"The Divorce Generation" by Susan Gregory Thomas (Review, July 9) is an accurate depiction of Generation X. My wife of 20 years and I (each married once before) have four Gen X children between us. They all are products of our first marriages. Our concern over their obsession with being "perfect parents" is that they will overlook the critical importance of being a well-matched couple first and foremost.
Our boomer generation was raised on the harrowing tales of our parents' experiences in the Great Depression. As a result, we placed importance on the value of a good education and high-paying careers. This didn't always leave time to be perfect parents. We missed some soccer matches and recitals. Our Gen-X children seem intent on never letting that happen to their children. Unfortunately, they are doing this at the expense of the one-on-one adult relationships and intimacy requisite for a sustainable marriage.
John Wayne Falbey
Naples, Fla.
The most trying times of marriage are the middle years. The excitement of the newness of marriage—new home, new interests, new babies, new friends—wears off, and within a decade it's gone. Then the mundane begins: He works too late, she has too much to juggle, the wedding-day glow is gone, the children's wants are impossible and no one seems to care. Life becomes an almost intolerable day-to-day struggle and one wonders: Is this as good as it's going to get?
In hindsight, it's difficult to pinpoint what exactly kept us together with all the upheavals, problems and roadblocks. Of course, with the arrival of each child, the realization that it wasn't "all about me" became apparent. We owed them whatever was necessary to ensure a stable and caring upbringing, regardless of how often we had to put our feelings, wants and desires aside.
For those who keep a marriage glued together, the rewards come. With children off leading satisfying and committed lives of their own now, products of a semistable home, we've found we can enjoy the results of keeping it together. We have a shared history—the trauma of our two-year-old getting stuck in a tree, the scramble to come up with enough money to get into the hospital the night the middle child was born, or the fuss we tried to pretend we weren't making for Cindy's first date. This and so much more is what made up our family.
After all the years of struggle, there's a shared contentment to be enjoyed. All it took was commitment, perseverance, persistence, hard work and long hours, and it was well worth all the trauma, drama and effort. It was and always will be better with the partner who somehow chose to hang in with me through it all.
T. Emerson Murphy
Annapolis, Md.
There seem to be three main areas of weakness that undermined the author's best efforts to hold her own family together. First, she was entirely focused on what she didn't want—divorce—instead of what she did want—marriage. Second, while avoiding her own parents as role models, she mentions turning to distinguished counselors and her "wolf pack" of contemporaries, rather than a solid, successful and happily married mentor who could offer advice and wisdom. Third, she seems to have accepted the diagnosis of "war orphan" too readily, seeing herself as a victim of her own childhood circumstances.
Perhaps if she had made the mature choice to wash the dishes, relate to her husband as a man instead of only as a father and to refuse to live much of her adult life in the shadow of her own childhood, she might have been able to achieve the dream that eluded her. In my mind, settling for a pleasant divorce is a far cry from "doing it right." Our generation can do better than that.
Rachel Kaitz
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
The essay is striking for the one, glaring omission in its history of divorce in America: the no-fault divorce. What is devastatingly sad is the huge number of American children and families that "no-fault" left crumbled in its wake. Apparently, Susan Gregory Thomas is one of them.
Karen Boushelle
New Albany, Ohio
