal o f being married. As Ron said, “People
who don’t take marriage seriously don’t get married.”
Brody et al. (1988) hypothesize that the multiply divorced quickly resort to
divorce for problem solving without trying other alternatives. In my findings this is
not borne out in two ways: (I) the length of time-from many months to many
years-that the participants thought about divorce before starting any action and,
(2) the numbers o f multiply divorced who have had marital therapy prior to
concluding their troubled marriages.
Brody et al. (1988) hypothesize that the multiply divorced are not likely to
be effective parents. Although the interview did not focus specifically on the
children o f the multiply divorced and their parenting, I believe this contention also
needs to be weighed against the fact that the multiply divorced were often making
the decision to marry or to divorce out of their high concern for their children’s
well-being.
What did the experience of being multiply divorced actually mean to those
who have experienced it? To the participants of this study, the experience of
multiple divorce means a mixture o f pain, a sense o f failure, shame, and-for
many-a resurgence o f strength, courage, and resiliency.
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Contcrtualiriny the Study
Blaming the multiply divorced woman for her multiple divorces ignores the
sociological, political, economic, and cultural factors that are part of women’s
daily experience. The country has recently been besieged by a backlash from
“family restorationists” (Skolnick and Rosencrantz, 1994, p. 58) from politicians
such as Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and Dan Quayle, as well as many others of
varying political beliefs.2 3 Together they provide a secular, politically-centrist
position calling for an end to the moral decay represented by alternative family
structures, divorce and especially, multiple divorce, and for the sake o f the
children, promoting the resurgence o f the nuclear family.
The Christian Right, the conservatives of government and church,
predominantly white males, constantly strive to narrowly define the concept of
marriage as a monogamous, lifelong union between a man and a woman. They also
strive to narrowly define the concept of family. Their definition would not include
a single mother by choice, a divorced parent with children, or a gay or lesbian
parent as a family, and certainly does not have space for a multiply divorced. An
example: Recently the Church o f England “took a step toward approving re
marriage for divorced people (my emphasis)” (Associated Press, London. Los
Angeles Times. 1-26-2000, p. A6).2 6 There would be several conditions attached,
“ In the summer o f 2000, Newt Gingrich married for the third time. We can
wonder, “Does he still give the same family values speech?”
2 6 It is curious that this is the same church “established by the much-wedded
King Henry VOI” (Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, p. A6).
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but one caveat stood out as interesting for the purpose of this study: “Bishops also
recommended that remarriage should normally not be permitted for people who
have been involved in more than one divorce. (My emphasis)” The multiply
divorced are definitely excluded from the possibility of marriage within this church.
Another example: The State o f California recently passed a highly
controversial Proposition 22, which legalizes the definition o f marriage as that of
“only a marriage between a man and a woman.” The proposition passed and the
consequence is that gays and lesbians have been excluded from the possibility of
marriage in California. Vermont, on the other hand, recently passed legislation that
gave rights to gay couples.
These movements all try to separate people into groups of “them” and “us”
in the hope that it will prevent anything-in this case, multiple marriage and
divorce-from happening to them. Such separation hurts the people who are
separated and separation did not help Newt Gingrich.
Participants’ Marital Status
I have talked about the experiences of the 12 men and 20 women
participants throughout this study. Where did these men and women stand in
relation to marriage and divorce on the day they were interviewed? They were, of
course, in different places and had different feelings about where they were. At the
time o f the interview nine (28%) were married, two (6%) were widowed, three
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(9%) were cohabiting, three (9%) were ending their process o f divorce, and fifteen
(47%) had been divorced and single for up to twenty-plus years.
Women Marriage No. No. Years
Chris 6 10
Sally 7 08
Fay 5 06
Laura 4 04
Men Marriage No. No. Years
Ron 4 20+
Dean 4 11+
Ed 5 2-1/2
Kyle 4 I month
Widowed Marriage No. No. Years
Lily 5 35
Irene 5 14
Table 6 - Longevity of Participants Most Recent Marriage
Table 6 shows that those who were married at the time of the interview
reported having happy and stable marriages that were o f considerable longevity.
