Stephen Webste
哈佛大学联合住房研究中心(Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies)称，"X一代"对完美住家的追求促使他们比以往任何一代人都愿意承担更多的住房贷款，花在房屋改造上的人均费用也更高。
每
一代人都有其标志性的历史时刻。如果你想知道某人是不是属于"最伟大的一代"，你可以提这个问题："诺曼底登陆日的时候你在哪里？"而对于"婴儿潮一代"，相应的问题包括："肯尼迪(Kennedy)遇刺的时候你在哪儿？"或者"尼克松(Nixon)辞职的时候你在做什么？"对于我们这些出生于1965年至1980年之间的"X一代"，唯一可以引起共鸣的问题是："你的父母是什么时候离婚的？"这个问题的答案给我们的人生道路带来了重大影响。不相信就问问你身边的"X一代"，他们会记得所有的一切。
当我父亲在1981年春天离开我们、和他的行政助理情人及她的4个孩子搬到5个州以外的地方时，我原先熟悉的那个世界终结了。透过我12岁的眼睛，我看到原先端庄优雅、博学多才的母亲变成了一个幽灵，穿着汗渍渍的睡衣，顶着一头乱发，坐在游戏房铺着灰色地毯的地板上嚎啕大哭。我的弟弟，从一个单纯可爱的小男孩长成了一个忧郁、愤怒的巨兽，整天把自己关在房间里，沉迷于黑色绘画小说和电脑游戏。
我在费城郊区度过了中学的剩余时光，惹出了一系列麻烦：经常抽烟、嗑药、被学校开除，高中最后一年的很大一部分时间是在精神病房度过的。我见父亲的次数屈指可数，但每次见到他，我都觉得他越来越像现实版的达斯•维德(Darth Vader)：一个包裹在人类内脏外的冷酷机器人。
在成长过程中，我和弟弟经常要自己照顾自己，属于脖子上挂着钥匙、居无定所的儿童，在20世纪70年代和80年代，这种孩子的数量相当庞大。在我们居住的那个区，到处可见神色悲伤、身上青一块紫一块的小孩，他们总是游荡在二手唱片店和火车站后面的库房之间，在这里寻求刺激，然后在不同的住所之间辗转迁徙：工作日住在母亲家，每隔一周的周末又要住到父亲的公寓。
我在高中时认识的一个男孩被单独安置在一套公寓里，因为他那对离异的父母都不愿让他住在自己家。自然而然地，我们在放学后（有时甚至逃课）都喜欢跑到他的住所，喝酒、嗑药。无论我们什么时候到他家，他总是醉醺醺的。几年前，一位朋友告诉我，她听说这个男孩在30岁的时候就因饮酒过度而身亡。
16年来，我经常对我丈夫这么说，"无论发生什么事，我们都不要离婚。"尤其是在我们的孩子出世以后。显然，我们这代人当中的许多人至少拥有大致相同的感受：离婚率在1980年左右达到最高峰后，目前位于1970年以来的最低水平。事实上，经常被提及的一个典型统计学论点──美国大约有一半的婚姻会以离婚告终──只在20世纪70年代得到了印证，换句话说，也就是我们父母那一代的婚姻。
20th Century Fox
很多"X一代"太熟悉父母离婚时残酷的法庭大战了。如今，"友好离婚"变得越来越普遍。图为由迈克•道格拉斯和凯瑟琳•特纳于1989年主演的电影《罗斯夫妇的战争》(The War of the Roses)。
在我们结婚前，我们想知道自己和配偶的日常关系将会如何。我们会是相处融洽的室友吗？美国国家经济研究局(National Bureau of Economic Research)在2007年发表的一项研究显示，在这个世纪最初几年首次走进婚姻殿堂的夫妇中，有近60%的受访者婚前曾与未来的配偶同居。根据美国政府2002年的全国生育力增长调查(National Survey of Fertility Growth)，有34%的同居情侣曾公开表示今后会结婚；有36%的情侣感觉"几乎肯定"会结婚，有46%的情侣表示有"相当大"或50%的可能性会结婚。
我相信自己是和最好的朋友结婚，这种信念就像相信自己永远不会离婚那么强烈。我告诉自己，无论婚姻生活中出现多么悲惨绝望的状况，都不能迫使我让自己的孩子承受家庭离异之苦。我并不是唯一一个出于强烈的个人原因做出这种保证的人。据2004年发表的一项关于世代差异的市场研究显示，在一生中最重要的成长发育期，我的同龄人是美国历史上获得父母关爱和教养最少的一代人之一。人口普查数据显示，我们这代人中几乎有一半来自离异家庭；40%是挂钥匙儿童。
我父母那个年纪的人常说，"亲爱的，你们当然觉得离婚是一种毁灭性打击，对于还是小孩子的你们来说，这是一段可怕的、让人迷失方向的时期。你们当然不希望自己和家人经历这一切，但有时候，父母分开对每个人来说都是更好的选择，每个人都会更幸福。"
