DIVORCE

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Strangers (A Memoir of Marriage)

Author: Belle Burden

Narration by: Belle Burden

In some respects, “Strangers” is an unrelatable example of the trauma of divorce. In other ways, it is a testament to divorces’ hardship for women and societies’ inequality. The unrelatable parts are in the difference between divorce for those who are wealthy and those who are not. What is brilliantly revealed is the trauma of divorce and its disproportionate effect on wives and mothers.

However, women who are not rich face a different experience when their husbands leave a marriage. In most cases, the burden of coping with divorce is more impactful for children and a wife than a husband. Often, as in the case of Belle Burden, a mother faces having to return to a work environment that discriminates against women in ways that diminish their value in society. Women often retire from the workforce when they become pregnant because of the consuming responsibility of raising a child.

It is worse for women who are poor and less educated than Ms. Burden. The point that Burden makes clear (regardless of her wealth and education) is women sacrifice much of their lives raising their children while husbands are freer to explore economic success. The wealth of Ms. Burden and her education exempt her from the trials of most women in the world. Burden clearly explains the emotional impact of divorce whether one is wealthy or not. Her wealth does little to reduce feelings of betrayal and failure.

Twenty years of marriage creates a bond never completely broken. For husbands the reliance they have on a wife’s care of children makes it difficult to offer the care and understanding that children need from both parents. Husbands are often inadequately prepared for relationship building that a mother has with their children. The consequence is a father’s failure to understand how to help their children deal with their parent’s separation. Those who share raising their children are less likely to have that problem, but social convention leaves most American men in the dark about how to take parental responsibility.

Burden clearly explains the emotional impact of divorce in America, but her wealth diminishes the scope and reality of divorce to the majority of women who have children and are left by their partners. That is not a criticism of Burden’s book but of sexual inequality that exists in most countries of the world.