TIME OUT:FAMILY BREAK-UP can be excruciating for adolescents. It is time of unbelievable stress and psychological pain during which adolescents can feel shock, self-blame and fear.
Break-up brings changes in relationships with parents. It intrudes on adolescents’ quest for independence during their own sexual development, especially if they are expected to celebrate the arrival of new partners in their parents’ lives and particularly if the sexual relationship between a parent and new partner is evident.
No young person ever wants to think of their parents and sex. Parents are not meant to have sex. They may have done so in the distant past for the conception of the adolescent, which is as far as speculation about parental sexuality will permit. So to have a parent expecting them to be delighted with a new partner is unrealistic.
If that partner is any way close to the adolescent in age, they hate it. But the problem is that adolescents often cannot tell their parents how much they hate it, because when parents separate, children can become afraid that they will be abandoned if they say what they really think and feel.
Young people have their own way of dealing with distress. Some dull the pain by keeping busy, denying that the break-up has any emotional effect on them, and using humour, sarcasm and demands to mask how they feel. Others are angry and reject both parents to protect themselves emotionally from further loss.
Research shows that many feel conflicting loyalties and try to protect both parents from hurt, so that just when the adolescent needs most parental support they have to be psychologically supportive of their parents instead, which is unfair.
There are many adolescents who get on with their own lives, closing down emotional attachments so that they will not be hurt again. But most will admit loneliness for the parent who has left if they had a good relationship beforehand, and no amount of shared care or equal-time arrangements compensate for the security of having two parents, who love each other and love them, with them in the one home.
When families split, adolescents worry, especially in these economic times. They are afraid that if parents can split from each other, they can split from them. During divorce, adolescents become aware of just how dependent they are on parental whim, and if parents are in conflict it makes them anxious.
But the biggest change for adolescents comes when a new parental relationship brings a new baby. New babies confirm that a parent has another relationship. It means that the fantasy that parents might reunite is over. It alters family dynamics, threatening the position of the children of the first marriage, especially if the adolescent was the only son or daughter prior to this birth.
If they are not living with the parent who has a new baby, adolescents often fear that they will be replaced in interest, money and affection. They are anxious if they are expected to welcome the baby as if this is a new brother or sister that they wanted. Adolescents worry about the impact of this arrival on their other parent, especially if that parent is a mother beyond childbearing years.
When a new baby arrives, adolescents need more attention, not less. They need sensitivity, not unrealistic expectations that they will welcome this child. They need time with their own parent alone, without the baby, to reassure them that they still hold a special position in the parent’s heart.
They need to attach to the baby in their own way, for the baby to engage them, not a parental demand that they engage with the baby. They need conversation to be about them, their hopes, their troubles, and not about the baby.
They need to be “babied” for a little while until they realise that there is emotional love and room for everyone, that new attachments do not mean the loss of old ones. If they react badly they need to be responded to with love, not with anger, until they feel safe again.
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist and author. Her most recent book, When Times are Tough, is published by Veritas