ABSTRACT
In this chapter, children’s responses to their situation in split families are explored with a view to illustrating their perspective on the topical question of how children cope when their parents live separately. The percentage of children living with both parents is known to be in steady decline (Barnados Today, 1994). Many myths about the disadvantages of living in a split family, which Morris (1992) enabled single mothers to refute, are also challenged by children. The children interviewed for this chapter do not dwell on inadequacies of the split family situation. Instead, they focus on a wide range of supports that are made available to them, and show themselves immensely flexible in the face of alternatives to family life where both parents live together. They can point out difficulties of family life when parents live separately, but do not identify themselves as living in a family which is any less satisfactory, or enabling, to that enjoyed by children whose parents do not live apart. This observation leads us to query, then, why it is so often assumed that family life is problematic when parents split up, and that children are invariably thrown into a second best situation (Wallerstein and Blakeslee, 1989; Alanen, 1992; Whithead, 1993). This is important because children coping well with split family life are made vulnerable if they continually have to contend with the myth that family life is only truly adequate when two parents live together. We know there can be problems, but there are also strengths, in split family life (Richards and Schmiege, 1993).