这种观点让我想起威廉•施特劳斯(William Strauss)和内尔•豪(Neil Howe)在《世代》(Generations)这本书中提到的一系列让我难以释怀的统计数据：在1962年，有一半的成年女性认为，即使婚姻生活很糟糕，父母也应该为了孩子而继续维持下去；到了1980年，只有五分之一的人这么认为。这两位作者写道，"五分之四的成年人声称离婚后生活更幸福，但是大多数孩子的感觉正好相反。"
是的，大多数孩子的感觉正好相反。想到这一点就让人难以忍受。我总是忍不住认为，每一次离婚都是希腊悲剧《美狄亚》(Medea)的重演：恸哭、绝望、失去理智的母亲；冷酷的、只顾保护新家庭的父亲；被折磨得几乎要死去的孩子。
当我在32岁生下第一个孩子后，曾经接受过一段时间的心理治疗，我想努力搞清楚一些问题，其中包括：随着孩子的降生，这个世界变得开阔和奇妙了，但为何同时也变得更加险恶了，远远超出了我的想象。直到女儿长到几个月大时，我才渐渐明白，当儿科医生和儿童保健书籍在提到"分离焦虑"时，他们指的是孩子的心理状态，而不是我的。
当时，单单是将女儿交给别人看管这种想法就能引起我一阵阵莫名的恐慌。我突然想到，这种怪异的表现可能与我的身世有关。在倾听我讲述自己的背景后，我那位杰出的治疗师得出了结论："你是一位战争孤儿。"
曾经是孤儿的父母──这也许是了解"X一代"父母的一个不错的角度。无论需要做出多大的牺牲，在居无定所的环境中长大的我们会倾尽所有地为我们的孩子提供这种稳定。哈佛大学联合住房研究中心(Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies)称，事实上，"X一代"对完美住家的追求促使他们比以往任何一代人都愿意承担更多的住房贷款，花在房屋改造上的人均费用也更高。
市场调查表明，"X一代"妈妈不会从她们的母亲那里寻求育儿建议。在我们看来，这个人在育儿方面做得糟糕透了，我们为什么要接受她的建议？相反，研究结果显示，我们会依赖那些真正对我们起过教导作用的人：我们的朋友，尽管这是一种群体作战方式。
Everett Collection
1979年的电影《克莱默夫妇》(Kramer vs. Kramer)。
我和我丈夫的婚姻显然处于"X一代"婚姻研究的范畴之内。我们住在一起将近八年后才结婚，尽管统计数据显示，婚前同居男女的离婚率比未同居夫妇高出48%，但我们对此毫不理会。
我丈夫的父母是天主教徒，他们是我遇到过的极少数关系牢不可破的和谐夫妇之一。当他们警告我们应该等到结婚以后再一起生活时，我们也不以为然。他们指出，成为伙伴和室友与结为夫妇是两回事。这是多么奇怪的老派思想和性别歧视！我们的婚姻不需要任何如此朴素或怀旧的元素。拜托，我们是最好的朋友。
社会学家、人类学家和其他文化观察家指出，"X一代"对配偶的情感投入超过了前几代人。我们是彼此最好的朋友，我们的婚姻是真正的伙伴关系。许多研究发现，"X一代"的男性家庭成员承担的家务比他们的先辈多得多。我们夫妻之间彼此依赖，协同工作。
然而，和我们的父母或祖父母那代相比，通奸这种行为对婚姻的破坏力对我们来说要严重得多。已故心理学家雪莉•格拉斯 (Shirley Glass)在2003年所作的一项研究发现，有关肉体出轨的道德观念正在发生深刻的变化。对男人来说，爱是爱、性是性这种传统的标准观念正在逐渐消失。越来越多的情况是，男人和女人在和情人通奸以前早就形成了非常认真的情感依恋。因此，她发现，不忠行为在当今导致离婚的可能性要大得多。
你可以叫我们"直升机父母"，也可以说我们过度神经质地依恋孩子，但是，我们这些从离异家庭的灾难中存活下来的一代人决定永远也不让我们的孩子遭受这样的伤害。我们对此深有体会。我们处理每件事情的方式都和父母不同，根本前提很简单：孩子第一意味着我们不会离婚。
但是，即使是在那些下决心永远也不离婚的人当中，婚姻也确实在解体。在结婚9年后，我我和我丈夫已经成为一对可怜的、被动攻击型室友。我曾经甩手不管厨房的事，一年没有洗碗。我丈夫一直"找不到时间"读我写的书。除了讨论家庭开销事宜外，我们很少说话。我们至少两年没有睡在同一个房间。像我们这样有这么多年幼孩子的父母，每晚例行公事地在孩子床边半梦半醒地唱催眠曲的状态要持续好几年，由此带来的一个副作用就是夫妻分房。
