The Social Construction of the Divorce “Problem”: Morality, Child Victims, and the Politics of Gender

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2003.00363.x
• Published date: 01 October 2003
• Date: 01 October 2003
• Author: Michele Adams,Scott Coltrane

2003, Vol. 52, No. 4 363

Special Collection

The Social Construction of the Divorce ‘‘Problem’’:

Morality, Child Victims, and the Politics of Gender

Scott Coltrane*and Michele Adams

Although divorce rates have been stable or dropping for two decades, Americans seem anxious about the state of marriage. Drawing

on the sociology of knowledge and a social constructionist approach to the study of social problems, we examine reasons for this

collective anxiety, documenting how the divorce ‘‘problem’’ has been framed by organizations promoting conservative family values.

We examine the history of divorce and identify social contexts associated with cyclical claims that divorce ref‌lects a breakdown of the

moral order. In the contemporary context, we examine how social science experts are used to portray children as victims of divorce

and how such images legitimate the political objectives of specif‌ic interest groups and mask underlying issues of gender inequality.

In an average year, about 2.4 million marriages and 1.2 mil-

lion divorces occur in the United States (Kreider & Fields,

2001). Are these high or low numbers for a country with a

population of over 286 million people? The answer depends on

one’s perspective, and that perspective is increasingly shaped by

divorce experts who conduct studies, write books, and produce

compelling stories for public consumption. In recent years, these

experts have included academic social scientists, demographers,

clinicians, practitioners, and representatives of religious organi-

zations and political pressure groups. Each has a stake in def‌in-

ing divorce in specif‌ic ways, and all compete for precious media

exposure in an effort to inf‌luence public opinion and affect gov-

ernment policies. In this article, we explore how the divorce

‘‘problem’’ has been constructed within specif‌ic historical and

cultural contexts, suggesting that recent acceptance of expert ad-

vice about the long-term consequences of divorce for children

has been facilitated by the rise of morality politics, which we

see as a reaction to cultural anxiety caused by women’s increas-

ing independence from men.

Clinical psychologist Judith Wallerstein is considered to be

one of today’s foremost divorce experts, essentially initiating the

modern academic debate on the effect of divorce on children

with her 1971 study of 60 divorced families and their 131 chil-

dren in Marin County, California, which was published with co-

author Joan Kelly in 1980 as Surviving the Breakup: How Chil-

dren and Parents Cope with Divorce. Her involvement in the

academic debate has continued to the present with the 2000 pub-

lication of her book The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-

Year Landmark Study (with coauthors Julia Lewis and Sandra

Blakeslee), for which she interviewed 93 of the (now adult) chil-

dren from her original sample. In the latest book, she presented

f‌ive composite portrayals of these adult children of divorce. To

counter previous criticism leveled against her methodology, con-

sidered by some researchers to be unscientif‌ic (see Cherlin,

1999), she added a ‘‘comparison group’’ of adults from intact

families. In summary, her f‌indings have become more antidi-

vorce over time and continue to portray children as the victims

of a process that pits the benef‌its of divorce to mothers, in par-

ticular, and parents, in general, against the welfare of their chil-

dren (see Wallerstein et al., 2000, p. xxxiii). Her suggestion that,

in the absence of overt violence or other parental psychopathol-

*Department of Sociology, University of Califor nia—Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521

(Scott.Coltrane@ucr.edu).

Key Words: divorce, family policy, gender, marriage, social problems, social move-

ments.

(Family Relations, 2003, 52, 363–372)

ogy, parents should stay married no matter what for the sake of

the children (p. 307) belies a turn of mind that is not necessarily

substantiated by her study (see other articles in this issue of

Family Relations). Why, then, in light of the academic criticism

leveled against the ‘‘science’’ behind Wallerstein’s research, does

she continue to be ‘‘widely considered the world’s foremost au-

thority on the effects of divorce on children’’ (PBS Video,

1997)? Here, we suggest that the answer to this question involves

looking beyond Wallerstein’s work and into the political and

ideological divorce reform and marriage movements that draw

on her study to promote their own agendas concerning the fam-

ily. Our task is not to judge Wallerstein’s arguments or to assess

the validity of her research methodology, although both have

been subject to criticism (e.g., Amato, 2003, this issue; Cherlin,

1999, 2000; Kelly & Emery, 2003, this issue; Pollitt, 2000).

Instead we examine the question of why Wallerstein has become

one of the foremost acknowledged experts on divorce in the

popular media and before a number of law-making and law-

adjudicating bodies (e.g., Wallerstein & Tanke, 1996; Warshak,

2000). Drawing broadly on issues relating to the social construc-

tion of knowledge, we suggest that the answer to this question

is informed as much by political and ideological forces as it is

by scientif‌ic logic (see McCarthy, 1996). In accordance with this

perspective, we point out that science and politics have histori-

cally found themselves to be strange bedfellows on issues relat-

ing to family and family values. Rather than inherently neutral

or scientif‌ically objective, family values are (and have been) in-

fused with power and politics (Allen, 2000; Coontz, 1992, 1997;

Stacey, 1996; Walker, 2000), and debates about marriage and

divorce resonate with moral overtones concerning social order,

disorder, and changing gender roles (Cott, 2000). Drawing on

alarmist assertions about the causal connection between the

‘‘breakdown’’ of the family and social disorder, divorce reform-

ers and marriage advocates since the Civil War have sought out

social science research to legitimate their assertions and promote

their cultural and moral agendas. As we discuss, the most recent

iteration of this moral argument, buttressed by Wallerstein’sdis-

cursive construction of the irrevocably damaged child of divorce,

provides a symbolic victim around which divorce reformers can

rally, adapting (or ignoring) Wallerstein’s relatively moderate

public policy recommendations to f‌it their own antidivorce agen-

da. Suggesting that Wallerstein’s expertise is framedproximally

by the ‘‘divorce problem’’ and, more abstractly, by the promar-

riage movement, we begin our analysis with a brief discussion

of the 19th-century historical backdrop from which the so-called

divorce problem in the United States and the present promarriage