The Divorce Generation Grows Up

Despite the dire predictions, a surprising number of Grant alums wound up in solid marriages. My buddy Chris made good on his high-school promise to let me be best man at his wedding—I gave him my "Fat Albert" lunchbox as a wedding present—and 15 years later he's still happily married, and living with his wife and two daughters near Houston, where he works for a company that conducts pharmaceutical clinical trials. "My life since my parents' divorce has been shaped to a tremendous degree by the goal of avoiding divorce as an adult at all costs," says Chris, whose parents both died of cancer within months of one another in 2001.

In many ways, the urge to stay married is stronger in my classmates' generation than the urge to get divorced was in my parents'. Perhaps this was a backlash to divorce; maybe it was the result of reaching marrying age just as President Reagan's New Conservatism was shaping the social order. Whatever the cause, my married classmates seem more clear-eyed than their '50s forebears. "Every honest couple will tell you that it's hard sometimes," says Josh Gruenberg, who became a lawyer and now lives in San Diego with his wife and three kids (his parents divorced in 1992). "You have to compromise, and it takes work," says Ruth Kreusch, an intellectual-property paralegal who's been married for nearly 17 years and has three kids (her parents finally separated five years ago, "but they're friends," she says). David Selig, who became a wealth-management adviser, says divorce isn't as prominent in his social circle now as it was when he was growing up—though his circle is admittedly smaller, since he's become much less social than he was in high school. "My wife and I would rather spend time with each other and our five rescue dogs than just about anybody else," says David, who's been with his wife for 18 years. The couple decided early on not to have children, but he says that decision had nothing to do with his having grown up in a divorced family.

Others in our class wound up marrying much later in life than their parents did (that's in line with the research, which shows that children of divorce tend to marry either later than their peers, or much earlier, in their teens). Robbie Hyatt, who's now a lawyer and also runs a martial-arts school in the Valley, didn't wed until he was 37, a year after his son was born. Lisa Cohen, who became a medical psychologist, waited until she was 35. "This generation grew up with such a massive culture of divorce that I think there was an effort to make better choices about who we married," says Lisa, whose parents wed in their 20s. "I was pretty clear on the fact that I didn't just want to marry someone for how good he looked on paper or how crazy in love we were," says Lisa, who has two children, age 7 and 4. "And I found someone who has great character. He's true-blue. He is committed to our family."

Both Laurie Gelardi and I would marry our respective partners if lesbians and gays were allowed to in the state of California; instead we have domestic partnerships. Laurie, now a neonatal intensive-care nurse, has been with her partner for 15 years and they have two children (when Laurie told her mother she was gay, her mom blamed herself, saying it was because Laurie had grown up without a father; Laurie assured her that wasn't the case). I've been with my partner, Jeff, for the past seven years. Though my own parents have been married 47 years, it took me until my late 30s to find a healthy relationship that stuck, probably because I never really believed a union could last without turning ugly.

Is that the cynicism of the Divorce Generation speaking? Maybe. But it's surprising how the right partner can break through the cynicism. In my case, it happened when Jeff reassured me, "Don't worry. The other shoe isn't going to drop." Jeff knows a thing or two about shoes dropping, being a child of divorce himself.

Despite the complications and the collateral damage, my friends from Grant class of '82 seem to agree that the divorces in their lives—both their parents' and their own—were probably for the best. Most don't think ill of their folks for having split up. "As a child I felt like I was a victim of my circumstances, a victim of the divorce," says Deborah Cronin. "But as an adult I learned that my parents were just two people who met each other, fell in love, had children, and it didn't work out. They were 18 and 19 years old when they met. They were young kids having kids." It seems that along with the crow's feet and expanding waistlines of middle age, my classmates and I have acquired an acceptance of our parents and their life choices. Some of us have even found healing. "My parents were good people," Tonju Francois told me the other day. "And good people get divorced, too." If I've learned anything from my walk down memory lane, it's that Divorce Generation has grown up.

With Temma Ehrenfeld

© 2008