但是，我从未考虑过离婚，甚至从来没有动过这个念头。我很高兴我的孩子能有一个完美的父亲，全家一起吃饭，家庭生活稳定，跟邻里相约游玩。
但是后来，有一天晚上，我发现自己陷入了一种曾经发誓要摒弃的状态：悲凉。我流着眼泪告诉我丈夫，我们就像一对无法忍受对方的兄妹，而不是一对夫妇。然后，我听到我丈夫说，他感觉我们好像从来没有真正做过夫妇，他对我们没有在十年前分手感到遗憾。他说，"我受够了。"这个情景就好像宇宙的力量突然爆发了；由此带来的可怕结局就像是浓密的乌云遮住了天空，遮住了这个世界的每一寸角落。一切都结束了。
那是在4年前。即使到了现在，我每天仍然感到困惑的是，当初对有些事情我（或者说我们）是否可以换一种方式来处理。和许多同龄人一样，我的成长环境促使我相信，凡事跟父母不同就是做出了正确的选择。
我嫁给了我所认识的最善良、最稳定的人，以确保我们的孩子永远不会像我一样经历缺失的童年。我悉心照料我的孩子，爱护他们，给他们读书，成天悠闲地陪伴他们，重新规划和设想我的职业生涯，让他们感到安全、幸福和受到关爱。我和我丈夫尽可能地建造最幸福、最舒适的家。我们像一个团队那样协同工作；我们爱自己的孩子；尽善尽美地做好每一件事。但是，尽管付出了所有这一切努力，离婚还是摆在了我们眼前。
我不知道怎样才能营造一个完美的婚姻。我比较认同马克•吐温(Mark Twain)在1894年的日记中所写的那句话："在携手走过婚姻四分之一个世纪之前，没有哪个男人或女人真正知道什么是完美爱情。"但我确实知道离婚意味着什么，我和我的前夫都希望尽可能做好这件事。
"X一代"中的许多人都是这么做的。"友好离婚"这个词可能让人觉得矛盾，但它越来越成为一种大趋势和现实的可能性。相比代价高昂的有争议诉讼，代价相对低廉的无争议离婚仲裁比以往任何时候都更普遍。我们的许多同龄人都太熟悉父母离婚时残酷的法庭大战了，我们不打算让自己的孩子也经历这一切。弗吉尼亚大学(University of Virginia)的一项最新研究显示，和那些闹上法院的夫妇相比，决定通过仲裁方式离婚的夫妇更有可能定期讨论孩子的需要和问题，更愿意参加学校重大活动和日常活动，以及陪孩子度假。
我们可能无法维持成功的婚姻，但我们仍然想成为好父母。在20世纪70年代，只有9个州允许共同监护。而现在，每个州都实行了这项政策。在离婚后，父亲通常会退出原先的家庭生活，有时候甚至父母双方都退出。但是，在帮助孩子养成自尊和建设性的行为习惯方面，父亲具有至关重要的作用。例如，2009年发表在《儿童发展》(Child Development)杂志上的一项研究显示，和父亲关系密切的青少年不太可能从事危险的性行为。
共同监护还能减少家庭纷争。2001年的一项研究显示，和单独监护相比，做出共同监护安排的离异夫妇较少与前配偶发生冲突，这是一项非常重要的发现，因为以前法官总是担心共同监护会使孩子面临持续的父母斗争。为了给孩子维持某种程度的稳定性，有些离婚的夫妇甚至决定继续生活在一个屋檐下的不同区域，或者每周轮流监护。
我还从未遇到过在离婚后仍然认为自己是合格家长并且认为目前养育孩子的方式更令人满意的母亲或父亲。我们当中的许多人最终还是给孩子带来了痛苦，而这曾经是我们竭尽全力要避免的事情。
但是，我们处理离婚这件事的方式也不像我们的父母。我们只能希望在这种情况下，我们是以一种不同于父母的正确方式做好了这件事。
SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS
(──改编自苏珊•格里高利•汤玛斯(Susan Gregory Thomas)将由兰登书屋(Random House)出版的回忆录《不顾一切》(In Spite of Everything: A Memoir)。)
（本文版权归道琼斯公司所有，未经许可不得翻译或转载。）
Every generation has its life-defining moments. If you want to find out what it was for a member of the Greatest Generation, you ask: 'Where were you on D-Day?' For baby boomers, the questions are: 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' or 'What were you doing when Nixon resigned?'
