The Church Has Been Right on Divorce All Along
by Jennifer Roback Morse This article was first posted at Crisis Magazine on January 27, 2016. I would like to weigh in on Ross Douthat’s on-going dialogue with theologians employed at nominally Catholic institutions. Like Douthat, I am not a theologian. However, we don’t have to be theologians in order to be good Catholics or […]
More than two Parents: Not so New and Not so Enlightened
From the United Families International blog on July 16, 2014. by Diane Robertson, featuring quotes by Ruth Institute’s Jennifer Johnson. In 2013 California made it legally possible for children to have more than two parents. More states will surely follow suit. The diversity-in-family-structure-loving-liberals think this is enlightened. They’re working hard to bring society out of […]
I’m still emotionally disturbed by my parents divorce sixty years ago.
I am a sixty-one year old adult child of divorce. My parents divorced in 1956 when I was two years old. My mother remarried in the same month that the divorce was final. My mother had full custody of me, and my new step-father raised me into adult-hood. I had minimal contact with my natural […]
Remember Our Children
Nov 12 2015 – America Magazine | Jason Adkins, Jessica Aleman, Richard Aleman, Mary Jane O’Brien Finding hope in the church’s ‘hard teachings’ on marriage and Communion A child attends a special Mass at Mission San Miguel in San Miguel, Calif., May 16 (CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec). Now that the Synod on the Family […]
From the Median: The Need for Intact Families
(January 6, 2016) Dr J is once again Molly Smith’s guest on From the Median to discuss how the sexual revolution has not provided a solution to our problems–the whole package has been damaging, and we can’t ignore some fruits of it while condemning others.
The Catholic Conversation: Fallout from the Sexual Revolution
(November 17, 2015) Dr J is interviewed by Steve and Becky Green on The Catholic Conversation out of Phoenix, Arizona. They’re discussing the fallout of the sexual revolution in regard to freedom and the family broadly and children specifically.
World Congress of Families speakers lament sexual revolution, family breakdown
By PEGGY FLETCHER STACK This article was first Published at The Salt Lake Tribune on October 29, 2015, and last updated October 31, 2015. On the third day of the World Congress of Families meeting in Salt Lake City, stirring speeches about assaults on the family from the government and media, costs of the sexual […]
Assessing Damage and Restoring Family Values
(October 29, 2015) Dr J is in Utah! She traveled there to be part of the 9th annual World Congress of Families. She’s speaking at their plenary panel "Assessing Damage and Restoring Family Values", on all of the different types of people who have been harmed by the sexual revolution.
Society victimized by divorce
by Francis Michael Walsh This article was first published October 3, 2015, at Pacific Daily News. On the very week that the Catholic Church sponsored a World Meeting of Families, the PDN published a column extolling the virtues of Guam’s divorce laws. We were told by the correspondent that the divorce laws in Guam are […]
This is what I wanted to say to a fellow child of divorce
by Jennifer Johnson I just came across this article, written by a young adult whose parents divorced when she was 16. Her name is Talia Kollek. She is defending divorce and advocating for more divorces. I wanted to post this as a comment under her article, but for some reason I didn’t have the heart. […]
When parents don’t love each other
by s.f. (ny, ny) When parents don’t love each other, they don’t love each others family. when they don’t love each other’s family, they don’t love the family of their child. the child feels alone and can’t show too much love or devotion to either side. when the parents remarry and have children, they love […]
The Vatican’s Synod on the Family
(October 14, 2015) Dr J is once again Todd Wilkin’s guest on Issues, Etc. They’re discussing the Catholic church’s worldwide Synod on the Family and the educational conference immediately beforehand in which Dr J participated.
Jennifer Johnson at ICRI
(October 10, 2015) Continuing with our international theme, Jennifer Johnson is in Paris! She traveled there to be part of the International Children’s RIghts 2nd Annual Conference. She’s speaking on the injustice of alternative family structures to the children growing up in them.
“When my parents got divorced”
Check out this video of adult children of divorce speaking out about their experiences. How many of you can relate? Tamara El-Rahi writes for Family Edge: “Everything thinks that divorce is so common and not a big deal. And yeah it is common, and it is a big deal, and it can completely affect your […]
Dr J at the Angelicum
(October 12, 2015) Dr J is in Rome! She traveled there to be part of the Courage Conference at the Angelicum. Courage put on the conference in anticipation of the upcoming Synod on the Family. She’s speaking on the injustice of alternative family structures to the children growing up in them. She takes questions afterward, too–those will be available on the Ruth Refuge.
