This post is the first in a series about how parents of gray divorce can help their adult children.
In her book What Happened to Goodbye, novelist Sarah Dessen poignantly depicts how parental divorce affects young adults: “But in the real world, you couldn’t really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn’t see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.”
Gray divorce, referring to a split in couples aged 50 and older, is burgeoning in the United States and abroad. The prevailing myth is that adult children aren’t affected because they are adults when their parents divorce. Yet, many adult children report that the rupture of the familial bonds that ensue from their parents’ divorce shakes them to their core. Researcher Marjory Campbell explains, “Divorce is a phenomenon that is forced upon the adult children with an expectation to not only survive it without scarring but to heal the wounds of their parents, a task too great to be achieved.” Parents of gray divorce must understand and remember her words.