Importance of staying together

I was on a long-distance bus when two young women sat behind my seat.

- BY R.S. KARUNARATNE

As usual they started talking about their children.One woman said, “Kids of divorced parents are kicked back and forth like a football.” The image of a man kicking a football grabbed my attention. When parents go in different directions after a divorce, children become footballs between mother and father.

Any type of separation, or divorce, can have devastating consequences on children. Sometimes the custody of a girl is given to the mother at the conclusion of a divorce case. It is not easy for a girl to face life when she loses one of her parents for no fault on her part.

To a disgruntled couple divorce may be the only solution. For them a divorce has great appeal. Sometimes the sheer incompatibility may force the parents to seek a divorce. In law, however, incompatibility is not a ground for divorce. In order to file a case for divorce a spouse has to prove impotency at the time of marriage, malicious desertion or adultery. Our lawmakers are planning to introduce some amendments to the existing law. I do not know whether they are going to make it easy for parents to end their marriage through divorce. However, the aftereffects of a divorce will affect the children. Ending a marriage through divorce may be OK for the parties involved, but it is not totally satisfying to the kids.

Radical restructuring

No matter how much love and caring divorced parents devote to a child, it will not ease the radical restructuring of the child’s world. If you wish to probe the restructuring, launch a study of children of divorced families. The modern trend is that divorced parents continue to love and support their children although they do not live together.