Lily, 73, had been widowed for two years after spending thirtv-five years in her
fifth marriage. Irene, 64, had been widowed for twelve years after fourteen years in
her fifth marriage. Ellen, 39, Jack, 52, and Andy, 28, were cohabiting with plans to
marry. Others still in the last phases of divorce included Jack, 52, and Kari, 39,
who were each completing their third divorce, and Toni, 53, Brad, 54, and Nan,
44, who were each completing their fourth divorce. Including the widows brings
the number o f those married up to 10-almost 1/3 o f the total participants-who are
currently or most recently in a stable marriage that many would predict would
never happen after being multiply divorced-but these participants show that it does
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happen. They show that the multiply divorced can and do achieve a marriage that
corresponds with what Cherlin (1999) calls the companionate marriage: friendly,
affectionate, and gratifying.
Participants’ Thoughts about Future Marriage
It makes intuitive sense that not all of the multiply divorced would reach
the same end-and indeed they have not. Some have reached a state o f marriage
and are happy with their lives. Some have reached a state o f singleness and are
content and happy with their lives. Some others have reached a state o f depression
and discouragement over what they have concluded is their own inability to have
the lasting personal relationship they still yearn for. With all that they have
endured: the pain and loss, the difficulties, the stigma, would the unmarried
participants ever want to marry again?
Several are quite vocal in their opposition to that suggestion. Lily, 73,
stated “I would not marry again.” Carla, 55, said, “No, thank you! I don’t think I’ll
[get married] again; [but] I might live together.” Brad, 54, gave opposing
statements: “Not ready ever again!” and then, “I still think the right woman is out
there.” Toni, 53, was still in the process of her fourth divorce, and said unhappily,
“I don’t see a social future ahead, [but] I don’t like being single.” Mary, 46, is
another who said, “I’m staying away from marriage.” Rose, 53, agreed, “No [I
won’t marry again], absolutely not!” Bryn, 39, is clear and explains herself: “I
won’t do it again, I won’t even go out with anybody... I don’t think I’ll do it
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again because I just don’t think I can.” Keeping her focus on herself and her three
young daughters, Lena, 30, tells herself, “Don’t do it again!” Dick, 45, said, “Not
again!” and Gary, 67, proclaimed that he is “Gun shy.” Dave, 58, said sadly, “I
think I’ll spend the rest of my life alone. . . I don’t think I could take another hit in
that part of my life.”
Others are quite optimistic and eager to try it again. Ellen, 39, was quite
open to the possibilities, “I don’t think there’s any guarantees, but I’m still
hopeful.” Kari, 39, felt very optimistic about marriage, “I am totally committed to
doing it again!” Rod, 58, also hopes, “I think I will be able to have that some day.”
And Dan, 55, also concurs: “If I found the right girl I’d get married again.” Hope
lives eternal and this last group could still find themselves in a situation that
becomes a marriage just as the eleven married and widowed persons have.
Participants’ Recommendations for Public Policy
The study participants did not like or want divorce. What do they
recommend for others? Surprisingly, when some of the multiply divorced
participants look at other multiply-divorcing people, their own internalized
stereotype is given voice. Some multiply divorced see divorce as too easy for
others. As if they do not remember their own difficult situations, how hard it was
for them to get a divorce that they were in need o f relief they become a part of the
same society that stigmatized them. They call for stiffer divorce laws, saying that
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divorce is too easy for others. These same participants do support the need for
divorce, however, when chronic problems occur in a marriage.
Other participants called for stiffer marriage laws, rationalizing that if
marriages were not so easy to get (much easier than divorce) there would be fewer
divorces. This stance would probably bring about the most change, but is the least
likely, as people like to make their own choices. The ones who take this stand
recommend required pre-marital counseling and required premarital education to
teach young people about the roles and responsibilities o f marriage. This group
believes it was the marriage, not the divorce, that was wrong. The fallacy of this
approach is that most people understand roles and responsibilities, but still do not
understand themselves.
Since I found that the multiply divorced often acted without regard for
their own well-being, 1 would recommend more k-12 classes that teach children to
recognize and honor their own emotions. I would like to see programs that help
young people to understand and to respect themselves. Since I observed the study
participants acting in self-destructive ways in order to avoid conflict or to avoid
anger, I would like to see programs that help young people learn to resolve
conflict and learn to manage their own and others’ anger. I would recommend that
these programs teach assertiveness and other communication skills to help children
to express recognize and express their feelings and increase their self-esteem and
self-confidence.
