Connected Lives

Abstract

I began this account of divorce and family life by discussing a newspaper article entitled ‘An Unusual Marriage’. This emphasised the degree of support, care and connection between a couple who had been divorced for 30 years. Yet how ‘unusual’ was the marriage between Sarah Clethero and John Challenor? The findings in this book reveal the many ways in which divorcees, just like Sarah and John, remain deeply connected to each other even ten years post separation. While not all divorcees went as far as to care for former spouses in their homes, there was nonetheless a great deal of ongoing care and support between them. Unlike the reports of selfish individualism we hear from neoconservative scholars, the findings in this study demonstrate high levels of commitment extending across families. Parents make choices about parenting and financial arrangements, about repartnering, relocating and working, all with the best interests of the child and their relationships in mind. The former spouses described in Chap. 8 often served as the most essential resource for support and carried responsibility for their ex-partners. Contrary to what we read in the newspapers, divorce does not always sever spousal or co-parental ties and patterns of support; the ties may be stretched across time and space but, in most instances, they remain.