When Parents Say "Divorce"
why the moment a family breaks apart is seared into a child’s memory forever
For decades, divorce has been framed as an adult solution to adult problems. Children were expected to be resilient, adaptable, and grateful if the adults in their lives felt happier afterward. What was rarely asked was the most important question: what did this cost the child?
The following excerpt from our flagship book, Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement, centers the voices we too often ignore. It exposes divorce not as a neutral transition, but as a defining rupture in a child’s life, one that reshapes their sense of safety, belonging, and trust long after the adults have moved on. To understand why family breakdown remains one of the most destabilizing forces in modern society, we have to start here.
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Every American alive at the time has a detailed memory of September 11, 2001. We remember exactly where we were and the people with whom we watched the Twin Towers fall. Their cries of disbelief and horror are burned into our memories forever. The difficult emotional math of processing one, then two, then three, and then four planes of innocents killing other innocents still brings tears to our eyes. The fury of watching the well-dressed businessman and businesswoman holding hands as they plummeted to their deaths remains white hot.
Our nation may have forgotten the unity we experienced in the aftermath of that horrific day, but we will never forget the horrors.
Shocking, traumatic events have a way of drilling deeply into human beings, and the shock children experience when they learn their parents’ marriage has died is no exception. This event is especially traumatic for children completely unaware of the trouble in their parents’ marriage, children who are oblivious to the fact that their entire foundation is about to crumble.
One moment they are safe and secure. The next, everything they believed was a permanent fixture in their life comes crashing down.
Children Will Remember This Moment Forever
Children of divorce will never forget the moment their parents announced their separation, or when Dad bailed, or the day Mom never came home. The emotional scars of those fateful moments remain, even decades later.
Gregory will never forget the day his dad broke the news. It was his last day of seventh grade. He remembers his dad pulling him and his brothers into the back bedroom:
[He] told us he was leaving because he couldn’t get along with my mom anymore. Then he went out to the main part of the house and told her. We could hear her screaming and crying.
Thirty years have passed, yet Laurissa clearly remembers the day her world changed forever:
I was ten years old. My dad was at home one day, and then gone the next, and I didn’t see him for several weeks, maybe even over two months. It felt like forever.
On the first day we saw Dad again, my little brother (who was three) ran to him, kicking and screaming, “You hate us!” My dad cried so hard I remember the entire car shaking with his sobs.
We NEVER adequately dealt with what happened. Mom never acknowledged what her decisions caused.... We learned “cancel culture” at home, and it’s all we know how to do.
Beth recalls how brokenhearted she felt when she realized her mom had come home only to collect some of her things:
My parents separated when I was eight. Mom had moved out for a bit, and I vividly remember one time when she came back to the house. I was so excited thinking she had come home to stay.
I had recently won a big red teddy bear as a prize from a local TV station, and wanted to show it to her and tell her about winning it. She was brushing her teeth, rushing and not paying attention to me.
Suddenly I realized that she hadn’t “come home” after all; she was only packing more of her things to take with her. I felt completely dejected that she didn’t care one bit about my teddy bear...or about me.³
Jennifer reflects on the day her “two towers fell”:
I was eight; my brother was seven. They sat us down at the kitchen table with one of us on each of their laps, and told us they were getting a divorce. We both immediately burst into inconsolable tears.
We had no idea anything was even wrong between them. To us, one minute they were painting the hallway on a weekend and the next, our family was ending....
I remember asking, “Which one of you is going to move out?” I thought about that as an adult revisiting this memory: Why did I know to ask that question? Clearly, we already knew what “divorced” meant. As children of the eighties, how could we not? It was like measles then: contagious and spreading fast.⁴
“Divorce” is another term for the death of a family. The end of a marriage is often the death of a child’s feelings of safety and security. It is the end of one home, the end of love shared by the two people a child loves most, and the end of time spent with both parents daily.
Divorce introduces instability, confusion, and questions of loyalty into the already complex nature of childhood.
Gen Xers and Millennials came of age during the peak of the divorce epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, making divorce an ever-present factor in their formative years. When divorce is all you know, it becomes the norm.
Unfortunately, nobody informed these kids that divorce might be their norm, but divorce is not normal. Nor was anyone honest with them about the lasting physical, emotional, and relational damage divorce inflicts on a child’s psyche. Had someone mentioned the serious, lifelong ramifications of divorce, the relational difficulties children of the peak-divorce era are experiencing could have been mitigated, or at least better understood.
If you already have a copy of Them Before Us, consider buying one for a friend or family member. Start a small group discussion with friends or within your church. The more we change hearts around divorce, the more we will be able to shift culture and policy.
Resources
Whenever we talk about divorce, people are quick to point out that there are legitimate and serious situations that may lead to or require it, including cases of abuse. We acknowledge that reality, and we have addressed it directly in our work.
Recognizing that some marriages must end does not require us to deny the truth that divorce remains deeply damaging for children. Two things can be true at the same time. There can be reasons for divorce, and divorce can still represent a profound loss for the child who did not choose it.
For more on the impact of divorce to children and society at large:
Them Before Us is a global movement committed to defending children’s right to their mother and father. We believe that adult desires should never come at the expense of a child’s fundamental needs.
We are not professional lobbyists or political insiders. We are ordinary people with an extraordinary conviction: children must come first in every conversation about marriage, family, and fertility. We exist to make one thing clear: when adults sacrifice for children, society thrives. When children are forced to sacrifice for adults, everyone pays the price.
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I've never understood this, but when my father told us he was leaving, he took off his wedding ring and gave it to me! Why??? Then my mother took off hers and gave it to me. What do you do with your parents' wedding rings in that situation? I kept them for years, until my father lost all his money and was living in a friend's basement. I then sold them and gave him the money. I also had an expensive multi-piece dresser set with 24 carat gold that I knew his new wife had picked out for me. Several years ago, I donated that to a ministry that operates a store, with the proceeds going to support a Baptist children's home. It felt good to know that something that brought me pain would help children.
This is the biggest inconvenient truth of modern life – and "oh, the kids are fine" is the biggest lie. Thank you for drawing attention to what so many people do not wish to see or to understand.