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Implications for Clinical Practitioners
This study has important suggestions for clinicians. As the multiply
divorced appear for therapy for any reason, there are some common attributes that
the clinician must be aware o f or look for, in order to help the client realize his or
her own self. These are:
There are deep levels o f stigma accompanying multiple divorce. As a result
the multiply divorced client will most likely come to the clinician heavily defended.
A clinician will best help the multiply divorced by being open about his or her
knowledge of this stigma as well as societal influences that help bring about
multiple divorce. A therapist would do well to spend time talking about self
esteem, the ability to handle criticism, the meaning associated with being
“different” or “obvious,” or feelings about having a life pattern that was not
necessarily the client’s original intention. A therapist can help the multiply divorced
to explore the strategies o f stigma management they have used and to develop new
strategies. These strategies might include normalizing the stigmatized person or
creating a buffer between the criticized and the criticizer. The participants o f this
study had used strategies o f nondisclosure, carefully chosen disclosure, and full
disclosure by means o f a combination o f humor and bravado. They used the humor
and bravado to shield themselves from any response or reaction their extraordinary
disclosure might provoke.
This client may have considerable shame and feelings o f failure (Mason,
1993). The client will best be served by a therapist who can help him or her
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acknowledge these feelings and trace them back to their origins, offering them a
reframe o f what originally presented as “proof’ o f their failure and shame. This
client will benefit from being able to differentiate between the definitions o f guilt
and shame, o f failure and success. Some participants o f this study were able to
reject any feelings o f failure or shame by compartmentalizing areas where they
knew they were good and successful, and by redefining what it means to be a
failure (Mason, 1993). Others continued to think o f themselves as a failure.
Many of the multiply divorced had low self-esteem stemming from as early
as childhood. I recently asked a client facing re-marriage what she was most afraid
o f and she blanched. After a period o f time in which she groped for words, she
whispered, “Inadequacy.” She had felt inadequate ever since she was a young child
growing up in a home with one critical and one alcoholic parent. By identifying the
time when she first felt inadequate, she began to re-evaluate what others expected
o f her as a child, and ultimately, what she expected o f herself now as an adult.
The multiply divorced client will tend to hide or minimize the true number
o f divorces he or she has experienced to avoid others’ judgement or their own
embarrassment. Time, patience, and an overall attitude o f acceptance will help this
person be able to be more open and honest with a therapist and ultimately with
themselves.
In addition, a therapist will want to be able to give assistance with other
issues such as: (1) The multiply divorced in this study, as children, often had to
disregard their own feelings and subsequently doubt or fear their own responses. If
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they do not trust their own intuition, may need help as adults to access and respect
their feelings. (2) As children, many were not allowed to give an opinion, or to
develop their own thoughts or beliefs, and may need help to do so as adults. (3)
Many will be able to value some o f their achievements in other areas, but since
many o f their childhood achievements were either not recognized or were
criticized as not meeting the mark, they may need their therapist’s help to
recognize and value their accomplishments today. (4) The multiply divorced
display enormous amounts of determination, resilience, and optimism about life but
may take their efforts for granted, not recognizing their own strength, without
someone to reflect that back to them. (5) The multiply divorced may still not be
able to make or to carry out self-enhancing decisions unless the decisions benefit
others. They may need help to be able to occasionally make decisions and to act
purely for their own well-being. (6) A therapist will need to educate the client on
the gendered differences of their experience. (7) A therapist may need to
encourage clients in general to slow down the manying process, encouraging more
pre-marital counseling and pre-marital education.
Implications for Future Research
In an effort to better understand the multiply divorced, it would be
important to more specifically study the relationship they had with their parents.
One o f the theories that I have embraced throughout this study is that the effects of
the participants’ childhood home life played strongly into their adult relationships.
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This study points to a relationship between dysfunctional communication and
emotive systems in the home of the participants’ families and the participants’
subsequent inability to discern a desirable match and their inability to withdraw
from an undesirable match. The theory invites a future study o f the relationship
between the multiply divorced and their parents to test whether there is a
connection and to design classes for parenting and for children o f other families
with these characteristics.