Teaser: October Synod on the Family
(September 30, 2015) Dr J is once again Molly Smith’s guest on From the Median to discuss her upcoming trip to the Vatican for the October Synod on the Family.
How Does Divorce and Family Breakdown Affect Our Children?
(September 30, 2015) Jennifer Johnson is Molly Smith’s guest on "From the Median", to discuss how divorce and family breakdown affect our children.
Little Girl Asking Her Parents To Be Friends
Sweet, sad video. Little Girl Asking Her Parents To Be Friends
Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, and the Understated Tragedy of Divorce
This article was posted at Word on Fire August 18, 2015. by Fr. Damian Ference Any regular reader of Word on Fire will know that I am a big fan of music, secular music in particular. It was Bishop-elect Barron who first made it acceptable to write favorably about secular music as a priest, at […]
A New Kind of Taboo for Children
(September 17, 2015) Jennifer Johnson, Ruth Institute’s Director of Operations, appears today on Family Policy Matters Radio to speak about the harms and risks of being a child of divorce. Emotional harm and the pressure to be silent form the inadvertent basis for a new kind of taboo for children.
My sense of family was swept away…
I just want to say what my reaction was when I understood that night, when I was seven, what was the meaning of the word “divorce.” Despite an empathy that made it very possible to forgive them in my early 30’s; Despite an understanding of how much a young, responsible couple was up […]
Dr J at CANFP
(August 21, 2015) Dr J is one of the keynote speakers at the California Association of Natural Family Planning, where she talks about "The Sexual Revolution and its Victims.", She takes questions afterward, too–check out the podcast stream over at the Ruth Refuge for all of her Q&A sessions.
The Courage Conference and the Sexual Revolution
(August 17, 2015) Dr J is once again Molly Smith’s guest on From the Median to discuss how we got to where we are culturally on sex, marriage, and family–and how we can move forward to a kinder, more Godly understanding that promotes healing from all the damage that’s been done.
Summit Ministries: Contracts vs. Kinship
(July 14, 2015) Dr J was invited to speak at Summit Ministries’ conference in Dayton, Tennessee, to a group of high school students. Here she’s giving a talk on the difference between kinship and contracts. Incidentally, this is her first talk after the Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges mandating genderless marriage in all 50 states. This is the second part of her talk–if you missed the first one, check out the previous podcast–and she also took questions, which are available for download over at the Ruth Refuge.
The Church’s Finest Hour
(July 15, 2015) Dr J’s giving her talk "The Church’s Finest Hour", on marriage and parenthood to the local diocese of Mt. Carmel in California. There was a Q&A session afterward, too–it’s available for download over at the Ruth Refuge. Check out all the other neat stuff the Refuge has to offer by clicking on the Ruth Refuge section of our website.
Five step-moms and sterilized at age 30
My parents divorced when I was about 9. I grew up in a home where marriage dysfunction was the norm. We went through 5 step moms. My brother and sister all became close because we had to rely on each other. I married my first wife when I was in my early twenties. I was […]
Breaking the Sexual Revolution’s New Taboos
By Jennifer Johnson This article was first published June 30, 2015, at the Christian Post. A taboo is a subject, word, or activity that is avoided because it is offensive or embarrassing. It seems to me that children who are not raised by their married biological parents are subject to a new kind of taboo. […]
I had Masha Gessen’s dream of five parents… and it sucked
Imagine having five parents! Here’s what it means: it means going back and forth between all those households on a regular basis, never having a single place to call home during your most tender and vulnerable years. It means having divided Christmases, other holidays, and birthdays–you spend one with one parent, and another with the other parent, never spending a single holiday or birthday with both parents. Imagine having each of your parents completely ignore the other half of you, the other half of your family, as if it did not even exist. Meanwhile, imagine each parent pouring their energy into their new families and creating a unified home for their new children. These experiences give you the definite impression of being something leftover, something not quite part of them. You live like that on a daily basis for 18+ years.
