Divorced Parenting: How to Make It Work

Betsy MacKenzie was a graduate student in community health at the University of Toronto.

Most parents experiencing separation and divorce say that they would do anything for their children, that the children are the top priority. Understandably, though, common sense is often hard to find in the midst of so much change and emotion. This book offers help in relocating parents’ common sense and honestly applying it to the management of their children’s lives.

Dr. Sol Goldstein is a psychiatrist at the Hospital for Sick Children and on the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He has been professionally involved in divorce counselling for fourteen years and has three children himself.

This book is a highly organized itemized guide, or “how to” book, on divorced parenting. Working on the premise that parents do want the best thing for their children, Goldstein helps them to realize and sort out their feelings. Again and again he illustrates that parents can and must separate their needs from those of the children. In many cases, the best thing for the child means a sacrifice for a parent that can only be made effectively if that adult can honestly translate her or his concern into a genuine focus on the child’s welfare and not the parent’s own. Goldstein acknowledges how hard and hurtful this is, but he insists that this is the only mature approach and one that offers the best long-range experience for the child. The messages are clear: your child has a fundamental right to a relationship with both parents as long as they are not abusive on dangerous; be honest with yourself, be honest but careful with your children and recognize that they can survive a divorce very much intact.

With plain talk and some well-chosen anecdotes, Goldstein guides his readers right through the separation/divorce process — from telling the children to the logistics of life for the family during the following years. The information is simple and practical and the ideas are completely accessible.

The tone is firm and hopeful but occasionally a little condescending. Goldstein talks quite a lot about regressive behaviour in children following a separation but does not apply the term to adults. Nevertheless, he has no doubt experienced it professionally and may have found that a slightly authoritarian style was welcomed by parents during initial divorce counselling. In any case, this is only a minor potential drawback to a book that offers positive, practical advice to those parents trying to maintain and develop the quality of life for their children during and after a marital breakdown.