A New Kind Of Taboo For Children

This is family policy matter programs produced by the North Carolina family policy Council of profamily research unification was dedicated to strengthening and preserving the family and up from the studio here is John Rustin, Pres. North Carolina family policy Council, thank you for joining us this week for family policy matters. It is our pleasure to have Jennifer Johnson with us on the program. Jennifer is associate director of the Ruth Institute, which is a global nonprofit organization focused on preventing divorce and also helping the millions of people who have been harmed by Jennifer has contributed articles to the Christian Post/daily.com and the Federalist. She was recently invited to speak at the second annual conference of the international children's rights Institute. Jennifer is with us today to talk about some of the ways the divorce forms. Children and adults and how the issue of divorce is connected to the current national debate over same-sex marriage and same-sex parent families.

Jennifer, welcome to the program, Dr. having well it's great to have you with us. We appreciate your time so much snow. Jennifer, the main message at the Ruth Institute is that the sexual revolution, and in particular no-fault divorce has literally harmed millions of people. Now I know that you have experienced some of these harms yourself firsthand as a child of divorce. What are some of the ways for the benefit of our listeners the divorce causes lifelong suffering well into adulthood and again I know that this is something that the Ruth Institute has spent years researching and looking into right way inspector for Carter lifelong suffering for the person who have to live under it that is helpful for people to understand is that there are layer of complication for the child of divorce that they have to live under and the layers are actually from another and they can build on another depending on the choices that their parents make after the divorce fell on, for example, on August 26 I put up an image on our public Institute Facebook page called stepfamilies are complicated, where I briefly outlined a few of these layers of the players at the bottom and that that's the divorce itself. The casket divorce which is obviously a painful shock to the child but also the disruption of the child's daily life on the child. Now has two very different homes. Two very different routines in those homes and frankly polite spell that no divorcing adult would ever accept because it's so disruptive you imagine a judge coming and say okay eccentric in the standard home you adults: rental apartment and yelled the listener together.

One of you will live in the apartment building on the live in the home with the child and you adults can be the one you want to go back and forth every week. Cannot imagine living like that as an adult you can see how disruptive it is. Especially if the say across state lines across county lines. You can imagine how disruptive that would be that's what we expect. Children of divorce to live under and Christmas I think it's cool to expect the person to live that way so that the first layer of complication.

Then let's say that one of those people remarry. So now each each spouse or each parent is now spending more time with the new spouse than they are with their own child.

That's another layer of pain I Added on top of the first one, then another layer is now we have potentially stepchildren that the new spouse is bringing into the relationship and maybe there are also doing the back-and-forth thing with their original other parent. Perhaps one or both of the child's parents house, a new child. So now there's a new interactive family that they've created for new child while the older child is living under disrupted family structure, and perhaps the parents I want both of them divorce it again. The whole cycle continues. Now you can see that this is layers but just built up enough and that, and it's all based on his adults having all of these choices and freedom that they collect are taken advantage of. Now Jennifer, I know that you've written the children not raise brother married, biological parents are being subjected to what would be referred to as a new kind of taboo actually force people and what that means and give us some examples of this taboo. Our culture has undergone quite a bit of change in how it views effects sexual activity, sexual liberation, and reproductive freedom, marriage equality, and there's always that people have in place so that they can have more freedom in our life. And I think that when all these changes first hundred coming down the pike in the 60s and 70s. The people who are really excited about these changes, perhaps thought that they were getting medical taboos political tethers about adultery and remarriage in all the things only get rather taboos. While I think the taboos actually run away.

I think they just shifted to a different realm of the argument are linked so your child who have to live under those choices that your parents are making, you are expected to be quiet about it yet to speak out about it and I allowed to express your opinion about it later. Not encouraged to in fact you're probably expected to endorse these choices that your parents has made, even though it's causing you a tremendous amount of pain. That's what I call the new taboo and expires on the people who live under others.

Children of divorce, children, unmarried parents, donor conceived children. Children who live in a single-parent by choice household. I think any of those are expected to just be quiet you don't like what your parents choices are about their sex lives or their marriage choices to that you have to stay silent about children who live in a same-sex marriage situation.

Do you believe that the legalization of same-sex marriage in our country has exacerbated this taboo for children who are raised outside of the married, biological parent structure.

Yeah, there's no question in my mind that a whole new set of children who have to keep silent about the sexual 23rd of the custodial adults in their lives. So you added a whole new round of five people who live under the new taboo sure seems like I just did not just that situation, but all the situations that you describe just can put a tremendous amount of pressure on those children and if you talked about earlier. That certainly has two to just build all the layers and layers of potential questions about confidence. All those types of things in the lives of those children right Jennifer. What are some of the ways that same-sex marriage and parenting are related to the issue of divorce for single parenting and why should this connection matter. As we look at the future of the American family and our nation.

