The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of Our Parents' Divorce [Hardcover]

Stephanie Staal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2000

"Divorce May Be Everywhere We Turn, Yet for Many Adult Children of Divorce, There Remains a Silence on the Issues We Want Most to Hear About.

"Experts try to measure the effects of divorce through school performance, criminal records, psychological tests, but we know the final price of our parents' divorce is paid when we make our own attempts at love and security.  After all, in the conversations that pepper everyday life, we talk about our intimate relationships--our hopes and our fears, our fights and our reconciliations. It is not enough to say, as many experts do, that children of divorce are more likely to divorce themselves. The anxiety that crackles through so many of our relationships cannot be dismissed as a simple matter of cause and effect.  Of course, divorce continues to shape our behavior, for divorce is all we know. It's a part of who we are. That much is obvious. The hard part is for us to figure out how to move forward while living with the past.  Through frank conversations with other adult children of divorce, this book will trace some of the specific ways in which our emotional makeup today is informed by our parents' divorce of yesterday.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The traditional family is no more: half of all marriages today end in divorce, and approximately one-third of children under the age of 18 live with only one parent. Yet while a multitude of books have been written about children of divorce, few show a split's effects on these children as they grow into adults and attempt to forge their own romantic and familial relationships.

Stephanie Staal, a newspaper reporter whose parents divorced when she was 13, tackles this issue not by presenting studies and recommending solutions or policies, but by sharing the stories of 120 "Generation Ex-" adults whose parents divorced when they were children. These are the kids who grew up in the '70s and '80s, when divorce was becoming increasingly common. These are the kids who are now adults longing for intimacy and connection, but fearing commitment and expecting failure, abandonment, and hurt.

"For my generation, divorce has taken on the social proportions of a Great Depression, a World War II, or a Vietnam in influencing our lives," writes Staal. "Divorce struck in the privacy of our own homes, shaking our beliefs about family to the core." The path to healing for these Generation Exes, she believes, lies in recognizing the far-reaching effects of divorce, and in learning--often through the experience of others--how to overcome the trauma of divorce to fashion satisfying lives and relationships.

Like Hope Edelman's Motherless Daughters, Staal's eloquent words shine the light on a massive social issue that has been explored from almost every angle possible, except for the one that perhaps counts most of all: from the mouths of the babes who experienced it. --Nancy Monson

From Publishers Weekly

Anyone contemplating divorce, or marriage for that matter, will think twice about the health and well-being of their children over the long haul after reading this intensely personal examination of how the author and 120 other adult children whose parents divorced in the 1970s and '80sA"America's first divorce generation"Ahave fared. Her male and female interviewees have two important traits in common: they were all under the age of 18 when their parents divorced, and their ability to engage in and maintain intimate relationships as adults has been severely affected by the legacy they share. Writes Staal, "Recognizing that we have been affected is only the first part of the journey; the second and harder part is exploring how." Although Staal dismisses the outsiders' perspective of divorce "experts," her observations echo the recent findings of clinical psychologist Judith S. Wallerstein's 25-year longitudinal study of the effects of divorce on children. Staal's writing is marred by overreaching metaphors and moments of forced drama, though she is at her best when she shares the sometimes disturbing stories she has gathered. In the end, her cohesive and thoughtful commentary offers a sense of hope, corroborated by her own progress and the positive examples of some of her interviewees. Just as Hope Edelman's bestselling Motherless Daughters offered so many women a sense of camaraderie and empathy, Staal gives adult children of divorce reason to believe that by working through the past they can achieve and maintain healthy relationships with their own partners and children.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press (September 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385334095
• ISBN-13: 978-0385334099
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #515,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you for giving us a voice!, January 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of Our Parents' Divorce (Paperback)

I'm so glad I found this book! For a long time I have been trying to figure out how my parents' divorce 25 years ago has affected me. The stories in this book and the author's insight gave me a comforting "legitimacy" for my feelings and helped me to verbalize them. It made me realize that I'm not alone. Staal discusses many issues that arise during and after parents divorce, like how money is often equated with love, how all family relationships change, how the history of a family is revised. She describes why many adult children of divorce usually show three different types of behavior in their romantic relationships: "the nester," "the wary investor" and the "commitment-phobe." Immediately after finishing the last page, I ordered copies for my mother, my father, and my sister with the hope that we can start to talk more openly about what happened in our family. I don't usually buy self-help books, but this book isn't like that. It's beautifully written. The author includes her own emotions and personal experiences from her parents' divorce, and some of her memories were so sad, I cried. I never felt like she was preaching or telling me there was something wrong with me. Rather, I felt like I was talking to a good friend who could understand where I was coming from. Within the pages of this book, I read passages that could have come from my own journal. I heard my own voice. It is a must read for all adult children of divorce - or anyone whose life has been touched by divorce.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thank you, Staal, October 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of Our Parents' Divorce (Hardcover)

This book makes an easy-reading companion piece to Judith Wallerstein's 25 year study of divorce. It's not filled up with case studies or self-help platitudes, but stories that ring true and are pretty much guaranteed to get you re-living memories of your own parent's divorce. The various stories are personal and full of emotion, but generally avoid specific blame and try to simply recount childhood experiences of confusion and change. Staal writes about her own experience with clarity, and she has done a remarkable job relating personal experiences to others who similarly put a lid on their own feelings until reaching maturity. Adults who are discovering that their parent's divorce continues to affect them will find themselves in these pages; happily, Staal leaves readers to draw their own conclusions about the material she has collected. The later chapters that concern adult children of divorce seeking their own long-term relationships seem to show the same results that Wallerstein's book does--that when parent's divorce, children often realize the strongest effects of that divorce when attempting to achieve true intimacy with their primary partner.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For Parents Too!, October 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of Our Parents' Divorce (Hardcover)

I am the parent of two adult children of divorce. For thirteen years since our family divorce, I have been seeking closure to this very painful experience. My concerns have been mainly for my adult children, because I think in they are the ones who have been hurt the most. My ex-husband and I seemed to move more easily into our new lives. This book is a MUST for divorced parents like me who want to understand their adult children better. I'm sure that other parents will find themselves and their ex-spouses in these pages as well as their children. After reading this book, I sent copies to my daughter, son, and ex-husband. It has opened new and productive dialogue in our family. With thirteen years behind us, we can all put the situation into better perspective and move ahead in our various lives.