In an effort to better understand the world of the multiply divorced, I
would want to study the siblings of multiply divorced in an attempt to identify why
some do and some don’t become multiply divorced. Not everyone in the family
system has the same outcome. Different siblings within the same family typically
take on different roles and personalities. Some theories classify the different roles
taken by children in dysfunctional families as the hero, the rescuer, the scapegoat,
the clown, or the lost child (Black, 1980). I would be interested to know which
role-if any-most often becomes multiply divorced.
In an effort to better understand the world of the multiply divorced, I
would want to study those who repetitively marry and divorce the same person.
While my sample contains two persons who married and divorced the same spouse
twice, I tried to avoid that phenomenon as I believe that this is a special case and
that there may be other issues at hand. Then, again, there may not as both women
married their former spouse for reasons associated with the children. My
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hypothesis is that this group has a different dynamic, but I would want to know
that as a fact or know what new issues might appear.
In an attempt to identify any possible class differences, it would be
interesting to study multiple divorce amongst the very rich and famous. I regularly
get asked-jokingly-if I am including Elizabeth Taylor in my study. I would like to
design a study o f only those whose names make national headlines each time they
marry and divorce. While I can theorize that many o f the issues are the same, there
may be differences brought about by the camera’s glare that other people never
deal with.
Final Comments
As I finish this project, two aspects of this study keep coming back to me,
that I do not feel have been said clearly enough. One is that, as I listened to the
participants’ retrospective accounts, it nearly always appeared that their decision
to divorce was appropriate, however, conversely, it appeared that their decision to
marry often was not.
The other feature is that these particular people are not necessarily different
from much o f society in their background and training. Many other people grew up
in the same kinds of homes as these particular people did, most notably their
siblings. Also, many other people find themselves in marriages with the hard-living
characteristics or the personality disorders that motivated my participants to
divorce. Others, however, may have chosen-for many reasons-to remain in those
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marriages, whereas my study participants, and other multiply divorced persons,
have chosen to leave them behind in search of a better life for themselves in spite
of the difficulties divorcing might bring them. Nan is one o f the participants who
made this point, “We are the ones who had the courage to make a change.”
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217
APPENDIX A - THE INTERVIEW GUIDE
If you are uncomfortable with a question, if it does not apply to you, or if
you do not know the answer, you may pass. You can refuse to answer any
question, and you may stop the interview at any time. Please feel free to inject any
thought that comes to you that you feel is relevant to the topic. You are welcome
to discuss or elaborate on any question in this interview guide.
1. How did you feel when your friend first mentioned this study to you?
2. What thoughts or feelings have you had in anticipation o f this interview?
About you:
Age
Education
Occupation
Children with you? biological _ s te p _ other _
Not married _ Cohabiting _ Married__
Race, ethnicity? _______
During your childhood, your parents':
Occupation: His:________ H ers:___________
Education: H is:_________ H ers:____________
Your siblings:
Have any o f your siblings been divorced:
Once? Twice? Three or more times?
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218
Your family's divorce history: Number o f Times:
Married Divorced Widowed
Your mother: _____ _____ _____
Your father: _____ _____ _____
Your mother’ s mother: _____ _____ _____
Your mother's father: _____ _____ _____
Your father’s mother: _____ _____ _____
Your father’s father: _____ _____ _____
Parents’ Values:
1. How did your family deal with problems?
2. How were decisions made in your family?
3. If I asked another family member, would I get the same response?
4. Whose voice seemed to matter the most?
5. Did your childhood differ from that of other nearby children? How?
6. What moral/religious tenets were you taught about marriage/divorce?
7. What opinions/attitudes do you remember hearing about any divorce?
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WJ
219
Projections as a child/teen/young adult:
1. What did you dream, hope, fantasize, plan for your family?
2. How did you want your marriage to be similar to your parents' marriage?
In what ways ... to be different?
4. What did you believe marriage to be?
5. What did you observe o f marriages around you?
6. How did you expect your marriage to be?
7. What did you believe divorce to be?
8. What did you observe o f divorces around you?
9. How did you expect to experience divorce?
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220
Marriage # ; his/her marriage # .
Your spouse's name is________ .
