Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Talkback Live

Were Enron employees betrayed by the boss?; A new study says divorce doesn't hurt kids that much

Aired January 14, 2002 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KYRA PHILLIPS, HOST: Were Enron employees betrayed by the boss?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These books were cooked by Lay and the other top executives who put hundreds of millions of dollars in their pockets while the employees of Enron were victimized.

PHILLIPS: What went wrong and could what you don't know about your company hurt your bottom line?

Also, divorce: A new study says it doesn't hurt kids that much.

And a moment of truth.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People should relax with the thing about race for two minutes and just be happy that they are putting a statue there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By having a black, Hispanic and a white firefighter in that statue, it's honoring the whole firefighters association rather than honoring just those three particular men.

PHILLIPS: Is this statue too politically correct?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE: "America Speaks Out". I'm Kyra Phillips. By the time this show is over you will be checking your 401(k) and testing your PC barometer. That's political correctness.

But first, does divorce hurt kids? Well, a new book-length study of more than 2,500 children suggests that divorce is not as damaging as we have all been led to believe. Now according to a study of more than 2,500 children, 25 percent end up with serious social, emotional or physical, psychological problems. And the first -- or the rest rather, they're, quote, "coping reasonably well."

The study is authored by E. Mavis Hetherington at the University of Virginia and it seems to go against a slew of recent reports on the negative effect divorce has on kids. Well, here to talk about it are Elizabeth Marquardt, affiliate scholar with the Institute of American Values in New York. She is currently writing a book on the moral and spiritual lives of children of divorce; and Julianne Malveaux, a syndicated columnist. Hello to you both.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Hi, Kyra, how are you doing?

PHILLIPS: Very good, good to see you both. All right, now should I dare ask either one of you if you are happily married or have been divorced?

(LAUGHTER)

Am I allowed to do that?

MALVEAUX: If you want. I'm single, never married, and a child of divorce.

PHILLIPS: OK. And Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH MARQUARDT, INSTITUTE FOR AMERICAN VALUES: Also a child of divorce and happily married.

PHILLIPS: All right. Well, we're going to have some good conversation then. Why don't we start off then with this research.

Elizabeth, let's start with you. How do you define normal range, coping reasonably well and functioning in the normal range? How do you define that?

MARQUARDT: Well, I think what's important is how Mavis Hetherington defines it. One of the things that I have troubles with in her report is that 25 to 30 percent of the people in her study had long-term damage from divorce. And I think that even that statistic alone should set off alarm bells in all off our minds.

PHILLIPS: What do you think, Julianne? I mean, how do you define normal?

MALVEAUX: You know, normal is an interesting word because I'm not sure in our society what is normal. When you talk about the impact of something like divorce on children, we might also talk about the impact of a parent's layoff, of a parent's early death or any one of a number of other things.

I think the point of this study is that there has been a group of people who have been so pro-marriage, that they have almost tried to close off options for people. I would rather see a child of divorce than a child who is living in a household that looks like World War Four.

PHILLIPS: No, that's true. I mean, Elizabeth, how do you respond to that? I'm a product of divorced parents and I can tell you I would have much rather lived in a happy environment and seen affection and good communication versus yelling and screaming and my parents not talking to go each other.

MARQUARDT: Well, there's some very helpful research on that. A longitudinal study found that about one-third of divorces in marriages that were high-conflict marriages, where there was violence and abuse, and obviously the kids did better after that. However, two-thirds of marriages -- divorces end in low-conflict marriages, where the parents divorce for reasons of unhappiness, unfulfillment, boredom, et cetera. And those are the ones that really damage the kids because they weren't aware of any problems to begin with in the first place.

PHILLIPS: Doesn't it come down to whether you live with mom or dad, it matters how caring and compassionate and competent that parent is, correct, whether there is one or two?

MARQUARDT: Of course it does...

MALVEAUX: I think that's the bottom line, is what the parents bring to the table, and what kind of conflict resolution skills that they model. In other words, if divorced parents are able to get along, if they are able to communicate, I mean, I think for young people, this gives them a sense of hope about communication. Again, this is the question.

I don't quite get this high-conflict, low-conflict thing because if one of the parents is unhappy, is miserable, it's not clear that they are able to provide a nurturing environment for their children. So let's look at what the parents bring to the table, what kind of coping skills they bring to the table and how they daily with conflict. I think the study just gives us another window to some of the other research we have seen from people who suggest that young people simply are shattered by divorce. I think that all three of us are living proof that that's not the case.