For much of my generation-Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980-there is only one question: 'When did your parents get divorced?' Our lives have been framed by the answer. Ask us. We remember everything.
When my dad left in the spring of 1981 and moved five states away with his executive assistant and her four kids, the world as I had known it came to an end. In my 12-year-old eyes, my mother, formerly a regal, erudite figure, was transformed into a phantom in a sweaty nightgown and matted hair, howling on the floor of our gray-carpeted playroom. My brother, a sweet, goofy boy, grew into a sad, glowering giant, barricaded in his room with dark graphic novels and computer games.
I spent the rest of middle and high school getting into trouble in suburban Philadelphia: chain-smoking, doing drugs, getting kicked out of schools, spending a good part of my senior year in a psychiatric ward. Whenever I saw my father, which was rarely, he grew more and more to embody Darth Vader: a brutal machine encasing raw human guts.
Growing up, my brother and I were often left to our own devices, members of the giant flock of migrant latchkey kids in the 1970s and '80s. Our suburb was littered with sad-eyed, bruised nomads, who wandered back and forth between used-record shops to the sheds behind the train station where they got high and then trudged off, back and forth from their mothers' houses during the week to their fathers' apartments every other weekend.
The divorced parents of a boy I knew in high school installed him in his own apartment because neither of them wanted him at home. Naturally, we all descended on his place after school-sometimes during school-to drink and do drugs. He was always wasted, no matter what time we arrived. A few years ago, a friend told me that she had learned that he had drunk himself to death by age 30.
'Whatever happens, we're never going to get divorced.' Over the course of 16 years, I said that often to my husband, especially after our children were born. Apparently, much of my generation feels at least roughly the same way: Divorce rates, which peaked around 1980, are now at their lowest level since 1970. In fact, the often-cited statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce was true only in the 1970s-in other words, our parents' marriages.
Not ours. According to U.S. Census data released this May, 77% of couples who married since 1990 have reached their 10-year anniversaries. We're also marrying later in life, if at all. The average marrying age in 1950 was 23 for men and 20 for women; in 2009, it was 28 for men and 26 for women.
Before we get married, we like to know what our daily relationship with a partner will be like. Are we good roommates? A 2007 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that, among those entering first marriages in the early 2000s, nearly 60% had previously cohabited with their future spouses. According to the U.S. government's 2002 National Survey of Fertility Growth, 34% of couples who move in together have announced publicly that marriage is in the future; 36% felt 'almost certain' that they'd get hitched, while 46% said there was 'a pretty good chance' or 'a 50-50 chance.'
I believed that I had married my best friend as fervently as I believed that I'd never get divorced. No marital scenario, I told myself, could become so bleak or hopeless as to compel me to embed my children in the torture of a split family. And I wasn't the only one with strong personal reasons to make this commitment. According to a 2004 marketing study about generational differences, my age cohort 'went through its all-important, formative years as one of the least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history.' Census data show that almost half of us come from split families; 40% were latch-key kids.