Preparation for this marriage:
Time acquainted with this spouse before dating______
Time dated this spouse before living together_____
Time lived with this spouse before marriage____
Did you have prenuptial agreement? Yes _ No _
What month/year were you married? _____________
About this spouse, on the day you married:
Your age _ This spouse's age _
Your education:______________
This spouse's education:_________________
Your profession/occupation_________________
Your spouse's profession/occupation____________
Children living with you? bio _ step _ other _
Step children who will "visit" with you? _
Number o f children to be bom within this marriage? _
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221
Marriage # , divorce # _ from _
In preparation for this marriage:
1. Did you have premarital counseling?
2. Who wanted to get married the most? ...least?
3. How important was the concept of marriage to you at this time?
4. How did you feel during the time leading up to the marriage?
5. How did you feel about yourself?
6. Who encouraged this marriage?
7. What were the advantages of this marriage?
8. What were the disadvantages of this marriage to you?
9. Who discouraged this marriage?
10. Can you tell me about the wedding?
Dynamics of the marriage/new family
1. What obstacles did you encounter?
2. How did you feel about yourself in this marriage?
3. In retrospect how do you see this marriage?
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222
In preparation for this divorce:
1. Which of you was most surprised at the talk of divorce?
2. Who mentioned divorce first?_____
3. Who moved out?_____
4. Who made the decision?___
5. Who filed the petition?_____
6. What month/year were you divorced?_________
7. How did you feel during the time leading up to the divorce?
8. How did you feel about yourself during this time?
9. How long did you think about divorce before acting on it?
10. How did the children affect this marriage/divorce?
11. How did you try to develop/maintain family with the children?
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223
Marriage Dynamics of the Divorce:
1. Did this divorce come about in a thoughtful, rational manner or as a
sudden, impulsive, reaction to something?
2. Did either of you seek professional help/advice? What was the focus?
3. What were advantages/disadvantages o f the divorce to you?
4. How do you justify this divorce to yourself? ... to others?
5. How would you have been affected had this marriage continued?
6. What meaning do you now attribute to this divorce?
7. Describe your relationship with this spouse at the time o f the divorce.
8. How are you connected to the children from this marriage?
9. How does the other parent stay connected to these children?
10. How do you maintain a sense of family with the children?
11. What rituals have you used to help maintain family-ness.
12. Who else is included in your family doings at this time?
13. Tell me about obstacles you have encountered throughout this process?
14. Tell me about any assistance you may have recieved throughout this
process?
After this divorce before the next marriage:
1. Children bom between this divorce and next marriage _
2. Your occupation after this divorce?
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Accommodating for Stigma
1. Tell me about the responses o f your family:
2. Tell me about the responses o f your friends:
3. Tell me about the responses of others:
4. How have your children been aware of the stigma?
5. How have these responses altered your life:
6. Describe how your self-esteem was affected in this marriage.
7. What constitutes a marital success or failure?
8. What constitutes a divorce success or failure?
9. How has your definition of marital success or marital failure affected you?
10. Were there any difference between having one divorce o r __divorces?
11. How did you experience the similarities?
12. What alternatives to marriage have you considered or experienced?
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Where are you today?
1 . What do you think and feel about marriage now?
2. What do you think and feel about divorce now?
3. Talk about your concept of family in each marriage.
4. What part did sexuality play in your experience?
5. What did the vows mean when you took them each time?
6. Would/did you ever, consider changing "'til death do us part"?
7. What have you gained by the total marriage/divorce experience?
8. What have you lost by the total marriage/divorce experience?
9. Where does your own support come from?
10. Are there people who should never get married?
11. What do you think would be an ideal relationship?
12. How did your child(ren) cooperate with or challenge your idea of family?
13. How have your child(ren) been affected by your divorces?
14. Have you thought o f yourself as a failure?
15. Have you thought of your efforts as failed?
16. Have others tried to label you or your efforts as a failure?
17. How has this sense o f failure effected you?
18. How has the idea of failure limited you or motivated you?
19. Do you think you are any different from others who have divorced 3 times?
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226
APPENDIX B - THE WOMEN
pseudo
nym
age year/age
when
married
times
divorce
age-last
bio/
adopt
child
time in
marital
status
educat
ion
current
occupation
Rose 53 1964-22 3rfat5 l 2 sngl-2 medadm **
Chris 50 1965-18 5th at 43 3 mrrd-7 HS data entry
Toni 53 1966-23 4th at 53 2 divg-0 grad
school
dir. mcd.
reeds.
