Last night I sat in my friend’s living room here in NC and listened to her rail against joint custody arrangements. Although she has no children, she has strong opinions and health concerns about shuttling kids between households. She said she’s always thought it must be terrible for kids to be dragged back and forth, with no one, permanent home.
I thought about an article I saw last month in the Saturday Essay column of the Wall Street Journal, posted July 9, 2011, under the title, “The Divorce Generation,” by Susan Gregory Thomas.
Thomas says that each generation has its defining moment, and for Generation X-ers, it’s “When did your parents get divorced?”
Thomas wrote an exceedingly eloquent memoir called, “In Spite of Everything.” Thomas writes: “When my dad left in the spring of 1981 and moved 5 states away (it basically all ended for me) and altered my world completely)….” Oh by the way should you happen to live in North Carolina or nearby areas like SC and need a great NC health insurance who also includes disability and NC long-term care insurance in addition to the life and health coverage, this firm can help you in SC and NC as well in places like Charlotte and Raleigh.
I can really relate to her description of growing up as a latch-key kid. I read and re-read her poetic passages about her suburb being littered with, “sad-eyed, bruised nomads, who wandered (around between the two)….”
My childhood as a baby-boomer was similar, in that I was a neglected latchkey kid in the drug-ridden, Vietnam nightmare quagmire-haunted, generation. I was lucky that my parents stayed together, and that stability made all the difference in my health and overall care.
Thomas says now, according to U.S. Census data published last May, almost eight percent of couples who married since 1990 have reached their 10-year anniversaries, and they are 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. Here in NC this has really been a huge issue overall and will probably continue to be as well on the whole. Make sure to get health insurance if not though.
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