PHILLIPS: Elizabeth, do you think research has been exaggerated? We talked about kids coming out of divorces, having children out of wedlock, dropping out of school, having emotional problems. Do you think all these years, that that's just been exaggerated?

MARQUARDT: I don't think it's exaggerated at all because the fact is is that children from divorced families have much higher risk for all those things you named than children from intact families. And Mavis Hetherington's study itself documents this.

And it is the case that children need a caring, compassionate parent. But I think any single parent can tell you it's much harder to be a parent like that when you don't have support in the home. And children often are not aware of the kind of conflict, low conflict that their parents have. Parents can be unhappy with each other, but the kids can still be quite happy that mom and dad are in the home caring for them.

MALVEAUX: You know, single parenthood is difficult to be sure. But many single parents have extended families and others who are helping them out. Again, I'm not either pro or anti-marriage but I do think that we have to talk about the issue of options.

I think this Hetherington study is a very important study at this time because you have organizations of people -- Bill Raspberry wrote a column today, for example, in "The Washington Post", in which he urged Michael and Juanita Jordan to give it another try, kids. And that seems to be the prevailing opinion. If you are miserable, if you've come to the end of the rope, it's not clear to me that you are doing anybody a favor by giving it another try, kids.

PHILLIPS: We have a phone call from Indiana. Kate is on the line. Kate, go ahead. What's your question?

KATE: Well, it's not really a question, it's a comment. I agree that about 25 percent of children from divorce have long-term suffering because of divorce. But in general, children are always stressed. And they go through a grieving process when divorce occurs simply because their environment, it turns from a stable environment to an unstable environment because mom and dad are no longer together.

PHILLIPS: Is there an age that is easier? Is it easier for a younger kid to deal with divorce or an older kid? What do you guys think about that?

MARQUARDT: There's no particular age. It's difficult for any child at any age. And, in fact, an often overlooked point is it's very difficult for young adults when their parents divorce. I used to work at a college and I would see these young people who just came to college and were devastated that their parents suddenly decided to divorce their freshman year, and their grades plummeted as a result, quite often.

PHILLIPS: Julianne?

MALVEAUX: Well, those are parents who stayed together for the sake of the children until freshman year. So let's look at it that way. I don't think -- I think divorce is difficult for everyone, but I think that life is difficult. I mean, no one lives a life that is wrapped up in ribbon, that is absolutely perfect. What do we say again about the effects of death, of layoff, of relocation. All of those things end up effecting people.

When we look at this aggregate data that the children of divorce end up doing so much worse and everything, when you break it down and look at the things like support, I think you find those divorced parents, those single moms and dads who have a support network, extended family, positive role models, end up with children who are much more successful. So I wouldn't put an age on it and I would certainly say that it's not just divorce, it's the environment that the children transition into.

MARQUARDT: It's not just divorce but the fact is that death and layoff and illness are all much less common in children's lives today than divorce, which affects almost half of children.

PHILLIPS: All right. We're going to get some of the folks in our audience. Chris, my partner in crime, Chris Askew, stand. You have been married for 34 years.

CHRIS ASKEW: Yes, between two marriages. I'm in my second marriage now for 20 years. I have two children from my first marriage and I can tell you, it depends on how the parents handle the divorce as to whether the children are traumatized. And there's no doubt there is a period of traumatization, but that can be overcome by the parents trying to get along and not tugging the children between the two parents.

PHILLIPS: How did you -- so you had kids in your first marriage?

ASKEW: Yes.

PHILLIPS: And so, how did you deal with it? Did you talk about it openly. How old were they and how did you deal with it?

ASKEW: There just wasn't the tugging between the two parents. I think that's what is important there. Don't blame the other parent constantly and put all the blame on them. Just accept it's an unfortunate thing that happened and move on with your life.

PHILLIPS: Forty years married, Jack, over here. I know you want to say something about this.

JACK: Yes. I think that divorce is traumatic to children. I think that what happens when you break up a family, you lose some of the stability with regard to the children growing up in an environment. It also has an affect on the self-esteem. You can have a situation where men lose their jobs or you have financial problems.

But the children don't feel rejected. They look at the employment as something that happened to their parents. When a parent breaks up, there's sometimes a feeling of rejection by a child that may not be accurate rejection because the parents conflict. But in the long run when you break up a family, children do suffer in one fashion or form.

