Divorce, Stepparents
and the Middle School Girl

Even as divorce becomes an everyday phenomenon in American society today, with an estimated 19.4 million divorced adults, and people begin to view it as commonplace, the impact of divorce is strongly felt by adolescent girls. Nearly 28% of children under the age of eighteen live with only one parent.

Although still disruptive, divorces that occur early in a girl's life and involve parents who maintain a friendly relationship seem to be the least damaging. Divorces that occur as a girl enters the middle school years tend to have a larger negative impact. The more emotionally sensitive teen experiences the divorce as a severe loss of stability that may trigger any number of personal crises.

All in all, divorce has a number of negative effects. Children of divorce are close to three times more likely to suffer emotional, physical and behavioral problems, including a higher incidence of teen pregnancy, suicide, depression and increased school drop-out rate than those of intact families (Divorce Reform Page, www.divorcereform.org, 1999). These children are also more likely to need professional help for these problems.

Besides having to deal with the splintering of their families, kids often also have to come to terms with their parents dating and remarrying at a time when they are grappling with their own confused and turbulent thoughts and feelings regarding dating and relationships. Roughly 10% of the newly formed stepfamilies will break up after just a few years, adding to the trauma already experienced by the children involved. Adolescents in stepfamilies are as likely as those in single parent families to experience disturbed functioning.

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What Some of the Girls Said:

• I was seven years old, and I was put in the middle a lot. I was relaying messages back and forth. Having my mom dating was hard for me, having him be kind of like a second dad, which I wasn't ready to handle, it was kind of all dumped on me at once. And I guess since I didn't have sisters and brothers, everybody was kind of dumping on me and not holding their own responsibility.

• I guess I think my family life is really, really screwed up. My parents are divorced and I have one sister. They live really close together; it's within walking distance. It's hard for me to take everything I have and move back and forth every week. I'm no where near as close to my mom as I am to my dad. I feel a lot safer when I'm with my dad than when I'm with my mom ëcause I'm sure she wouldn't even care if something bad would happen to me. It's like she doesn't love me or something. It's like nothing's there. It's like she doesn't have any feelings toward me at all and so it's hard to leave everything and then like go to nothing.

• I was three or four, I can't remember exactly. And it didn't really have a real big impact on me because I was so little. I don't remember ever my parents having any fights or anything at home. I just remember when my mom told me that they were getting divorced and then my dad moved out and he lived in a house. We saw him every Thursday for some time at night and then he moved into a different house, and the time increased and now we have a half-and-half schedule. During the week we go. It's really confusing but it's equal amount.

• It's a lot harder when you're a teenager, because there are so many other things coming at you from all directions and your parents are people you usually tend to rely on in different situations. If they're getting divorced I can see how that would be really hard.
  
  
• They got divorced when I was five years old, for the longest time that really bothered me and I wanted my parents back together and everything. But now, as I got older, I understood that it wasn't my fault and that there was nothing I could do about it and that I was going to have to accept the fact that my parents weren't together anymore. I'm basically okay with it now. I mean, it still bothers me sometimes, because I don't really have a dad in my life that much.
  

• I mean they're friends and everything still, but the marriage didn't last. They ended up getting a divorce, but they are still friends and still talk to each other.

• When my mom got a boyfriend, that was incredibly hard for me. It had been my mom and I for about ten years and then all of a sudden, she got a boyfriend who had two kids and she was spending all of her time with him and hardly any time with me. It bothered me that she would spend almost all of her quality time with him, because I thought, you were here for me for ten years and now you're just gonna leave me in the dust. Her boyfriend and I didn't get along at all in the beginning, because I was jealous. I was jealous of him because he got most of my mom all the time, just her time. He took her time away from me, which made me jealous, but now I realize that she has needs and wants, too. I sort of put that ahead of mine, just realizing that she was there for me for ten years, now I have to be there for her, to support whatever she's going through and if she wants a boyfriend, that's great.

• He's never had kids before and I think he likes having kids. He has one now but she's only four months old and I don't think it really influences him at all. I think he treats us all like his kids.

• My step-dad treats my dad's kids like they're dirt and his kids like they're so special and he's always being mean to us.

• I know she loves me because she tells me that all the time, but sometimes I doubt her real feelings for me. Sometimes she acts like she wants me over at my dad's and sometimes she acts like she wishes I wasn't there. She doesn't say that, but I don't know, I just feel that she doesn't want me there. It's not really real all the time. It hurts me that she doesn't want me there. I know that she doesn't always want me there.

• My relationship with my dad is good because I see him every other weekend and we talk on the phone a lot. My relationship with my step-mom could be better because we don't communicate as much and we've had some battles in the past and we're still trying to like overcome all that.

• Everything's fine now. Everything's pretty good. My dad just remarried and my mom and my step-mom get along pretty well.

• Well my step-mom was the first stepparent I had. It was a different experience but I'm used to her now. We don't always meet eye to eye, but I can live with that. Now I have half-brother and a half-sister over at that house so, I spend most of my time over there take care of them.

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Beyond the Butterfly is co-produced by Wisconsin Public Television and NEWIST/CESA #7 (Northeastern Wisconsin In-School Telecommunications).