THE TIES THAT BIND

By Walter Kirn

How quickly in a free society controversy becomes consensus only to become controversy again when the new conventional wisdom jells. Take the national debate about divorce. In 1992 Vice President Dan Quayle made his infamous Murphy Brown speech railing against single motherhood and was ridiculed by almost every social observer to the left of Pat Robertson. Less than a year later, social historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead published an essay in the Atlantic Monthly titled "Dan Quayle Was Right." Citing studies that tracked the development of children raised by single parents, she identified broken families as Public Enemy No. 1, responsible for a generation of sad and angry, underachieving youngsters. In a flash, Whitehead's point of view won converts no less influential--and liberal--than Donna Shalala and Hillary Clinton, who in her book It Takes a Village wrote of feeling "ambivalent about no-fault divorce when children are involved."

It seemed that 1990s America was growing as disillusioned with divorce as 1960s America had grown with marriage. As the backlash against divorce progressed, state legislatures across the country, in an as yet unsuccessful attempt to reduce what was still the world's highest divorce rate, called for a rollback of no-fault divorce laws and even for premarital waiting periods. Last week, in a melodramatic flourish, a North Carolina jury added to the simmering debate by taking the side of an abandoned wife, ordering the "other woman" to pay her $1 million (see following story). Though the decision was based on an antique "alienation of affection" law, it still sent chills through the country's Second Wives Club--and its associated husbands.

Nevertheless, the worm has already begun to turn again. Last winter, Whitehead expanded her essay into a book, The Divorce Culture, and all hell broke loose. A New York Times reviewer dubbed Whitehead's treatise a "self-blame book" and mocked its scholarship. Esquire magazine ran the bold-face cover line DIVORCE IS GOOD FOR YOU. In the New York Times, essayist Katha Pollitt took on the new Louisiana law that created "covenant marriage," a more binding vow that can be ended only because of extreme circumstances. "You don't have to be abused or betrayed," Pollitt declared, "to have a bad marriage." Earlier Pollitt had baldly asserted, "Divorce is an American value." Thus, in a double backflip, the backlash against the backlash against divorce is under way.

"Would I prefer a world in which there was less divorce?" asks Larry Bumpass, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin. "The answer is an obvious yes. Do I think that it is a realistic policy objective? The answer is no." He contends that the antidivorce movement isn't a genuine movement at all but a think tank-inspired pseudoissue. He points to the role being played by organizations like the Institute for American Values and its offshoot, the Council on Families. "They have a very explicit objective of getting these issues on the national-policy debate. I can tell you, though, there is no indication that public attitudes are swinging in a way consistent with this move." Other academics agree with Bumpass. Stephanie Coontz, who teaches family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, derides the think-tank activists as old-fashioned social reactionaries in disguise. "Divorce is the entering wedge for these people. They found an issue that looked less mean than attacking unwed moms. Everyone is against divorce in the abstract, but in the concrete, they understand why particular people they know had to have a divorce." "These think tanks know how to tap into people's anxieties," says Arlene Skolnick, a research psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. "The gap between the way we'd like families to be and the way they are creates a constant toothache that can be poked."

But Maggie Gallagher, who is affiliated with the Institute for American Values and is the author of The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love, rejects the charge that reforming divorce laws is a hothouse, right-wing issue. "The real reason that public opinion has changed is not because a small group of very clever people have been manipulating it but because as more and more social-science data accumulated, a number of prominent family scholars changed their minds. As more ordinary Americans had actual experience of what happens with a 50% divorce rate, they too became concerned."

Like adversaries in a divorce court, each side in the public-policy debate has its own roster of expert witnesses and armory of exhibits. Divorce opponents including Gallagher and Whitehead point to the mountain of evidence about the corrosive effects on children. But that research, say their critics, is garbage. "You cannot compare the children of two-parent homes with children of divorce," argues Pollitt. "You have to compare the children of divorce with the children of people in marriages that are dreadful but continuing." She dismisses the list of remedies offered by the antidivorce crowd and is skeptical of mandatory counseling. Divorced and quick to admit it, Pollitt says, "I had marital counseling. It is very expensive, and like all forms of therapy, it works only if you want to be there."

Pollitt sees an ulterior motive behind the assault on no-fault divorce: a backlash against feminism. While husbands once initiated most divorces, the situation has reversed itself: more wives now seek divorces. And if you believe Ashton Applewhite, author of Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well, divorce, though usually painful at first, is a true liberation for many wives. In her book, she profiles 50 women, including "Dina," an immigration attorney. The mother of two sons, Dina regrets agreeing to share custody with the children's father. Ultimately, though, she works things out, illustrating Applewhite's point that the key to successful postmarital parenting is flexibility. In Applewhite's view, divorce can bring opportunities for personal growth, particularly when that growth has been thwarted by a suffocating union.

Whitehead, however, regards this promise of self-renewal through divorce as the original sin of recent decades. She calls the phenomenon "expressive divorce" and locates its origins in postwar prosperity. For Whitehead there's a close connection between soaring divorce rates and middle-class narcissism, and though divorce rates have actually plateaued, the siren song of personal liberation sounds as sweet as ever. Pollitt is contemptuous of the notion. She says, "The picture is that people are going along married and in a state of, if not ecstasy, then reasonable content. And then somebody decides to be selfish, frivolous and pleasure seeking."

This is the debate's great question, the one that keeps the divorce ball bouncing: Does the high divorce rate reflect a massive cop-out by increasingly self-indulgent individuals, or is it based in vast social forces such as the economic independence of women? It's a question that can't be answered with statistics, though certain experts try. According to sociologist Bumpass, "There have been fluctuations around the trend line, but the overall dynamic that has given rise to increased divorce has deep historical roots." He takes a lofty, long view and tends to speak in ivory-tower mouthfuls, such as "the underlying individualism of modern industrial-market society." Which isn't to say he doesn't have common sense. Almost alone among the debaters, Bumpass detects a self-regulating mechanism in the nation's experience with divorce. "It's quite possible that cohabitation is, in a sense, pruning off divorces that would otherwise have occurred. You have what a colleague of mine calls premarital divorces."

By encouraging couples to marry less hastily and keeping them frightened and honest when they do wed, the high divorce rate may be, paradoxically, its own antidote. Revising no-fault divorce laws could be irrelevant and mandatory counseling redundant, especially when one considers the boom in voluntary counseling. At a convention in Washington, "Smart Marriages, Happy Families," therapists from around the world gathered to share findings and techniques. Some events, like the lecture on "Hot Monogamy," were reminiscent of a Reader's Digest article. Other ideas, such as church-based programs that ask engaged couples to fill out marital "inventories," seemed promisingly pragmatic. The present is always struggling against the past. Much as the laid-back breakups of 20 years ago arose from the hard-bitten marriages of an earlier time, the current soul searching about divorce owes its existence to the hang-loose '70s. If mistakes have been made, who's to say that we can't learn from them without resorting to blunt reversals of policy and nasty ideological purges? Looked at from ground level, away from the clamor of dueling research studies and butting talking heads, the idea that divorce could prove a friend to marriage has the unlikely ring of truth.

--Reported by Wendy King/Washington and Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by WENDY KING/WASHINGTON AND ANDREA SACHS/NEW YORK