Divorce Is Still Bad, and Gen Z Knows It

Can we stop with the divorce parties already?

Recently, I have been reckoning with the stamp that my parents’ divorce has left on my life. It has not proved to be an easy journey, as divorce has become so normalized that now-adult children of divorce (ACOD) may feel unable to express their negative feelings about the shaky circumstances in which they were raised.

Picking up the pieces is rendered more difficult if both your parents are seemingly thrilled by the separation, while you must process your grief and resentment alone. Remarriages and unwanted step-parents and step-siblings add to this turmoil. Split custody arrangements, two sets of birthdays and holidays, and walking on eggshells when discussing one parent around the other involve dizzying amounts of mental gymnastics.

I’m one of the lucky ones. Most divorces occur within the first 14 years of marriage, but I had the good fortune to spend my childhood with an intact family structure. My mother did not remarry, so there was no chance of me being molested or mistreated by a boyfriend or stepfather. I was old enough that the family court did not force me to pack my bags every week to move back and forth between my dad's and mom’s houses. Thankfully, my parents noticed my deteriorating mental state and did not force the issue.

Still, I would be lying if I said that damage was not done. The scientific literature mostly corroborates my experience, except for a meta-analysis that claims that parental divorce has little measurable effect on the well-being of children. The problem with this study is that short-term behavioral and social problems may prove less serious than long-term psychological battles. According to some studies, a single-parent background and a family breakup were associated with childrens’ low academic achievement, conduct issues, earlier sexual experimentation, and even drug abuse and death. These findings have been replicated multiple times.

Importantly, divorce can harm a child’s future success in romance and marital attainment. One article described this in science-speak as a “heightened anxiety in forming enduring attachments at later developmental stages including young adulthood.” According to the author, ten years post-divorce, a large number of ACOD still carried the memories of the marriage breaking down, were resentful of their parents, and had the sense that they had been deprived. Young women in particular were nervous about repeating their parents’ unhappy marriage, and both men and women were eager to avoid divorce for the sake of their own children.

A literature review succinctly lays out the possible effects of divorce and single parenthood, concluding that “the best scientific literature to date suggests that, with the exception of parents faced with unresolvable marital violence, children fare better when parents work at maintaining the marriage.” You heard that right; even adultery may not be enough to call it quits.

How can this be true? Here’s the fallout of divorce, at least for me: my mother became destitute due to all of the legal fees inherent in a long, drawn-out divorce process, so we had to sell my childhood home. Meanwhile, my father carried on his merry way, with the family business in tow (men typically do better financially post-divorce). My relationship with my parents weakened and I completely lost my faith. Due to my lack of belief, I engaged in some risky behaviors in college. During this time, I was so depressed that I was eventually taken to a therapist. I didn’t want to die exactly, but I certainly didn’t want to live.

The literature review backs these effects up and adds that divorce is bad for parents too. Married people are in better physical and emotional shape, participate in their communities more, live longer, and have higher incomes. In a shocking statistic, divorced partners felt that they had achieved happier lives post-divorce only 10% of the time. Meanwhile, married individuals who reported being unhappy when first surveyed, but chose to stay married, were happier at the end of five years than their now-divorced counterparts.

I know how all of this sounds. It is really easy for me to say that parents should stay in difficult marriages when I have never had to make that decision for myself. I have never opened up my bank statement to discover that my spouse had gambled all of our money away. I have never chanced upon my spouse in flagrante delicto with another person. I know women who discovered that their husbands were addicted to child pornography. In egregious cases like this latter one, separation or divorce may be a last resort measure. However, there are things parents can do to mitigate the fallout.

According to a few studies, a lot of the negative outcomes for children of divorce can be mitigated if the parents co-parent well, meaning that they don’t actively disparage or loathe each other. Other factors that can ease the pain for children include not forcing a one-size-fits-all custody arrangement on children that can never be renegotiated, avoiding excessive travel demands, and not having children — especially young ones — spend long periods away from their primary attachment figures.

Gen Z and Broken Homes

Many people in my generation walk around the world with the wounds of divorce, fatherlessness, and motherlessness. It can manifest as distrust of authority figures, apprehension at the prospect of dating and marriage, and an inability to let a man or woman take care of them. The wounds may flare up in domestic disputes, where ACODs fret that one argument heralds the end of the relationship, as that is how it was with their parents. Social media coverage of celebrity marriage shipwrecks seem to corroborate what ACODs already suspect — lifelong, monogamous marriage, if not impossible, is certainly out of reach for them. 