Dear Heterosexual Community: Your Kids Are Hurting, Part 2
by Jennifer Johnson, Associate Director How savvy are you about step-families? Do you understand the structural similarity between step-families and same-sex marriage? Take the Step-Family Quiz to test your knowledge.I created this quiz as an engaging way to help defenders of marriage understand the cultural blind-spot that we have about step-families. Of course anybody is […]
Dear Heterosexual Community: Your Kids Are Hurting, Part 1
by Jennifer Johnson, Associate Director for the Ruth Institute I am pleased to see that the community of natural marriage defenders is taking notice of kids in gay households: Dear Gay Community: Your Kids Are Hurting Wonderful! But what if I told you that it’s only a start? Consider this: kids in gay households […]
Hidden Pain
by c.a.w. Life growing up was never easy for me. Maybe it was my sensitive temperament. I was shy, and a bit of a tomboy. Consequently, I was never popular in school. It was hard, but at least I had my family to turn to, right? I always had my brother to play with, and […]
Parental Alienation Syndrome
by Heather B. (Maryland) My Experiences with Parental Alienation Syndrome I still remember standing at the top of a sloping gravel driveway. My sister stood beside me; I was uncertain of the words we were trained to speak. As the black pick-up truck made its final ascent to our front door, I look at my […]
Divorce as a Children’s Rights Issue
(October 3, 2014) Dr J travels to California’s Simi Valley to participate in the International Children’s Rights Institute’s conference hosted by Robert Lopez–this is our podcast of her talk there, "Divorce as a Children’s Rights Issue."
Lifelong Grief: A Child’s Story of Divorce
by Alysse E. (Raleigh, NC) Lifelong Grief My divorce story begins with an image of my father, curled up underneath my baby bed while I slept, whispering a tearful goodbye. Later that night, he would beg my mother, “Please, don’t take her away.” Because I was only two when my parents divorced, I have no […]
3rd times a charm
by Ashtin (Iowa) My dad My biological mother and father had only known each other 6 months when they had their shotgun wedding, which my mother was 5 months pregnant at. They were young, even though my mom had Curtis(6)( my brother from a previous marriage) already, Logan was born, then myself. But at the […]
Too Bad They Didn’t Realize This 40 Years Ago…
by CTW (Illinois) 1973 – two years before the divorce My parents divorced when I was 9 years old. I’ve written 2 brief reflections on my experiences and contributed them to this site: http://www.marriage-ecosystem.org/the-myth-of-divorce-as-the-way-to-solve-all-your-problems.html http://www.marriage-ecosystem.org/turned-out-all-right.html And now I have an addendum. My dad’s third wife passed away a few months ago (in early 2014). In […]
Their divorce nearly killed me
Growing up in suburban Philadelphia, the daughter of two yuppies, it seemed like I had everything. I was pretty sheltered, a shy child by nature and nurture. The later cause of my introverted nature was the fact that my parents avoided verbal communication with each other. The only time I remember them directly talking to […]
Missing Father, Missing Time
by Shannon (Texas) I was fairly young when my parents divorced, six. It was rough on my brother and I. My dad kidnapped me and brought me to court. He asked me to lie about my mother in hope that he would attain custody, that did not happen. My parents fought a lot and I […]
Just terrible
by Mia So when I was four months old, my mom go diagnosed with CML. My dad kept on going to New York for work. When he was working on a movie he had sex with the girl who is 18 years younger than him. My mom found out when the baby was born. My […]
Divorce Never Ends for Children
by Ryan (Midwest, USA) Based on my personal experience, and what I’ve observed knowing dozens of people with divorced parents, it is my belief that there is no divorce that does not severely damage a child and set them back for their entire life. Some divorces are necessary, as in cases of abuse or addiction […]
I fear having a family so much that I probably won’t
by Noah (Baltimore) My parents were allegedly a common law marriage, but the state they lived in didn’t recognize common law marriage at the time, so far as I can tell. They were hippies, my father was a drunk and a junkie, my mother left him when I was 2 and my brother 4. My […]
No easy solution
My mom needed to divorce my dad. He had been physically abusive for years. Eventually he committed adultery. While my mother felt totally betrayed, there was a part of her that was glad she finally felt no one could expect her to stay married to him. That was when I was 13. Now I’m an […]
The Parents Move On, But the Children Suffer Forever….