People my parents' age say things like: 'Of course you'd feel devastated by divorce, honey-it was a horrible, disorienting time for you as a child! Of course you wouldn't want it for yourself and your family, but sometimes it's better for everyone that parents part ways; everyone is happier.'
Such sentiments bring to mind a set of statistics in 'Generations' by William Strauss and Neil Howe that has stuck with me: In 1962, half of all adult women believed that parents in bad marriages should stay together for the children's sake; by 1980, only one in five felt that way. 'Four-fifths of [those] divorced adults profess to being happier afterward,' the authors write, 'but a majority of their children feel otherwise.'
But a majority of their children feel otherwise. There is something intolerable about that clause. I can't help feeling that every divorce, in its way, is a re-enactment of 'Medea': the wailing, murderously bereft mother; the cold father protecting his pristine, new family; the children: dead.
When I had my first child at 32, I went into therapy for a while to sort through, among other things, just why the world-as open and wonderful as it had become with my child's presence-had also become more treacherous than I ever could have imagined. It wasn't until my daughter was a few months old that it dawned on me that when the pediatricians and child-care books referred to 'separation anxiety,' they were referring to the baby's psyche, not to mine.
The thought of placing her in someone else's care sent waves of pure, white fear whipping up my spine. It occurred to me that perhaps my own origins had something to do with what a freak show I was. After hearing about my background for some time, my distinguished therapist made an announcement: 'You,' she said, 'are a war orphan.'
Orphans as parents-that's not a bad way to understand Generation X parents. Having grown up without stable homes, we pour everything that we have into giving our children just that, no matter how many sacrifices it involves. Indeed, Gen-X's quest for perfect nests drove us to take out more home equity loans and to spend more on remodeling, per capita, than any generation before it, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Marketing surveys reveal that Generation X mothers don't seek parenting advice from their own moms. Why would we take counsel from the very people who, in our view, flubbed it all up? Instead, says the research, we depend on the people who actually raised us, albeit wolf-pack style: our friends.
To allow our own marriages to end in divorce is to live out our worst childhood fears. More horrifying, it is to inflict the unthinkable on what we most love and want to protect: our children. It is like slashing open our own wounds and turning the knife on our babies. To consider it is unbearable.
My husband and I were as obvious as points on a graph in a Generation X marriage study. We were together for nearly eight years before we got married, and even though statistics show that divorce rates are 48% higher for those who have lived together previously, we paid no heed.
We also paid no heed to his Catholic parents, who comprised one of the rare reassuringly unified couples I'd ever met, when they warned us that we should wait until we were married to live together. As they put it, being pals and roommates is different from being husband and wife. How bizarrely old-fashioned and sexist! We didn't need anything so naïve or retro as 'marriage.' Please. We were best friends.
Sociologists, anthropologists and other cultural observers tell us that members of Generation X are more emotionally invested in our spouses than previous generations were. We are best friends; our marriages are genuine partnerships. Many studies have found that Generation X family men help around the house a good deal more than their forefathers. We depend on each other and work together.
Adultery is far more devastating for us than it was for our parents or grandparents. A 2003 study by the late psychologist Shirley Glass found that the mores of sexual infidelity are undergoing a profound change. The traditional standard for men-love is love and sex is sex-is dying out. Increasingly, men and women develop serious emotional attachments with their would-be lovers long before they commit adultery. As a result, she found, infidelity today is much more likely to lead to divorce.
Call us helicopter parents, call us neurotically attached, but those of us who survived the wreckage of split families were determined never to inflict such wounds on our children. We knew better. We were doing everything differently, and the fundamental premise was simple: 'Kids come first' meant that we would not divorce.
But marriages do dissolve, even among those determined never to let it happen. After nine years, my husband and I had become wretched, passive-aggressive roommates. I had given up trying to do anything in the kitchen and had not washed a dish in a year. My husband had not been able to 'find time' to read the book I had written. We rarely spoke, except about logistics. We hadn't slept in the same room for at least two years, a side effect of the nighttime musical bed routine that parents of so many young children play in semiconsciousness for years on end.
Yet I never considered divorce. It never even entered my mind. I was grateful that my babies had a perfect father, for our family meals, for the stability of our home, for neighborhood play dates.