In some sense, it’s easier to give up on the dream of marriage, rather than shoot for the stars and fail like our parents did. At its core, Gen Z is risk-averse, and a lot of that aversion has to do with our childhoods and family of origin. Inflated stranger danger fears in the 2000s only dovetailed with the anxiety that came from growing up in an unstable home environment. Is it any wonder that all we want is stability and an off-grid farm safe from the watchful eyes of Uncle Sam?

I feel that I have the duty to remind us that divorce and single parenthood is bad, whether you’re religious or not. It atomizes the family and community ties, making way for the US government to take the place of a father. If the government cared one iota about its finances, it would disincentivize divorce and re-incentivize marriage so that fewer children would live in poverty. But on the other hand, divorce is a great way to boost GDP. Think about it; would we really have a housing crisis if more fathers and mothers still lived in the same house? Would we be nearly as productive as a country if single moms didn’t have to work?

In sum, I expect no help from the government; the incentives to boost marriage rates are murky at best. In America, prioritizing marriage would also have the uncomfortable side effect of making single parents feel bad, and no one will be willing to do that. Lastly, authoritarian governments have tried to disrupt the nuclear family — the foundation of society — from time immemorial, and they will continue to do so for the sake of control and a quick buck.

Really, it’s up to us regular citizens to re-articulate a vision for marriage that is not chock full of falsehoods. Because let’s be honest; our ideas of what marriage is for are wildly different than our ancestors’. Consider Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The foundational block comprises our physiological needs such as water, food, reproduction, and shelter. Next up is safety concerns like employment, health, and property. Third is love and belonging needs like friendship, family, and intimacy. Fourth is esteem needs like status, respect, and freedom. Lastly is self-actualization, our desire to maximize our potential.

Not long ago, marriage used to be about physiological and safety needs. You married to share property, survive, and propagate the next generation. If you were lucky, you loved your spouse. Today, we expect our partners to be our God, to actualize our potential. When they inevitably fail to be perfect like God, we may kick them to the curb because we figure that we can meet all of our needs with a new partner, through workplace status, with friends, or through the strength of our effort. We see ourselves as independent, free actors, free to make and break contracts with other free actors at will.

No one considering divorce would likely articulate their thoughts this way. Most unhappy marriages have myriad “irreconcilable differences,” arguments shoved under the rug for years, emotional or physical infidelities, personality quibbles, and all the rest. But underneath it all, I believe that relationships fail because of unmet and unsaid expectations. And right now, we unconsciously expect our partners to completely satisfy our need for God, friendship, and romantic love.

This is why I have hope. If we’re having divorce parties in earnest, then I believe (and statistics show) we have reached peak divorce. The parties are the last, sad hurrah before the inevitable collapse of the empire contrived by the ill-conceived Sexual Revolution. No one, save a few predatory males, feel that their deepest longings were satisfied by the Revolution. In fact, during the COVID pandemic, the majority of us got a wake up call that our physiological, safety, and even our love and belonging needs could be turned upside down in an instant. We thought we could trust every member of our nation to share the same reality as our own. Now, we’re not so naive.

This, coupled with God’s grace, partly explains why I have seen a paradigm shift in the Church since 2020. Lukewarm and non-believing Christians left in droves over the pandemic as social bonds frayed. Some of them converted to wokeism. At the same time, once-staunch atheists and agnostics converted to Christianity in striking numbers. The desolation of COVID, the vast malfeasance of our authority figures in government, and constant calls of censorship, misinformation, and disinformation led many of us to question everything, including our beliefs and lack thereof. After many of us spent our summers isolated from the world, we were surprised to find that we did want marriage and children after all.

However, some of us atomized further post-COVID. After we left our in-person jobs, community groups, and churches, we delved into the online world. We may still wear a mask in public and the only person we speak with in a day may be a cashier. We have not spoken to our parents in a while, and do not go home for holidays because we are tired of having two sets of Thanksgiving dinners, Christmases, and New Years. We have a job and DoorDash on the side, but need a roommate or two to afford an apartment. We bandy about the idea of finding a spouse, but do not know where to find one.

The family? Atomized. Community ties? Atomized. Today is a tale of two cities, two communities. I’m privileged to be in the community full of deeply flawed, but warm people who help each other and strive to be as kind as Jesus. Gen Z needs to know that this community does exist, but not online. Furthermore, they need to realize that there are kind, single men and women out there, but it’s less likely they’ll be on the apps. They need to hear that the state, the internet, and work combined will not completely satisfy their needs. And most importantly, Gen Z needs to hear that no matter what, your marriage will not be perfect. But with God’s help, it can be great.