By the early 1980's commitment to "self" had replaced commitment to family, and "divorce counselor" occupied the spaces once proudly touting "marriage counseling".Divorce passed thru many phases including the sweeping "no fault" divorce, which became the law of the land in most states. As this process continued to focus on individuals as opposed to families, the number of children touched by divorce increased exponentially!

When my parents divorced in the late 1960's I was one of only 4 or 5 kids in my elementary school who did not live with their nuclear family. Today more than half of all marriages end in divorce. We have developed counseling and systems for single moms to help them along with their newfound freedoms. We help them to process the anger and hurt into confidence, self assuredness, and self esteem. We teach them job skills, help them to afford childcare, provide them with public assistance when need can be shown, etc. We have pumped our kids so full of self esteem that colleges have labeled the current crop of university students as the most narcissistic ever. They are drunk on the empty self esteem which has been bottle fed to them since their infancy. I say this is empty self esteem because it is my contention that real esteem is derived from accomplishment!

I do not intend to infer by the tone of this article that we should not as a society reach out to & help single mom's and the children of divorce. To the contrary, I believe we should do whatever we can to help all divorcees. Society has a vested interest in restoring order to their fractured lives as soon as possible. The ugly reality is that we do a poor job of helping single mom's and these devastated kids. We do nothing for the dads!

As a young boy in the late 1960's I experienced divorce first hand. I grew up with two homes and two rules sets. I grew the number of aunts, uncles, and grandparents as mom and dad eventually got settled into new relationships. I want to point out that for me, all of these adults who had some influence were always supportive and loving. I am grateful for their kindness and generosity. By my teen years dad had landed my new step mom, followed soon by my new baby brother. We had become the complete blended family. Yours, mine, & ours.

Fast forward fifteen years and once again divorce struck my life. The mental anguish was nearly unbearable. I had promised myself all those years ago that I would stop the cycle of divorce at one generation. I had failed! Now I would encounter divorce from the parent side. I had no idea how hard this would be, and still is!

When divorce occurs, all of our normalcy (the good, & the bad of it) becomes sub divided. Suddenly there are two households of bills as opposed to one. This results in lower socioeconomic standards for all involved. Emotionally the children of divorce are forced to accept explanations which seek to shield them from the ugly truth, or worse still they are privy to too much information about their parents problems. Either way their instincts tell them they must be at fault somehow. This is slow guilt! The kind of raw emotional baggage that so many kids cannot or will not attend to, is pushed away to some back burner in the brain, and so it simmers for decades in some cases. Statistically, it has been shown that the children of divorce are more likely to have problems at school, experiment with drugs and alcohol--often leading to addictive behaviors which mask the pain, childhood pregnancy, unwed mothers,legal & relationship problems which run the whole social gambit. I have carried this baggage from elementary school until the present. I must tell you that my reality confirms much if not all of the available research, and statistical analysis.

Fast forward another ten years to current. I am happily remarried and on the downhill side of forty something. I became self employed in January of 2006. I am writing this article which is moving forward towards my life goals. In essence, I have accomplished at forty something the direction & motivations of a thirty something. I lost a decade somewhere in my anger & denial stages. During this time of turbulence and emotional instability I was capable of simple survival! My relationships with my kids grew fractious. You cannot parent inside of a visit. I knew what my kids were experiencing, and I could not help them. Once you have felt this guilt, you own it. Visits became less frequent, phone conversations are strained. My role as dad has been reduced to ineffectual at best. All of the while, I have to watch them process their own guilt in their own ways, unable to help. I have four kids from 15-20 years old, and all of them are fighting their own demons. I am handcuffed when it comes to being helpful, to being dad!