sower
Life in the Middle
Parents’ tug-of-war battle
claims woman’s childhood
By Matthew Waite
Senior Reporter
Author’s note: The following are excerpts
from a letter Jen wrote on March 2 about
her feelings on divorce.
"People always ask what it’s like to be in a divorce
where the parents hate each other...
“It’s like being the flag in a tug o’ war game. Your
mom is at one end and your dad is at the other. Both
will do anything to win the prize.
“They both pull as hard as they can, but no one
ever wins.
“What they never realize is that as I grow older, the
flag gets to be a smaller size and a smaller part of the
game. Eventually the flag won’t matter because no one
ever wins.”
For 16 of Jen’s 18 years on this earth, she has lived
with divorce.
A senior in an Omaha high school who is planning
to attend the University of Nebraska-Lincoln next fall,
Jen is still caught in the middle of her parents’ divorce.
“My mom and my dad still to this day do not get
along,” she said.
Jen’s life until grade school was spent going back
and forth, spending ev
and battling,” Jen said. “She always thought that my
dad had bribed me or brainwashed me.
“I was at the age where if we went to court I could
basically decide which parent I would go with, and my
mother knew that," she said.
Jen’s mother never took the decision to court, and
her father had legal papers drawn up to get around
the original divorce settlement.
Jen said her mother was still bitter about her choice
to live with her father, who has since move* back to
Omaha. She said her mom failed to understand her
reasons Tor leaving.
“She never really understood... and I still don’t think
she understands that part of the reason I came to live
with my dad was just to get to know him," she said.
“Most of the reason was just to get away from her."
Jen went to visit her mother in the winter of her fresh
man year in high school. After constant fighting, Jen
decided she was not going back.
Three years later, Jen and her mother are trying to
rebuild their lost relationship.
Jen’s mother is upset that Jen has decided to at
tend school in Nebraska and not in Ohio, where the
mother now lives. Jen’s mother wants her to make up
for the years they lost, Jen said.
“She’s always bugging me about 'was it worth it to
destroy a family,’” she said.
and the kids are such a different age than me, I m not
really part of the family, even though they say I am.
When Jen and her stepmother began their relation
ship, they started it as best friends. After the kids came,
her stepmother started to take a more motherlike stance
with Jen, which caused fights, she said.
"That’s what we fight about now ... what I’m going
to take from her and what is she going to give to me
and the borderline between mom and friend," Jen said.
Lynn White, a sociology professor at UNL, said Jen
was not alone.
Most problems involved with the introduction of a
stepparent occur when the child is an adolescent, White
said. The problems come with the addition of one more
authority fiaure in the house.
“When children are adolescents, there’s a lot of dif
ficulty for the children to cope with," she said. “You
have a whole issue of adolescent rebellion magnified."
If the stepparent is introduced when the child is
young, White said, typically the relationship works out
— especially between a stepfather and a boy.
When a mother divorces, White said, a daughter
and mother usually form a stronger relationship, while
a mother and son’s relationship is not so strong.
She said when the mother remarried, typically the
relationship between the daughter and the mother was
strained. The daughter has to share the mother’s af
fection with the new
/ ...
ery oiner weeKena ai ner
dad’s home and the rest
of the time at her
mother’s, she said.
Visits to her dad’s
would start on Friday
night, unless he had a
date, Jen said, in which
case he’d pick her up on
Saturday morning.
“We’d go over to his
apartment and just goof -
off," she said. “We'd go
around and do all the fun
weekend things that
you’d never get to with
Mom, like go to Fun-Plex.
"Mom didn’t like it if
we went anywhere out of
the vicinity of Omaha,"
she said. “We had to stay
nusDana.
White said Jen
was lucky with the !
relationship she had
with her father. t
“A substantial
percentage of par
ents without cus
tody of the child just
drift away," she
said.
White said di
vorce affected kids
in two different,
overrepresented
ways.
“People go in
both directions,"
she said. "Some go
out and repeat their
parents' mistakes;
mere ui ai le yui rediiy nidu.
Despite a divorce settlement that gave her father
no visitation rights, her mother allowed Jen to visit him.
Jen said her mother would try to use that against her.
“Since I grew up and I knew him, she couldn’t re
ally stop me from seeing him, because then I would
get mad at her and it would be even more messy than
it was,” Jen said.
Jen said she never was able to spend a week with
her dad during the summer. On breaks from school,
she would only be allowed to spend a day with him,
she said.
“We took one vacation once," Jen said. “I was in
fifth grade ... it was a weekend-type thing.
“We never did tell Mom about that," she said.
When she got home, her mother would ask her
about what they did that weekend and about her dad’s
life.
Jen said her father had changed since the divorce.
Although her father had hit her before, it was not
out of anger, she said. It was for disciplinary reasons.
“Now when he loses his temper, he just takes deep
breaths and counts,” Jen said.
There has always been tension between her and
her mother, Jen said, which has translated into their
not getting along.
Jen decided to move to Wisconsin to live with her
dad before starting her freshman year of high school.
When she told her mother about her decision, the
result was not good, she said.
“That was basically two weeks of straight yelling
“I don't think we’ll ever understand the same thing,
because she knows a totally different guy than I do,"
Jen said. “And she doesn’t understand why I like the
guy she hates."
Jen’s family problems didn’t stop with her real par
ents.
When her mother remarried two years after her
parents divorced, her mom’s new husband became
“dad."
She said that as she grew up, she and her stepfa
ther got along — but they don’t anymore.
“I really resent the fact that he was pushed on me
as my real dad," she said. “They really wanted me to
take his name ... and I said no."
Her stepfather is also intimidating and mean, Jen
said.
“He was a major contributor to the screaming and
yelling during visits," she said. “He and I basically stay
away from each other when I go to visit.
Jen said she didn’t feel like she was at home when
she visited her mother.
“We just don’t have a family there," Jen said. "There
was one when I was a little girl, but there was always
tension because there was this choice between which
father."
Jen’s biological father remarried three years ago
and has had two kids with his new wife. This family —
with which she lives now — is really not a family either,
Jen said.
"It’s trying," she said. “It’s more of a happy envi
ronment, but since they’ve had these two younger kids
Illustration by James Mehsllng
some avoid them."
The repeaters are more common than the kids who
avoid the problems, White said.
The children of divorce also may have some other
problems.
"The children of divorce are more likely to get di
vorced themselves,” she said.
Jen said her experiences with divorce had left her
cautious and unsure about her future with marriage.
“I see myself getting married at a very, very later
age when I am very, very sure about the person I am
getting married to," she said.
When she looks at other lasting marriages, Jen said
she thought there was something wrong that was hid
den — that the marriage wouldn’t work out.
I don’t have the belief that a marriage will last for
ever anymore," she said. "I definitely have the belief
that if you get married, you should wait a terribly long
time before you have kids to make sure you are going
to be okay."
Jen said her parents’ mistakes scared her.
“I’m scared to get married,” Jen said. "I’m scared
that I’ll believe that it will stick around forever, and I’ll
have kids, and III stick them through (my experience)
again.
"It seems like the only reason people have unhappy
divorces is because of kids," she said.
Jen said she wouldn’t be good at being married
because she had not learned from her parents’ example
of marriage.
I think that what a lot of people need is to learn
from example," she said.