Blog #13: Family Transitions

“Good Grief: Bouncing Back from a Spouse’s Death in Later Life”

This article by Deborah Carr discusses older widows and widowers. It is interesting how Carr points out that the images of widows and widowers we see in the media are usually portrayed of young people who had just gotten married not too long ago. Carr writes, “Televised images of distraught widows and widowers often focus on the young—the teenage brides of fall soldiers in the Iraq war or the junior executives who lost their wives on September 11th.” It actually turns out, as Carr states in the article, that of the 900,000 men and women in the U.S. who lose their spouse, almost ¾ of them are at least 65 years old. It is obvious that losing one’s husband or wife is something that generally takes place when we are older in life, even though often times we see the loss of a spouse as something that occurs when we are much younger.

According to Carr, the three factors that are most important influences on spousal bereavement are the age of the husband and wife, how the spouse died, and what the couple’s life was like prior to the death. Carr discusses how the loss of a spouse for those who are older tends to be seen as more of a process than just a single event. In most cases it is not as if one day all of a sudden a person’s spouse dies. Instead for those who are older death can often times take a long period of time. Obviously for people who are in an unhappy or unhealthy marriage, they are less likely to experience depression when their spouse dies. Instead it is more common for them to feel a sense of relief because now they have freed themselves from a situation that was likely affecting them negatively.

While many people might expect widows and widowers to go through similar experiences, that is not completely the case. This also happens to be the case for the different things men and women experience while being married. Carr says, “‘His’ marriage brought men good health, power, and satisfaction, while ‘her’ marriage subjected women to stress, self-sacrifice, and depression.” For the women whose spouse’s die, they are more likely to be the ones who will experience financial hardships after their husband’s die. Carr states, “For women, widowhood often means a sharp dip in economic resources. Economists estimate that a widow’s cost of living is about 80% of what the couple’s was, but the monthly Social Security payments decline to just two-thirds of their previous level. Widows are consequently more likely than widowers to experience distress and anxiety about money.” Unlike many women of today who appear to be more independent, for example having careers of their own, many older women did not work and relied solely on their husbands in terms of supporting themselves financially. Obviously, most men who lose their wives to death do not experience such feelings of distress and anxiety about money. Men, on the other hand, tend to undergo physical illness when their wives die. Carr writes, “Men are more likely than women to experience sickness, disability, and death after their wives die. While popular lore and a handful of early studies claim that these men may “die of a broken heart,” the loss of a helpmate and caretaker is the real culprit.”

Children’s Adjustment to Divorce”

This article was rather interesting to me because it is along the same lines as the paper I did with me group which compared children of divorce to those of high-conflict. The findings of the studies done in this article were actually similar to what my group found after we conducted our interviews and researched the topic. Furstenberg and Cherlin found that it wasn’t so much the divorce itself that affected children, but instead it was the high-conflict aspect of the relationship between the parents that had the most negative affect on the children. Divorce is a hard for everyone who is involved in the situation. It is obviously hard for the children because this is period of time where there is a lot of uncertainty. There is also a lot of inconsistency during this time for children. After the divorce the parent who has main custody, which is usually the mother, tends to have to take on a lot more tasks than when the parents were still together. As Furstenberg and Cherlin write about a woman who has to provide for and take care of her two children after she and her husband separate, “Now responsibility fell solely on her. What’s more, she was working full-time in order to compensate for the loss of Herb’s income.” Not only did Helen have to work full-time so that she could provide for herself and her children, but also she was the one responsible for taking care of the work at home. This has a direct affect on the children because it often times causes chaos in the home.

According to Furstenberg and Cherlin, the factors that affect short-term and long-term adjustment of children to divorce are financial problems, low level of conflict between parents, and whether or not children are able to maintain a healthy relationship with the non-custodial parent. As previously stated, a lot of the conflict that takes place between the custodial parent, who is usually the mother, and the children, usually the son, is due to a decrease of the finances in the home. Since the father has left the house, his income is no longer helping to support the family the way that it once had. This causes a lot of strain on the mother and children, often resulting in problems between the mother and children. Also, as Furstenberg and Cherlin write, “Loss of the father’s income can cause a disruptive, downward spiral in which children must adjust to a declining standard of living, a mother who is less psychologically available and is home less often, an apartment in an unfamiliar neighborhood, a different school, and new friends.” As far as low level of conflict between parents goes, this applies to families that are still intact and those that are not. Whether or not the parents are still married or not, if they are fighting with each other it will most likely have a negative affect on the children. As has been shown in some studies, that children who have regular contact with the non-custodial parent, usually the father, were “better adjusted.”

“Putting Divorce in Perspective”

This article by Coontz discusses how children who are from a divorced family are not necessarily worse off than those who are in intact families. This reading also goes along with the theme and results of my group paper. Coontz discusses how it is the children who are in families where there is high-conflict that are the ones who are most negatively affected.

Often times it is not just divorce that can have a negative affect on children. Some of the other reasons are poverty, financial loss, school relocation, a prior history of severe marital conflict, and withdrawal of parental attention. Coontz writes, “Researchers who managed to disentangle the effects of divorce itself from the effects of a change in residence found that relocation and loss of peer support were more likely to interfere with school completion than parental separation.” This means that it is not so much the divorce that causes children to drop out of school but instead it is that many of these children are either moving which means that they are going to different schools.

The factors that account for the variation in these effects are the custodial parent functions, which as we said before is generally the mother of the child. This is a very stressful time on everyone especially the custodial parent. Coontz says, “The main problem for children of divorce is when depression, anger, or economic pressures distract their mothers’ attention.” She goes on to talk about how many mothers were either not paying enough attention to the children at all or were only focusing on the negative behaviors of the children.