PHILLIPS: Sometimes you don't see it until years down the road. That is for sure. It's time for a break now. Later this hour, you have seen the famous photo of firefighters raising an American flag at ground zero. Now a statue inspired by that photo has sparked a heated debate over race and political correctness. And that is out poll question today, should the sculpture of the firefighters depict those in the photograph or all firefighters? Take the TALKBACK LIVE on-line viewer vote at cnn.com/talkback, AOL keyword: CNN.

Here's what some folks are saying already.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it's OK to alter the photograph in transferring to the statue in order to represent all the races that fought to rebuild New York.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think to be more authentic it should be the way the picture is reflected.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It should be the original firefighters who were in the photograph. The original ones.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was all different people that were there, right? Not one kind of fireman. A fireman is a fireman.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PHILLIPS: Welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE. We are talking about divorce. New research that came out, controversial research, saying divorce isn't so bad. Kids still turn out somewhat normal no matter what the circumstances are, but still there's a lot of debate about that.

We are talking about that with two of our experts. Julianne Malveaux, who is with us, a syndicated columnist; and Elizabeth Marquardt, Institute for American Values. We are going to get right into the discussion again, you guys. Actually go to our audience.

We have many kids, products of divorce, parents with some pretty interesting insight. We are going to start with Betsy.

BETSY: My parents were divorced when I was 11. My parents separated when I was 6 years old. And that 5 year battle was nasty, absolutely back and forth, screaming about everything from money to cause of divorce and my parents lived a distance away from each other as well, so my life as a kid before that consisted of taking gymnastics classes, and ballet classes and art classes and I had to stop all those so I could go back and forth every other weekend and have the two weeks with dad, and do all the normal stuff that divorce kids are supposed to do.

PHILLIPS: Are you glad your parents split up because you saw so much arguing going on?

BETSY: There was really no conflict in my home as much as there was just silence. There wasn't really any talk about what was going on. And I was so young that I didn't even realize it, so...

PHILLIPS: Are you looking forward toward marriage?

BETSY: No. Not at all. I constantly, just seeing my own parents and conflict, my best friends' parents, a lot of my friends from high school and college that have horrible divorces. It's really affected how I look at marriage, how quickly I want to go into it and if I will ever be able to trust someone.

It's like some of my friends don't even believe that they will be married to just one person. I think that's really sad.

PHILLIPS: Wow, trust and safety. How do you respond to that, Elizabeth? You are writing a book right now on sort of the spiritual and moral aspects of this. How do you fight those feelings of not want to go get married? That fear. Safety factor. Trust factor.

MARQUARDT: Well it's very difficult. There's now an array of professionals who are trying to help children of divorce kind of reengage with healthy and positive attitudes about marriage.

But this very story that this young woman tells, which is so sad, you can hear just the reality of this whole situation we are talking about in her words, is borne out in the Heatherington's statistics that were released this morning; 70 percent of the children of divorce in her study said that they would consider divorce if their marriage didn't work out.

Only 40 percent of the people from intact families said the same thing. And what that means is if you go into marriage with the attitude, well if this gets bad I'll just divorce, researchers have shown that that weakens your marriage from the outset because you are more likely to divorce rather than work on your marriage.

So this shows just how fraught with anxiety this whole process of trust and intimacy is for children of divorce.

PHILLIPS: Julianne, what do you think?

MALVEAUX: I pretty much agree with what has been said here because I do think that obviously children of divorce do have trust and intimacy issues.

At the same time I think the whole point of Heatherington's book is that divorce is a legitimate option for couples who are not making it. And somehow implicitly in our society we tend to sneer at divorced parents. We tend to sneer at single moms. We tend to behave as if there is something wrong with them.

Often time the people who are left after divorce are doing their best. I don't think we can afford to ignore that. What we need to do is talk about social supports for single moms or ways that we can make sure that children of divorce do have the kind of counseling and help that they need to develop a set of values that they want in terms of their own family formation.

But I think to say well because of this story, which is a very sad story and I empathize, because a young woman talks about her own issues does this make divorce less acceptable? I don't think so.

MARQUARDT: I would like to point something out and this is what constantly happens, is that no one is saying we should sneer at divorced parents. I myself have two divorced parents and I love them dearly. I'm talking about the experience of the children. When somebody is talking about their own experience coming out of divorce, why should that have to reflect negatively on the parents?