Penelope Trunk: Say No to Divorce

Penelope Trunk is against divorce. She considers it a selfish and immature thing to do.

In a passionate and persuasive screed she denounces divorce. It’s bad for you; it’s bad for your children. Better to solve your problems than to get a divorce.

Sometimes the problems are insoluble. Mostly they can be solved. It takes time and work, but it is better than getting a divorce.

More often than not discussions of divorce hedge the moral issue. Divorce’s apologists pay lip service to the importance of preserving marriages and then start laying out conditions under which divorce is a good and necessary thing.

No one is going to deny that some marriages deserve to end. Still, in recent years the debate has centered on justifications and rationalizations for divorce. This has effectively encouraged divorce.

Trunk does a great job of framing the issues and presenting the case against divorce.

In so doing she outlines the duties and responsibilities that come with marriage. If you are thinking of divorce or are married you will do yourself a large favor by reading her piece.

Trunk is implying that for too many people divorce has become a developmental stage.

Happily enough, the divorce rate seems to be diminishing. Of course, the marriage rate is diminishing too.

Divorce is a major life trauma. If you do not get married you can be assured that you will never get divorced.

I was shocked to discover that the Charlton, OH shooter had been abandoned by his parents when they divorced. They went their separate ways and left him with his grandparents. Was he too much trouble? Had he gotten in the way of their pursuit of bliss?

We cannot know.

Still, as the media narrative is claiming that he became homicidal because he had been bullied someone should underscore the fact that he was abandoned by his divorcing parents. 

Trunk has done so and we ought all to be grateful.