I’ve always been a little suspicious of that term. We women are traditionally the “glue” that holds apparently happy families together, often at the cost of terrible personal sacrifices. And the “happy” may depend on a multitude of lies, some coming to the surface now as both individuals and institutions face the fact that their prosperity is founded on slavery. But how many white families actually discuss their slave-owning ancestors?
Yet a few days ago, I realized to my amazement that I live on the edge of a happy family. Not at its center, and would not wish to be because there is still an element of self-sacrifice and secrecy involved. But definitely at the edge where I can enjoy the warm glow.
My generation, now rapidly passing, was known for our disruptions, the massive number of divorces and desertions that the rapid changes of the 1960’s and 1970’s ushered in. Nearly all of my friends from that period are divorced and our children have inevitably in spite of our best efforts suffered. As one daughter said, told of her parents splitting up, “I’ll never believe in love again.”
Fortunately, that bitterness seems by now to be at least partly assuaged. The young women I know in their late twenties are forming partnerships and even marrying; in fact the dizzying array of “destination weddings” and the incredible expense involved seems to mean we’ve forgotten that 50 percent of marriages in this country still end in divorce.
Or perhaps as Dr. Johnson said it’s the triumph of hope over experience.
But that fifty percent is a myth, founded on projections of what would happen if the high divorce rates of the 1970’s and the early 1980’s continued.
But they did not. In fact the percentage of divorces in this country has been declining. Now, 36% of white men will divorce or separate at some point in their lives and 38% of white women. Poverty, race and lack of education increase the percentages.
I see all around me some of the reasons for this change: later marriages, later childbearing, greater economic independence for the increasing numbers of working women and, perhaps most important although hard to quantify, an emotional detachment in the midst of courtship and even those insanely expensive weddings. There are still the afflictions of course: women who’ve been starved emotionally tend to cling, women who as we age are not able to support ourselves in the way we thought inevitable and make liaisons or even marriages based on hidden calculations: will he die before me? Will he leave his fortune to his children? Etc., etc. And yet it is also true that love still functions to some degree even here.
But back to living on the edge of a happy family. Often it seems to depend on the full-time investment of the wife/mother; on an acceptance of unconventional behavior at least in the young; and, most important, on an openness to including men from other races and cultures in relationships and even marriages (I’m not sure the same applies to women).But there is still that pesky two percent difference in the number of women and the number of men divorcing. I think it stems from the fact that the very structure of marriage demands more of women than of men. We are the ones who manage. We have to, lacking the ancient social structures that prioritize and protect men. And so when something goes wrong in a marriage, we instinctively take over, try to talk about it, try therapy, endure. It’s harder for us to run away.
Yet running away may be at times exactly what is required and that is why I live, gratefully, on the edge of a happy family.
… a willingness to exhale to breathe deeply to dance a bit between my steps after reading words that you write….as if i was a participant in a game of duck duck goose and your writing has tapped me on my head…