This book focuses on the experience of father's lives after a divorce, and how mental health professionals can help them create a healthy transition. Through the use of case examples critical issues are highlighted and discussed with supportive empirical findings and clinical insights. Traditionally, the marital legal sessions as well as the ultimate marriage settlement focus on the issues confronted by the ex-wife and mother and on the custody and visitation plan for the children. This is actually supported by law in some places. This can remove the father from important qualitative issues such as what it is like to have children in two households, relationships with two sets of grandparents, where holidays will be spent, fair rotations of responsibility and how continuing parental discord can be resolved. The issues examined in this volume are relevant to a range of professionals who deal with divorcing couples from psychologists and family therapists to legal advisors and judges.
Seventy now-adult children of divorce give their candid and often heart-wrenching answers to eight questions (arranged in eight chapters, by question), including: What were the main effects of your parents' divorce on your life? What do you say to those who claim that "children are resilient" and "children are happy when their parents are happy"? What would you like to tell your parents then and now? What do you want adults in our culture to know about divorce? What role has your faith played in your healing? Their simple and poignant responses are difficult to read and yet not without hope. Most of the contributors--women and men, young and old, single and married--have never spoken of the pain and consequences of their parents' divorce until now. They have often never been asked, and they believe that no one really wants to know. Despite vastly different circumstances and details, the similarities in their testimonies are striking; as the reader will discover, the death of a child's family impacts the human heart in universal ways.
Millions of families strive to give their children the best possible upbringing after being split apart by divorce. Separated mothers and fathers -- and in many cases their second spouses -- struggle to find the right way to piece together parent-child relationships in its wake. In this revolutionary work, psychologist Sanford L. Braver -- who undertook the largest ever federally funded study on issues confronting divorced fathers -- shows how millions of well-intentioned mothers, fathers, judges, lawyers, educators, and other caregivers have been repeatedly and tragically misled by the prevailing data about divorce and parenthood.For years our society has accepted the image of the "dead-beat dad" who shirks childcare payments and other responsibilities. Yet Braver proves that this villainous figure -- like many other myths of the divorced parent -- simply does not exist in significant numbers. Moreover, Braver overturns one of the most important pieces of data on divorce in the past quarter-century: the belief that divorced women suffer a steep decline in their standard of living. This widely embraced notion was the result of misread data, but was transformed into "fact" by the media and the courts, and accepted by divorced families and their advocates.No other book has revealed the deep flaws in today's research on divorce. One-sided studies of divorced men and women, misused census data, and poor research have skewed many of the assumptions around which parents and courts have shaped divorce settlements, parenting responsibilities, and child-rearing decisions. Every divorced parent -- and anyone who loves a divorced parent -- urgently needs this book to understand the newrealities behind divorce and parenting. Notes. Index.
Each member has their own unique place in a family. Ron Deal explores the myth of the "blended" family offering practical, realistic solutions for stepfamilies.
Although there has been much research attention paid to mothers and children, fathers have been the unstudied parties in divorce. In this comprehensive ethnographic study, Terry Arendell gives voice to a group of divorced fathers on topics ranging from noncustodial parenting to relationships with their former spouses to fathers' rights. Their "masculinist discourse of divorce" often focuses on their rights as fathers, resistence to injustices perpetrated by the ex-spouse and the legal system, the inherent differences between women and men, and the fractured nature of the postdivorce family. Using a feminist lens, Arendell is able to differentiate the strategies adopted by traditionalist divorced fathers from innovative ones and suggests policy recommendations informed by their masculinist discourse. Complementing her earlier work Mothers and Divorce, this provocative volume offers a balanced and essential view for students and professionals in gender studies, marriage and family, sociology, social work, and communications.
Positive advice for divorced dads and their families The country's leading authority on fathers' rights Jeffery M. Leving presents a definitive how-to resource for divorced dads of any age, background, and marriage history. Leving offers targeted guidance and suggests techniques for staying connected with children and dealing with ex-wives—and in some cases a new girlfriend or the wife's new boyfriend—during the divorce and afterwards. This upbeat book offers good news for divorced dads and counters many of the myths that paint divorcing fathers as alienated, irresponsible, or absent. Includes advice for overcoming limited access to children with cooperative responses and legal remedies if necessary Reveals how to avoid depression and feelings of guilt that can cause a divorced dad to give up and lose connection with his kids Offers ideas for responding to an ex-wife's remarriage, moving, unfounded accusations, and other common issues Contains guidance for engaging in new relationships and possibly remarriage How to Be a Good Divorced Dad is practical and down-to-earth and offers dozens of real life examples of dads who have discovered the importance of staying involved in their children's lives.
Don't Let Your Kids Slip Away after a Divorce! Divorce doesn't have to mean losing the relationship with your children. You can create even deeper emotional ties with them now than you had before. This easy-to-use guide gives you the tools that you'll need to stay bonded and connected with your kids now and in the years to come.
The perfect gift for parents this Father’s Day: a beautiful, gut-wrenching memoir of Irish identity, fatherhood, and what we owe to the past. “A heartbreaking and redemptive book, written with courage and grace.” –J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy “…a lovely little book.” –Ross Douthat, The New York Times The child of an Irish man and an Irish-American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hard-working single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon. Every few years, his father returned from Dublin for a visit, but those encounters were never long enough. Devastated by his father's departures, Michael eventually consoled himself by believing that fatherhood was best understood as a check in the mail. Wearied by the Irish kitsch of the 1990s, he began to reject his mother's Irish nationalism as a romantic myth. Years later, when Michael found out that he would soon be a father himself, he could no longer afford to be jaded; he would need to tell his daughter who she is and where she comes from. He immediately re-immersed himself in the biographies of firebrands like Patrick Pearse and studied the Irish language. And he decided to reconnect with the man who had left him behind, and the nation just over the horizon. He began writing letters to his father about what he remembered, missed, and longed for. Those letters would become this book. Along the way, Michael realized that his longings were shared by many Americans of every ethnicity and background. So many of us these days lack a clear sense of our cultural origins or even a vocabulary for expressing this lack--so we avoid talking about our roots altogether. As a result, the traditional sense of pride has started to feel foreign and dangerous; we've become great consumers of cultural kitsch, but useless conservators of our true history. In these deeply felt and fascinating letters, Dougherty goes beyond his family's story to share a fascinating meditation on the meaning of identity in America.
Alerts divorcing parents, especially fathers, to the hidden minefields of custody proceedings; offers practical recommendations for reform; sheds light on the real cause of fatherlessness in America today.
Restore your faith in love and build healthy, successful relationships with this essential guide for every woman haunted by her parents' divorce. Silver Medal Independent Publisher's Award Winner of the Best Book Award in "Self-Help: Relationships" Over 40 percent of Americans ages eighteen to forty are children of divorce. Yet women with divorced parents are more than twice as likely than men to get divorced themselves and struggle in romantic relationships. In this powerful, uplifting guide, mother-daughter team Terry and Tracy draws on thirty years of clinical practice and interviews with over 320 daughters of divorce to help you recognize and overcome the unique emotional issues that parental separation creates so you can build the happy, long-lasting relationships you deserve. Learn how to: Examine your parents' breakup from an adult perspective Heal the wounds of the past Recognize destructive dynamics in intimate relationships and take steps to change them Trust yourself and others by embracing vulnerability Create strong partnerships with their proven Seven Steps to a Successful Relationship Break the divorce legacy once and for all!