Well, you know, there are structural similarities between divorce and single parenting and same-sex parenting, but will probably talk about those. I think that it's important to consider the role of the custodial parent in a single-parent household, so did the custodial parent actually deliberately create a single-parent household without the objective or or are they just the victim of maybe a sad circumstance but so for example, did did the other stuff die. I silent.

I would separate a single parent who has experienced a sad circumstance in the life of a single-parent who created the environment by choice or for example as you have a woman who has used the sperm donor and she is literately choosing to raise the child on her own.

To me that's not the same type of intent as a mother whose husband has died. Now the truck point of view, I argue that same-sex marriage and single-parent team are structurally similar because we see that the opposite sex parent is not in the picture so it is a lack of what I call a biological sex diversity in the home so you don't have a mom and her dad in the home in both of those instances. So I think that they are structurally similar. Everything is anyway.

We talked about for years and years, but eventually functions recognized for the bad of the complementary nature of a man and a woman coming together in the marriage relationship and by having a same-sex couple, the child is automatically deprived of an individual of either mother or father in men and women or different there not the same and they bring different things to those relationships.

Jennifer what you believe the advocates of traditional marriage have really not done a great job of communicating the connection between same-sex marriage and families of divorce or single-parent, who chosen the lifestyle for themselves and their children. Now I wish I had a really hard, but I doubt I do have some things that I have wondered about the person that I wondered is that it seems to me that a lot of the prominent marriage defenders who are doing a fabulous job defending marriage. However, they themselves did not have to live under a divorce household, though I don't think that they really can appreciate how difficult it is for child of divorce to live under all the complications that come about as a result. So I think that they tend to just downplay it because they don't have any personal experience of the second reason is perhaps people who believe in marriage between a man and a woman will Bailey be divorce themselves. They may be remarried.

They may be dealing with stepchildren. They may be, have created an intact family.

For you children have older children who are doing the back-and-forth thing so maybe I know.

Again, this is purely speculation, but I wanted.

Maybe they felt guilty. Maybe that's why they'll talk about it because they have a little bit of guilt, conscience, and so they're not willing to to bring it up and say you know I yeah I mean I did this to my child and I need to somehow fix it or at least address exchange Institute recently launched a new initiative that is aimed at reaching what you refer to as the 12 survivors of the sexual revolution, including adult children of divorce and tell us all a little bit about that initiative and what you intend to do with it.

Well you know what will expire about this because what we wanted to do is to help people connect the dots between all these cultural chunkers in our sexual more and a lot of pain and suffering that people are enduring today.

So essentially what we did is we created a chart that lists what we call the 12 survivors of the sex revolution.

Voters all different types of April on that chart is the children of the poorest children of unmarried parents donor conceived children.

People who are reluctantly divorce against their will.

We have we have a whole slew of of these so-called survivors and their common thread is that cultural change and idea of sex and reproduction and I we just want to draw attention to the fact that the changes were not unless they created a lot of people who are hurting in its wake Co. that's originally look at initiative that is called religious refuge is a tort yogurt Institute refuge and people can go and sign up and basically at the state a so that people who have had to live under families painful situations, or perhaps they caused the situation and now they see what they've done and they want to want to talk about it and I want to figure out how to make things better with cratered safe space for these people really want to disaffirm people for a long being hurt.

As a result of all of these changes are come down the last 40 years is a great opportunity for people to show the actual reason to receive healing and understanding and support expect from others, which is wonderful Jennifer. Unfortunately we were nearly out-of-town for this week. But before we go I deftly want to give you an opportunity to tell our listeners where they can go to learn more about the Ruth Institute and this new initiative. The roof refuge yellow people can go to our website which is written Institute.org and click on the link that says roof refuge and that will take it to where you need to go to sign up.

We also on Facebook so were just Facebook.com/Ruth Institute left to have more followers and have a lot of interesting stuff going on there that doesn't necessarily show up on our website.

So any of those places are great ways to connect with us and we would sure appreciate how having some of your listeners come do that will actually encourage them to avail themselves of these resources again W WW.Ruth Institute.org again with Institute.org and without Jennifer Johnson a little thank you so much for taking time out of what we know is a very busy schedule to talk with us today and for your great work at the Ruth Institute, John, before we close. I want to invite you to follow the North Carolina family policy Council on Facebook.

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