But then, one evening, I found myself where I vowed I'd never be: miserable, in tears, telling my husband that we were like siblings who couldn't stand each other rather than a couple, and listening as my husband said he felt as though we had never really been a couple and regretted that we hadn't split up a decade earlier. 'I'm done,' he said. It was as if a cosmic force had been unleashed; the awful finality of it roared in like an enormous black cloud blotting out the sky, over every inch of the world. It was done.
That was four years ago. Even now, I still wonder every day if there was something that I-we-could have done differently. Like many of my cohort, the circumstances of my upbringing led me to believe that I had made exactly the right choices by doing everything differently from my parents.
I had married the kindest, most stable person I'd ever known to ensure that our children would never know anything of the void of my own childhood. I nursed, loved, read to and lolled about with my babies-restructured and re-imagined my career-so that they would be secure, happy, attended to. My husband and I made the happiest, most comfy nest possible. We worked as a team; we loved our kids; we did everything right, better than right. And yet divorce came. In spite of everything.
I don't know what makes a good marriage. I am inclined to think that Mark Twain was right when he wrote in an 1894 journal: 'No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.' But I did know something about divorce, and I wanted-and my former husband wanted-to do it as 'well' as possible.
Many of us do. The phrase 'friendly divorce' may strike some as an oxymoron, but it is increasingly a trend and a real possibility. Relatively inexpensive and nonadversarial divorce mediation-rather than pricey, contentious litigation-is now more common than ever. Many of us are all too familiar with the brutal court fights of our parents, and we have no intention of putting our kids through it, too. According to a recent University of Virginia study, couples who decide to mediate their divorce are more likely than those who go to court to talk regularly about the children's needs and problems, to participate in school and special events, daily activities, holidays and vacations.
We may not make it in marriage, but we still want to make it as parents. In the '70s, only nine states permitted joint custody. Today, every state has adopted it. It was once typical for dads to recede from family life, or to drop out altogether, in the wake of a divorce. But dads are critical in helping kids to develop self-esteem and constructive habits of behavior. A 2009 study published in the journal Child Development found, for example, that teenagers with involved fathers are less likely to engage in risky sexual activities.
Joint custody also reduces family strife. According to a 2001 study, couples with such arrangements report less conflict with their former spouses than sole-custody parents-an important finding, since judges have worried, historically, that joint custody exposes children to ongoing parental fighting. Some divorced couples have even decided to continue living together in different parts of the home-or to 'swap out' each week-in order to maintain some measure of stability for their kids.
I have yet to meet the divorced mother or father who feels like a good parent, who professes to being happier with how their children are now being raised. Many of us have ended up inflicting pain on our children, which we did everything to avoid.
But we have not had our parents' divorces either. We can only hope that in this, we have done it differently in the right way.
SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS
(-Adapted from 'In Spite of Everything: A Memoir' by Susan Gregory Thomas, to be published by Random House next week. Copyright © by Susan Gregory Thomas.)
For much of my generation-Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980-there is only one question: 'When did your parents get divorced?' Our lives have been framed by the answer. Ask us. We remember everything.
When my dad left in the spring of 1981 and moved five states away with his executive assistant and her four kids, the world as I had known it came to an end. In my 12-year-old eyes, my mother, formerly a regal, erudite figure, was transformed into a phantom in a sweaty nightgown and matted hair, howling on the floor of our gray-carpeted playroom. My brother, a sweet, goofy boy, grew into a sad, glowering giant, barricaded in his room with dark graphic novels and computer games.
I spent the rest of middle and high school getting into trouble in suburban Philadelphia: chain-smoking, doing drugs, getting kicked out of schools, spending a good part of my senior year in a psychiatric ward. Whenever I saw my father, which was rarely, he grew more and more to embody Darth Vader: a brutal machine encasing raw human guts.
Growing up, my brother and I were often left to our own devices, members of the giant flock of migrant latchkey kids in the 1970s and '80s. Our suburb was littered with sad-eyed, bruised nomads, who wandered back and forth between used-record shops to the sheds behind the train station where they got high and then trudged off, back and forth from their mothers' houses during the week to their fathers' apartments every other weekend.
The divorced parents of a boy I knew in high school installed him in his own apartment because neither of them wanted him at home. Naturally, we all descended on his place after school-sometimes during school-to drink and do drugs. He was always wasted, no matter what time we arrived. A few years ago, a friend told me that she had learned that he had drunk himself to death by age 30.