Leah 56 1956-15 4th at 36 1 sngl-20 M.A. college
professor
Irene 64 1952-19 3rd at 38
(+ lan)
I wid-10
(ml5)
9th
grade
PBX operator
Lily 73 1946-21 4th at 34 6 wid-3
(m35)
BA
***
Glory 41 1978-21 3rd at 36 2 sngl-5 HS admin
istrative
Polly 50 1965-18 3rd at 43 2 sngl-8 HS insurance
work
Laura 47 1969-18 3rd at 35 1 mrrd -4 MA actress
+teacher
Eve 67 1948-18 3rd at 59
(+ 1 an)
5 mrrd -7 HS waitress***
Mary 46 1980-26 3rd at 44 2 sngl-2 ly r
coll
tchr. aide****
Ruth 56 1963-23 3rd at 49 1 + 1* sngl-8 2MS-
JD
asst. dir.
senior ctr.
Bryn 39 1982-22 3rd at 38 3 sngl-l
3 yr
coll
student
Carla 55 1964-22 3rd at 40 1 sngl-15 3 yr
coll
phone
(unempl)
Fay 51 1964-17 4th at 44 1 mrrd -5
2 yr
coll
computer tech.
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227
pseudo
nym
age year/age
when
married
times
divorce
age-last
bio/
adopt
child
time in
marital
status
educat
ion
current
occupation
Sally 53 1962-17 6* at 43 4 mrrd-8 HS traffic mgr.
Nan 44 1971-17 4*3144 3 sngl-0 AA-
RN
volunteer
Kari 39 1976-17 3rd at 39 1 divg -0 HS legal secretary
Lena 30 1987-19 3rd at 28 3 sngl-2 I lgr+v
o-tech
hair stylist
Ellen 39 1987-22 3rd at 38 1 sngl-1
/coh
MSW advertising
legend
•adopted
•♦disabled
'♦•retired
••••unem
ployed
age
mean
mode
median
at study
50
39/53
50/51
first wed
20
17,18,22
19
misc. facts
children 44
marriages 75
divorces 70
widows 2
abbreviations
an annul!
coh cohabiting
sngl single
wid widowed
divg divorcing
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228
APPENDIX C
pseudo age
nym
-TH E MEN
year/age
when
married
times
divorce
age/last
bio /
adopt
child
time in
marital
status -
edu
cation
current
occupa
tion
Ron 67 1958-28 3ld/44 0 marrd-
16 years
grad
school
writer
Dean 56 1965-24 3rd/ 43 0 marrd-
1 1 years
PhD. professor
Kyle 42 1975-17 3rd/ 39 2 marrd-
1 month
J.D. attorney
Ed 44 1971-18 4th / 41 2 marrd-
2 years
lyr-
college
corporate
vice-pres
Jack 52 1966-20 3r d / 52 5 divg/
cohg
2 yr-
colleg
pilot
Andv 28 1991-21 3rd/ 28 1 sngl/ 2 vr- secuntv
Dick 45 1980-28 4th / 44 2 single
I year
2 yr-
college
hair stylist
Gary 67 1954-25 5th/ 47 4 sngl
20 years
HS aerospace
***
Brad 54 1964-21 3rd/ 54
+ 1 an
1+
2*
divg
6 months
1 yr-
college
off mgr< #
Dan 55 1967-27 3rd / 48 3 sngl-
8 years
HS sales rep
Dave 58 1961-21 S ^ l 2 sngl-
7 years
J.D. attorney
Rod 58 1956-17 4th/ 56 2 sngl
2 years
3 yr-
college
student^
legend age atstudv first wed
*adopted mean 52 22
♦♦disabled mode 58/67 21
♦♦♦retired median 54/55 21
abbreviations
divg divorcing
cohg cohabiting
an annulled
marrd married
sngl single
misc. facts
26 children
42 marriages
39 divorces
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
APPENDIX D - TIMES DIVORCED
229
times
divorced
men women total
divorces
3 8 13 63
4 3 5 32
5 1 1 to
6 0 1 6
total 12 20 111
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
230
APPENDIX E - WHO FILED?
