The Ottawa Citizen, Wednesday 10 June 1998

If there is one thing that defined the "revolution" of the
1960s, it was a more permissive attitude toward all things sexual. Part
of that revolution was to make divorce far easier. On the one hand, we
were assured, real commitment had nothing to do with bits of paper and
formal ceremonies. On the other, we were told, the seasons change and so
have I, you need not wonder why.

When something akin to chaos ensued, we were assured that loving
relationships mattered more than permanent ones, and that a happy second
or third family was a better place in which to grow up than an unhappy
conventional one. And it had better be, because the institution of
no-fault divorce guaranteed that, if this experiment failed, many
helpless children would pay the price.

A new federal study indicates that divorce, and the damage it does,
are becoming far too common in Canada. The study, the National
Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) will track some 23,000
children at two-year intervals, from 1994-95, when it began, until they
reach 20; more than 3,000 of these children have divorced or separated
parents. The chances are very good that it will uncover things the
government would prefer not to know. Indeed, until a public outcry
forced it to reverse its decision, Statistics Canada announced in 1996
that it would stop collecting yearly marriage and divorce statistics,
something it had been doing since 1921, and which was part of its
original mandate.

The reality of divorce cannot be denied. In 1993, there were 78,000
divorces nationwide, as against only 11,000 in 1968. And it’s happening
sooner: According to the new survey, 20 per cent of children born
between 1971 and 1973 saw their parents separate by age 11; for children
born in 1983-84, that happened by the age of six; while for those born
in 1987-88, 20 per cent had seen their parents divorce by the time they
were five.

But the more divorce is studied, the more we find that traditional
views on the subject contained far more wisdom than the prattling of
sophisticated, educated experts. It is reasonably well-known that
poverty is roughly six times as common among single-parent families as
among two-parent ones. What is less appreciated is that children in
single-parent families have more health problems, and more trouble
falling asleep, than their two-parent counterparts. Even after
correcting for the negative influences of poverty, they have a higher
incidence of depression and anxiety, and of trouble at school, with
their peers and with the law. Moreover, children of divorce are nearly
twice as likely as those from two-parent families to get divorced
themselves. So the cycle perpetuates itself.

Another important myth of the sexual revolution is that it makes
sense to shack up, to test-drive a relationship, before getting married.
In fact, only half the test drives lead to a sale: Only 51 per cent of
common-law marriages last more than 3 years. In 1995, the survey
reports, 561,000 of the four million Canadian children aged 11 and under
had been born into common-law relationships — 300,000 in Quebec alone,
where such relationships account for 64 per cent of all relationships
among those under 30. Yet a shocking 63 per cent of children born into a
common-law marriages saw their parents separate, as against only 14 per
cent of those born to married parents. Shocking, but not altogether
surprising: In Quebec, another study found, a quarter of unmarried
couples do not even discuss their decision to live together.

The NLSCY confirmed — as your granny would have told you — that
single parenthood is a financial nightmare. One third of children with
separated parents live with no financial support agreement. Of those
where there is a financial support, 76 per cent receive regular payments
if that agreement was reached privately, but only 53 per cent if it was
court-ordered.

A particularly interesting finding is that 75 per cent of children
saw their non-custodial parents regularly (at least once a month) when
the support agreement was privately arranged, versus 53 per cent when it
was court-ordered. This statistic strongly suggests that children are
being used as bargaining chips in post-divorce battles. No money, no
access or, to be fair: no access, no money. Either women are denying
access because "deadbeat dads" are not paying support, or, as
Commons-Senate hearings are now finding, men are withholding support
when women are not living up to access agreements. Either way, it’s a
form of child abuse.

Mounting evidence also suggests that not only boys but also girls
suffer psychological damage from growing up without fathers. But
accepting that apparent reality means accepting that men are not simply
bad news, and we may not be ready for that. On November 6, 1996, for
instance, then minister of justice Allan Rock told Parliament that
"The record shows that a child who is in a situation where payments
are not made by an absent parent bears emotional scars for life and
takes the message that the absent parent has abandoned or rejected them
and left them behind." The idea that it is not the departure of the
father, but of his wallet, that creates a sense of abandonment is
shockingly materialistic, as well as transparently wrong.

When these sorts of numbers started to become well-known back in
1993, partly thanks to Dan Quayle’s famous comments about Murphy Brown,
then-NAC president Judy Rebick responded to one psychiatrist’s criticism
of divorce by calling him "incredibly ignorant" and declaring
that "It is outrageous for a psychiatrist to suggest people should
divorce less." Since we aren’t psychiatrists, we’ll suggest it
anyway. But how to discourage divorce? One possibility is to
re-stigmatize it. People who take on and then abandon the
responsibilities of child-rearing should be made to bear a heavy cost in
social disapproval. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) succeeded in
stigmatizing drunk driving. Citizens Against Divorce (CAD), if it were
formed, could do the same.

A second technique, as Professor Douglas Allen of Simon Fraser
University suggested in a 1995 study for the C. D. Howe Institute, would
be to put the property right to divorce "back into the hands of the
wife, [which] could be done by making mutual consent necessary for
divorce." If a husband could not leave without the consent of his
wife, or vice versa, wives would neither bear a disproportionate share
of the costs of any divorces that still took place, nor see divorce as a
way to make off with the kids and the house. Husbands would also think
twice about abandoning their responsibilities.

More importantly, however, both men and women would think more
carefully before marrying and having children. The term "no-fault
divorce" seems to imply no-cost divorce.

There is no such thing.

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