The Divorce Generation Grows Up
Grant High School's class of '82 were raised on 'The Brady Bunch'—while their own families were falling apart. These are their stories—in their words.
I grew up in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley—the quintessential American suburb, built on the postwar fantasies of men like my father, a GI who'd trained in the California desert to fight Rommel and never forgot the first time he saw orange trees and swimming pools. For $500 down, you could buy a ranch house in one of the Valley's new tract developments and start a family—maybe even live out your dreams of Hollywood stardom. Such was the life that Joseph Jefferson hoped to create when he moved to California to study acting and married a fellow student. But Dad found acting to be a cruel mistress: he wound up spending more time tending bar than in front of the cameras. It was no way to support his wife and two kids, and his marriage was a shambles. So he found another mistress: my mom.
They met at an actors' hangout called the Masquers club, and fell in love while Dad was starring as Jesus in a Passion play. Mom had helped him land the role, having been featured a season earlier as the Woman at the Well, whom Jesus saves from a life of serial divorce and adultery (cue the ironic guffaw). Behind the scenes, the man who spent his nights carrying a cross on his back was angling for a divorce himself. And those weren't easy to get in 1960, even in Hollywood. To begin with, his wife didn't want to give him one, and even if she had she would have needed to prove "fault"—adultery, abandonment, neglect, commission of a felony. So my dad and mom moved to Las Vegas for a few months, where they lived in an apartment house populated by card sharks and showgirls while awaiting the end of dad's marriage under Nevada's lax divorce laws. On Sept. 5, 1960, they drove to a small town in the middle of the Nevada desert called Tonopah and got married by the justice of the peace.
After moving back to Los Angeles, my actor parents set off on their new life together as if nothing had ever happened. But, of course, it had. At age 4 I discovered I wasn't an only child when my dad's kids, who'd been living in Florida, came to stay with us for a year. My mom says I refused to hug her the entire time—but I remember sobbing just the same when they left. My sister and brother had it worse: they grew up without a father, and never got to develop much of a relationship with him.
Ignorant of the picket fences around our tract homes, divorce was a constant intruder in the San Fernando Valley of my youth. Although I grew up a few blocks from the "Brady Bunch" house, the similarity between that TV family's tract-rancher and the ones where my friends and I lived pretty much ended at the front door. In the real Valley of the 1970s, families weren't coming together. They were coming apart. We were the "Divorce Generation," latchkey kids raised with after-school specials about broken families and "Kramer vs. Kramer," the 1979 best-picture winner that left kids worrying that their parents would be the next to divorce. Our parents couldn't seem to make marriage stick, and neither could our pop icons: Sonny and Cher, Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors, the saccharine Swedes from Abba, all splitsville.
The change had begun in the '60s as the myth of the nuclear family exploded, and my generation was caught in the fallout. The women's rights movement had opened workplace doors to our mothers—more than half of all American women were employed in the late '70s, compared with just 38 percent in 1960—and that, in turn, made divorce a viable option for many wives who would have stayed in lousy marriages for economic reasons. Then in 1969, the year I entered kindergarten, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed California's "no fault" divorce law, allowing couples to unilaterally end a marriage by simply declaring "irreconcilable differences."
Not since Henry VIII's breakup with the pope has divorce received such a boost: by the time my friends and I entered our senior year at Ulysses S. Grant High School, divorce rates had soared to their highest level ever, with 5.3 per 1,000 people getting divorced each year, more than double the rate in the 1950s. Just as we were old enough to wed, experts were predicting that nearly one in two marriages would end in divorce.
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Member Comments
Posted By: deliverybox @ 05/28/2008 9:19:23 PM
Comment: I'm definitely a little late with my comments but was just informed of this article today. I have read much of this commentary. I believe I'm fully qualified to comment. My dad has been married 8 times; my mom twice. My spouse's mom has been married 4 times. I have 2 great kids and have been happily married for 22+ years --- to the same woman! (get this I only knew her 3 weeks before we got engaged and 3 months before we married--ha!) I too am a class of '82 and my biological parents divorced when I was 8 years old. Their divorce affects me each and every day. And let me explain how. When I call mom, the step dad answers. I don't care. I don't want to talk to a "step" dad. I didn't ask for, nor do I wish to expend my energy, dealing with another person whom was unwillingly thrust into my life. Same story for my dad. When holidays come around it's a pain dealing with biological parents and "step" parents. Again, I didn't ask for "step" parents nor do I wish to establish a relationship with any---especially after my dad's 8 marriages. I feel so strongly in the institution of marriage and believe that if you sign-up and exchange vows, you're in it for life! Any other excuse won't cut it! Of course my wife and I have had our tough times, but we've gotten through them. My kids are so much more confident than I and my siblings. Why? Because we kept a strong family structure. We sucked it up and our marriage is as solid as a rock. For those who've commented that this divorce stuff is a bunch of psychobabble, I believe you're full of it. I've lived through divorce and I will live with the results for the rest of my life. Unfortunately so will my kids. They will never experience true grandparents. Ever try to do a family tree for a school project? Yeah, it sucks! Divorce has affected financial stability, emotional stability, and stability one could attain with years of family structure. Instead neither parent has any money, neither has a house that's paid for, neither has any money tucked away for the future, and neither can be depended upon for anything (like an emergency loan) or their grandchildren's needs (maybe a little something for college). Quite simply, because of their selfishness, we suffer. Now for those just itchin' to take a swipe at me with a "whoa is me" e-mail, I don't need it. Despite the mistakes of my parents I believe I've overcome many of life's obstacles. My point is, I didn't need the added hell caused by their immaturity and selfishness! Bitter? Maybe. But, like I said, divorce sucks and I live with it every single day!
Posted By: Dawn M Nelson @ 04/24/2008 10:13:53 PM
Comment: Thanks for revisiting the first generation of kids to deal with the increasing divorce rate. You shed light on a lot of issues we faced growing up with divorced parents. Some of us HAVE grown up and learned to deal with those issues in our own ways. It is something that was huge to have to grow through at the time, and it's good to read about others who went through it too. We know it still impacts our lives and our choices. How could it not? Thanks for not forgetting about us. We lived, now we understand, and are thus more understanding. It's nice to get to that place and great to read about from your perspective.
Posted By: mlevin0925 @ 04/23/2008 11:35:31 AM
Comment: The article is useless. It does nothing to shed light on what it is really like to be an ACOD - an Adult Child of Divorce. It is something you carry with you for the rest of your life because you are constantly dealing with the issue of having two people that can't stand one another integrate. It's casts a dark (but insignificant) cloud on every special event - birthday parties, weddings, school events, sports events, etc. It ends up being about not making one parent or another uncomfortable. You just hope that the parents can be unselfish enough and mature enough to not make the event about their discomfort, and not cause a scene. Such a pain. And then there is the need to explain to your kids why they may have so many sets of grandparents. Once a child of divorce, always a child of divorce.