It is a common saying among lawyers that a woman divorced from her husband, on no matter how slight cause, is pretty sure to go to the bad thereafter. This is not necessarily an indication, so the lawyers say, that the woman is at fault, but that the mental strain to which she has been subjected, the strain upon her self-respect, is greater than poor humanity is equal to. What the subsequent results are upon her in society we all know. The present ruler of England has decided that no divorced woman, no matter in what country her divorce was obtained, shall ever appear at court. The rule seems cruel, but social results certainly appear to justify it.
If there are children in the case, as usually there are--for somehow people without children seldom appear in the divorce courts--if there are children, the results upon them are worse than upon either the complainant or defendant. The principal good influence children are subject to is that of home. A disagreement between father and mother naturally interrupts this. An absolute break between the parents cannot fail to immediately have the worst possible effects upon the children. All children--except yours and mine--are at times brutes. There are no worse tale-tellers, no worse back-biters, no worse sayers of cruel things, than little children. It is not that they are unusually wicked or savage by nature, but insufficient training, lack of self-restraint, lack of adult sense of propriety, causes the tongue to say whatever is in the heart; and any adult who is obliged to keep a watch upon his own tongue should be able through sympathy to imagine the savagery which will be inflicted upon the children of divorced or divorcing people by their associates. However disobedient or irreverent children may be to their parents, the filial instinct exists in all of them, and a stab at either parent is felt most keenly by the children.
The ordinary consolations of a person wounded through the heart of another are denied the child. It has neither religion nor philosophy, nor even stoicism, to support it. It must suffer keenly, and when it looks for consolation or desires consolation, where is it to go, when the two authors of its being, whom it has been taught to regard with equal respect, are at difference, and each is ready to accuse the other and belittle the other? The child of a divorced person is a marked object of curiosity in the society of children, whether in neighborhood parties or at school or Sunday-school, or even in church. The slightest quarrel brings the inevitable taunt that “your mother ran away from your father,” or “your father is in love with somebody else’s mother,” or “you haven’t any father now,” or something of the kind. Only a short time ago the newspapers of the United States recorded the suicide of a child of nine years, who had sought death to avoid the torment of being twitted with the separation of its parents.