Using a variety of cultural sources - children's books, greeting cards, and the literature of self-help, etiquette, and advice - as well as psychological and sociological research, she provides historical perspective and shows how Americans who once viewed divorce as a last resort have come to see it as an entitlement. She traces the change most particularly to the mid-sixties, when a major, and troublesome, shift took place, leading to what she calls "expressive divorce" - divorce as an individual prerogative, and as a source of personal growth and new opportunity. Whitehead does not oppose divorce as such. She assumes that it is often the only possible remedy for an irretrievably broken or violence-ridden marriage. Rather, it is against casual divorce that she argues - divorce that focuses on one person's rights, needs, and desires without regard to the consequences for others, especially children. And she makes us see how little attention is paid to preparation for marriage, with the result that it all too frequently turns out to be short-term, contingent, and subject to abrupt termination. FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly Whitehead faults three strands in the development of a divorce culture: a shift in the ethic of obligation to an ethic of self, an all-American reconception of divorce as a right and woman-friendly socio-economic shifts. Her conservative defense of traditional marriage criticizes both capitalism and liberalism. She attributes the rise of what she terms "expressive" divorce to a "model of family relationships based on marketplace notions of unfettered choice, limited warranties and contingent obligations." Whitehead shows how all sides in the culture wars have accepted divorce as morally valid and how stressed fathers and mothers transmit the suffering of these choices to children, the conception of divorce as a "psychological entitlement" being adversarial to children. Her stories of children from divorced families are poignant, making this an important book for those with younger children considering divorce. The author's antidote is to stop thinking about marriage in terms of the marketplace and recommit ourselves to civic and religious traditions of obligation. Whitehead is a freelance writer who specializes on matters of family and child well-being. (Jan.) Library Journal Elaborating on her controversial Atlantic Monthly article, "Dan Quayle Was Right," Whitehead itemizes the deleterious effects of divorce on children and attributes many social pathologies to divorce. Her sources are an interesting mix of social science data and analyses, self-help and etiquette books, novels, children's literature, and even Hallmark cards. The conclusions she draws from social science data are not always supportable, and she takes a very narrow point of view compared with Judith Stacey's broader In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in a Postmodern Age (Beacon, 1996). The unique value of Whitehead's study is that while she traces the development of divorce from marginal to mainstream, she also shows that ideas about divorce are an almost inevitable working out of American political ideals. No prescriptions are offered, except that a rising change in public consciousness may still help both children and the body politic.

For all social science collections. At the end of 1993, after Murphy Brown decided she wanted a child more than she wanted to wait around for a husband, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote an  Knopf Publishing Group 0-679-43230-2 / 9780679432302
Hardcover Very Good  New York 

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