'Whatever happens, we're never going to get divorced.' Over the course of 16 years, I said that often to my husband, especially after our children were born. Apparently, much of my generation feels at least roughly the same way: Divorce rates, which peaked around 1980, are now at their lowest level since 1970. In fact, the often-cited statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce was true only in the 1970s-in other words, our parents' marriages.
Not ours. According to U.S. Census data released this May, 77% of couples who married since 1990 have reached their 10-year anniversaries. We're also marrying later in life, if at all. The average marrying age in 1950 was 23 for men and 20 for women; in 2009, it was 28 for men and 26 for women.
Before we get married, we like to know what our daily relationship with a partner will be like. Are we good roommates? A 2007 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed that, among those entering first marriages in the early 2000s, nearly 60% had previously cohabited with their future spouses. According to the U.S. government's 2002 National Survey of Fertility Growth, 34% of couples who move in together have announced publicly that marriage is in the future; 36% felt 'almost certain' that they'd get hitched, while 46% said there was 'a pretty good chance' or 'a 50-50 chance.'
I believed that I had married my best friend as fervently as I believed that I'd never get divorced. No marital scenario, I told myself, could become so bleak or hopeless as to compel me to embed my children in the torture of a split family. And I wasn't the only one with strong personal reasons to make this commitment. According to a 2004 marketing study about generational differences, my age cohort 'went through its all-important, formative years as one of the least parented, least nurtured generations in U.S. history.' Census data show that almost half of us come from split families; 40% were latch-key kids.
People my parents' age say things like: 'Of course you'd feel devastated by divorce, honey-it was a horrible, disorienting time for you as a child! Of course you wouldn't want it for yourself and your family, but sometimes it's better for everyone that parents part ways; everyone is happier.'
Such sentiments bring to mind a set of statistics in 'Generations' by William Strauss and Neil Howe that has stuck with me: In 1962, half of all adult women believed that parents in bad marriages should stay together for the children's sake; by 1980, only one in five felt that way. 'Four-fifths of [those] divorced adults profess to being happier afterward,' the authors write, 'but a majority of their children feel otherwise.'
But a majority of their children feel otherwise. There is something intolerable about that clause. I can't help feeling that every divorce, in its way, is a re-enactment of 'Medea': the wailing, murderously bereft mother; the cold father protecting his pristine, new family; the children: dead.
When I had my first child at 32, I went into therapy for a while to sort through, among other things, just why the world-as open and wonderful as it had become with my child's presence-had also become more treacherous than I ever could have imagined. It wasn't until my daughter was a few months old that it dawned on me that when the pediatricians and child-care books referred to 'separation anxiety,' they were referring to the baby's psyche, not to mine.
The thought of placing her in someone else's care sent waves of pure, white fear whipping up my spine. It occurred to me that perhaps my own origins had something to do with what a freak show I was. After hearing about my background for some time, my distinguished therapist made an announcement: 'You,' she said, 'are a war orphan.'
Orphans as parents-that's not a bad way to understand Generation X parents. Having grown up without stable homes, we pour everything that we have into giving our children just that, no matter how many sacrifices it involves. Indeed, Gen-X's quest for perfect nests drove us to take out more home equity loans and to spend more on remodeling, per capita, than any generation before it, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Marketing surveys reveal that Generation X mothers don't seek parenting advice from their own moms. Why would we take counsel from the very people who, in our view, flubbed it all up? Instead, says the research, we depend on the people who actually raised us, albeit wolf-pack style: our friends.
To allow our own marriages to end in divorce is to live out our worst childhood fears. More horrifying, it is to inflict the unthinkable on what we most love and want to protect: our children. It is like slashing open our own wounds and turning the knife on our babies. To consider it is unbearable.
My husband and I were as obvious as points on a graph in a Generation X marriage study. We were together for nearly eight years before we got married, and even though statistics show that divorce rates are 48% higher for those who have lived together previously, we paid no heed.
We also paid no heed to his Catholic parents, who comprised one of the rare reassuringly unified couples I'd ever met, when they warned us that we should wait until we were married to live together. As they put it, being pals and roommates is different from being husband and wife. How bizarrely old-fashioned and sexist! We didn't need anything so naïve or retro as 'marriage.' Please. We were best friends.
