Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- One Introduction
- Two What is known about children’s experience of parental separation and divorce?
- Three The research study
- Four Constructing a new framework for understanding children’s accommodation of parental separation
- Five Setting the context for the framework: emotions
- Six Reactions
- Seven Support
- Eight Communication
- Nine Conflict
- Ten Future directions
- References
- Appendices
- Index
Nine - Conflict
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Acknowledgements
- One Introduction
- Two What is known about children’s experience of parental separation and divorce?
- Three The research study
- Four Constructing a new framework for understanding children’s accommodation of parental separation
- Five Setting the context for the framework: emotions
- Six Reactions
- Seven Support
- Eight Communication
- Nine Conflict
- Ten Future directions
- References
- Appendices
- Index
Summary
Case study:
Catrina's story
Catrina (Respondent 17) is 19 years old, she was 12 when her parents separated. She found out by overhearing her parents arguing:
‘My mum shouted at my dad, she said she had stopped loving him and was going.’
She describes how initially she ‘thought the sky had fallen in’. She was ‘quite religious and wanted God to make it all better’.
After her parents separated she hardly saw her mother for a while; this was because her parents could not agree on the living arrangements for her and her brothers. She recalls how her father
‘kept telling us he would not let anyone take us away from him and he would always look after us. He always saw things as a fight with Mum to keep us so he used to remind us whenever we wanted to see Mum. He didn't think she could look after us on visits so it was hard and I thought I had to look after my brothers.’
And her mother
‘could say some terrible things to Dad and sometimes to us. She said things she should not have said in front of us kids. I know they were upset but it's not fair on children and makes them feel bad and as if it's their fault.’
Because her parents could not agree on post-separation arrangements for the children, Catrina and her brothers spoke to a social worker ‘and the courts had to sort it all out’. She felt able to talk to the social worker, and to her friends about her parents’ separation but would have liked the opportunity to talk to a youth worker at that time:
‘I think we all would have been better if we had seen some sort of youth worker who would have helped us not to bottle things up and get us to talk, that would have been better especially if my brothers would have spoken up more.’
Looking back, she describes how:
‘At the time you have to get on with it, it can be worse now thinking back. But even then I knew that it was not fair that they made us feel like we did. Dad never hid that he did not like us seeing Mum and we all knew Mum hated Dad so it was hard going between the two.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Childhood Experiences of Separation and DivorceReflections from Young Adults, pp. 153 - 166Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2019