Church leaders condemn logging

Divorce is a topic that's barely ever out of the news — from Diana's worldwide plea for understanding to the never ending gossip about this or that celebrity. But some of the recent coverage, including a 60 Minutes "story" and Bettina Arndt's column in the Sydney Morning Herald on November 11, has been more sinister. Both 60 Minutes and Arndt chose to portray divorce as a modern family "problem" — not in the sense that people who wanted a divorces couldn't get one, but by portraying divorce as an easy, even maliciously vengeful path for women, which could result in unnecessary pain and anguish for their children or ex-husbands. The 60 Minutes piece went so far as to claim that parents were pursuing their own happiness at the expense of their children, and implied that it was better for parents to stay together "for the sake of the kids". Its message to women was stay in the two-parent family unit, no matter what. This kind of claptrap has been around since divorce laws were liberalised in this country in the 1970s. Historically, women who live independently have often been vilified for refusing to sacrifice everything — including their happiness, safety and sanity — for their children. These latest attempts to deter women from divorce are part of the same diatribe. They fly in the face of much of the consciousness raising achieved by the women's movement over the past twenty-five years, in particular regarding the fact that the nuclear family form and the ideology that accompanies it place significant restrictions on most women's life choices. They also attack the right of women facing difficult and abusive situations at home to be able to leave. The Arndt column went even further saying that women are vengeful and malicious, and men had better watch out because women will use divorce to punish them and exact revenge. These examples are unfortunately all part of a bigger picture, the results of which are that women are portrayed as callous and selfish. Men and children are their victims. This is very much '90s backlash stuff. It is of course true that divorce can be a difficult time for both partners and their children. Many children feel hurt and/or responsible for a deteriorating relationship between their parents. But claiming that women who seek a divorce are vengeful and/or selfish does not solve these problems; in fact it compounds them. Resentment abounds when a relationship deteriorates and broader questions such as a woman's right to live an independent life can easily be lost in the emotional turmoil that surrounds a lengthy and traumatic legal procedure. For both parents' and children's sake, women's life choices must continue to broaden — free of guilt tripping or moralising. By Kath Gelber