Divorce filed Divorce filed
Participant bv the Woman bv the Man
Rose 1,2 ,3
Ron 2,3 I
Chris 1, 2, 3, 4 5
Toni 1.2 3.4
Leah 1,2, 3, 4
Dean 1 2,3
Irene 1,2 4
Kvle 1.2.3
Glory 1,2,3
Lily I, 2, 3, 4
Polly 1,2,3
Jack 1.2,3
Ed 1,3 2,4
Lori 1,3 2
Eve 1,2 4
Marv 1,2.3
Ruth 1,2,3
Andy 1,2,3
Dick I, 2, 3, 4
Garv 3 1. 2. 4. 5
Bryn 1,2,3
Carla 1,2,3
Fay 1, 2, 3, 4
Brad 3 1.2
Dan 1,2 3
Dave 1,3 2
Sally 3, 4, 5, 6 1,2
Rod 1.2.3 4
Nan 1. 2, 3, 4
Kari 1,2,3
Lena 1,3 2
Ellen 1. 2 3
87 filed by women 24 filed by men
78% 22%
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
APPENDIX F - PARTICIPANTS’ CHILDREN
231
number of
children*
men with
this
number
women
with this
number
total number
of children*
0 2 0 0
1 1 8 9
2 5 7 24
3 2 2 12
4 2 2 16
5 0 0 0
6 0 1 6
total 25 children*
12 men
42 children*
20 women
67 children*
32 people
•Children on this table include adopted as well as biological children.
The children o f all but one man lived with their mothers. All but one o f the
women’s children lived predominantly with their mothers except for a possible
one-year stint with their father.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
APPENDIX G - SAMPLING RESPONSE
232
number: responded to:
10 Superior Court mediator contacts
6 USC memo and contacts
4 CSU-LA memo and contacts
4 Discovery House contact
3 another participant
3 a friend of mine
1 myself
1 direct from a memo or flier
32 total
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
(213) 740-3533
FAX (213)740-3333
Subject Consent
The purpose of this research is to study how the Multiply Divorced sustain a sense o f family with their
children. The results will reflect findings from thirty (30) qualitative face-to-face interviews with Multiply Divorced
individuals. The research is being conducted by a graduate student in the Department o f Sociology at the University
o f Southern California to fulfill the requirements for a doctoral degree.
*
Each subject must give! their consent (below) before the interview begins. The interview will take two hours
and will be audio-taped. The subject’s name and identity will be held in confidentiality. Within a year o f the
interview the audiotape will be destroyed.
The interview focuses on your individual experience as a multiply-divorced parent. The interview begins with
demographic fact-gathering questions about you and your situation, followed by open-ended questions that allow you
to describe your situation in your own words. There are oo costs to you beyond your time and the only known risk
to you is that this interview may raise issues that cause you some discomfort. In the event that you are disturbed by
the interview, you may contact any o f three therapists who practice near you. Their names, addresses, and telephone
numbers are listed on a separate sheet and are provided to you before the interview begins.
Your cooperation will be deeply appreciated: however, your pam'dpatioa is strictly voluntary. You have the
right to choose not to participate, to stop foe interview at any time, or to refuse to answer any question; there will
be no consequences attached to these choices. You may benefit from your participation through the opportunity to
talk about your experience in an empafoic, nou-judgmeatal atmosphere. You also may receive a summary o f foe
results by supplying an 8-1/2* x 11* self-addressed stamped envelope.
If you have questions or need further information about this project you may contact foe principal investigator
for this research. Dr. Elaine Bell Kaplan at (213) 740-8865. This consent form has been reviewed and approved by
foe University Park Internal Review Board at foe University of Souther California who may also be contacted at (213)
740-6709.
Thank you for your time and your cooperation.
(name) (date)
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. UNIVERSITY PARK. LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90089-2339
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Emerson, Patricia Ann (author)

Core Title In and out of marriage: A study of the multiply divorced

School Graduate School

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Sociology

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest,sociology, individual and family studies,women's studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Kaplan, Elaine Bell (committee chair), Banner, Lois W. (committee member), Kim, Eun Mee (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-122260

Unique identifier UC11329004

Identifier 3041449.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-122260 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 3041449-0.pdf

Dmrecord 122260

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Emerson, Patricia Ann

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA