‘The Never-ending Story’: Children’s Gaze and the Unresolved Narrative of Their Parents’ Divorce

Abstract

This chapter will discuss how some young adults fail to come to terms with the ‘never-ending story’ of their parents’ divorce, because inconsistencies in that story prevent them from satisfying their burning desire to discover ‘the truth’ about why their parents split up. The context of our discussion is the changes in demography and divorce legislation which have provoked controversy over whether the children of divorced parents should be viewed as victims – as ‘damaged’ adults-in-the-making – or whether some may grow emotionally through their experiences of ‘family reordering’. In conventional terms, the ‘never-ending story’ of parental divorce might be viewed as a ‘sleeper effect’ that emerges belatedly to damage some young adults’ lives. However, we want to argue that such ‘stories’ can also be seen as processes of narrative construction through which young people actively – although not always successfully – attempt to recreate their identities when faced with the trauma of parental divorce.