Sociologists, anthropologists and other cultural observers tell us that members of Generation X are more emotionally invested in our spouses than previous generations were. We are best friends; our marriages are genuine partnerships. Many studies have found that Generation X family men help around the house a good deal more than their forefathers. We depend on each other and work together.
Adultery is far more devastating for us than it was for our parents or grandparents. A 2003 study by the late psychologist Shirley Glass found that the mores of sexual infidelity are undergoing a profound change. The traditional standard for men-love is love and sex is sex-is dying out. Increasingly, men and women develop serious emotional attachments with their would-be lovers long before they commit adultery. As a result, she found, infidelity today is much more likely to lead to divorce.
Call us helicopter parents, call us neurotically attached, but those of us who survived the wreckage of split families were determined never to inflict such wounds on our children. We knew better. We were doing everything differently, and the fundamental premise was simple: 'Kids come first' meant that we would not divorce.
But marriages do dissolve, even among those determined never to let it happen. After nine years, my husband and I had become wretched, passive-aggressive roommates. I had given up trying to do anything in the kitchen and had not washed a dish in a year. My husband had not been able to 'find time' to read the book I had written. We rarely spoke, except about logistics. We hadn't slept in the same room for at least two years, a side effect of the nighttime musical bed routine that parents of so many young children play in semiconsciousness for years on end.
Yet I never considered divorce. It never even entered my mind. I was grateful that my babies had a perfect father, for our family meals, for the stability of our home, for neighborhood play dates.
But then, one evening, I found myself where I vowed I'd never be: miserable, in tears, telling my husband that we were like siblings who couldn't stand each other rather than a couple, and listening as my husband said he felt as though we had never really been a couple and regretted that we hadn't split up a decade earlier. 'I'm done,' he said. It was as if a cosmic force had been unleashed; the awful finality of it roared in like an enormous black cloud blotting out the sky, over every inch of the world. It was done.
That was four years ago. Even now, I still wonder every day if there was something that I-we-could have done differently. Like many of my cohort, the circumstances of my upbringing led me to believe that I had made exactly the right choices by doing everything differently from my parents.
I had married the kindest, most stable person I'd ever known to ensure that our children would never know anything of the void of my own childhood. I nursed, loved, read to and lolled about with my babies-restructured and re-imagined my career-so that they would be secure, happy, attended to. My husband and I made the happiest, most comfy nest possible. We worked as a team; we loved our kids; we did everything right, better than right. And yet divorce came. In spite of everything.
I don't know what makes a good marriage. I am inclined to think that Mark Twain was right when he wrote in an 1894 journal: 'No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.' But I did know something about divorce, and I wanted-and my former husband wanted-to do it as 'well' as possible.
Many of us do. The phrase 'friendly divorce' may strike some as an oxymoron, but it is increasingly a trend and a real possibility. Relatively inexpensive and nonadversarial divorce mediation-rather than pricey, contentious litigation-is now more common than ever. Many of us are all too familiar with the brutal court fights of our parents, and we have no intention of putting our kids through it, too. According to a recent University of Virginia study, couples who decide to mediate their divorce are more likely than those who go to court to talk regularly about the children's needs and problems, to participate in school and special events, daily activities, holidays and vacations.
We may not make it in marriage, but we still want to make it as parents. In the '70s, only nine states permitted joint custody. Today, every state has adopted it. It was once typical for dads to recede from family life, or to drop out altogether, in the wake of a divorce. But dads are critical in helping kids to develop self-esteem and constructive habits of behavior. A 2009 study published in the journal Child Development found, for example, that teenagers with involved fathers are less likely to engage in risky sexual activities.
Joint custody also reduces family strife. According to a 2001 study, couples with such arrangements report less conflict with their former spouses than sole-custody parents-an important finding, since judges have worried, historically, that joint custody exposes children to ongoing parental fighting. Some divorced couples have even decided to continue living together in different parts of the home-or to 'swap out' each week-in order to maintain some measure of stability for their kids.
I have yet to meet the divorced mother or father who feels like a good parent, who professes to being happier with how their children are now being raised. Many of us have ended up inflicting pain on our children, which we did everything to avoid.
But we have not had our parents' divorces either. We can only hope that in this, we have done it differently in the right way.
SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS
(-Adapted from 'In Spite of Everything: A Memoir' by Susan Gregory Thomas, to be published by Random House next week. Copyright © by Susan Gregory Thomas.)
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