by Cindy (Pennsylvania) I was born in 1967. My parents were on the cutting edge of society then. My mother had become a career woman in 1961, when my brother was an infant. There were no daycares, only grandmas. Even after I was born, my mother wanted little to do with marriage and family. My […]
2nd class citizen in my own family
by Second class citizen (USSA) I was the eldest child in step family situations on both sides. It was like being a second class citizen in my own family. On my mother’s side, a new child was born, and the entire family revolved around this new child. On my dad’s side, he remarried women who […]
Light in the Storm
I remember watching from an upstairs bedroom window my father walking because my mother had tossed him out of the house. He had no where to go. I put my hand on the glass as a way of feeling that pain of him leaving. My father was sick due to Agent Orange. I was screaming […]
Turned Out All Right?
by CTW (Illinois) My mom denies how painful the divorce was for my brothers and I. Once we grew up, she openly mocked the statistics demonstrating poorer outcomes for children whose parents divorced, because we didn’t suffer any of the social pathologies to which we were statistically more susceptible: none of us ended up in […]
The issues are legion
There are too many sufferings in my life to list. Two things I would say are: Divorce and one remarriage ruined every holiday family gathering for me because parents or siblings pressured me to attend. I can’t be in two places at the same time, and parents would be angry or saddened because they knew […]
"The kids will be fine if the adults are happy…"
by Anono-Mama (Planet Earth) I am the child of divorce. My parents divorced when I was about three, and I was bounced back and forth between their households my entire childhood. There were several things that were and still are very painful. My mom later remarried. I loved my step dad a lot, but when […]
Divorce for good reason
by army brat (America) My father came home from a deployment and had found me (a toddler) bruised after being abused by my mother. He took me, and left, and ultimately gained full custody (in the south, at a time when males receiving full custody was unheard of). We were financially wrecked, and although we […]
Gifts for them but not me
by sigh (Boston, MA) One time my step dad came home from a trip. We were all excited to see him, and he had some gifts. Two gifts, to be exact. One for my mother. One for my sister (his daughter). They both opened the boxes in front of me. Inside were matching jackets, a […]
The myth of divorce as the way to solve all your problems
by CTW My parents divorced when I was 9… …and proceeded to continue to fight with one another for my entire childhood and into my adult life. My own marriage also ended in divorce, and yet the conflict has continued for the past 12 years and is likely to continue at least until the youngest […]
Divorce for "unchastity", or so they claim…
by Rebekah (Michigan) When I was young I used to tell people that I was glad my parents weren’t together. When probed further I could only fall back to the fact that I had hardly remembered them together and that they seemed so different from one another. I would then try to highlight their vast […]
Jumping Ship After Raising the Kids
My parents divorced after 29 years of marriage. Their children, including myself, were all over the age of 18. My mother said that she waited until we were all out of the house to leave, because we would not be affected so much. She was wrong. Many of our extended family members said, “If that […]
my parents divorced when i was 39
by Stephanie (Canada) They had been married so long! They had three children and at that time, 21 grandchildren. It had been hard between them forever, but seemed to get worse every year. My mom mocked me for being distressed past six weeks – she said “You knew this was coming”. Well, yes and no. […]
Lost Identity
The earliest memory I have of my natural family is when I was two or three years old. I remember lying on my father’s shirtless back while he did pushups. After he finished his exercises, my mother used tweezers to pluck stray hairs out of his back. It is a personal memory, one of many […]
Legal Issues and a Lifetime of Stress
My parent’s divorce could potentially be the cause of my depression, anxiety, OCD, social anxiety, and schizophrenia. Things got quite bad in a way you might not expect. There was no hitting or drinking involved. I was born to my parents when they were dating. The two had been in love throughout high school, and […]
Trying to Outrun the Curse
My parents got divorced as I was entering high school. I generally say it hit my younger brother the hardest. I think that’s just because his reaction was more outward. My dad is on wife #3. Hopefully, she’s the final one. My mom didn’t remarry. She viewed it as her keeping her vow, since my […]
What should I call this man?
by JVW (NC) I distinctly remember when I was 5, trying to figure out what to call the man my mom had married. I knew my dad was supposed to be called dad, but this man was around me every day, always here, and my dad was only around from 12:30-5 every Sunday with a […]
How about great-grandchildren of divorce?
by K (Colorado) Nobody in my family has divorced for three generations. But my great-grandfather divorced his first wife and married my great-grandmother. His own son, born of this second marriage – my great-uncle – criticized him for what he did. Now both of those generations are gone, but there are still effects. I live […]