I wonder something. I wonder how many of the confrontational divorces are resolved if we, as a social worker, do not offer a platform on which they can fight. Perhaps you are indignant now, you think of all the children who are the biggest victims of 2 parents ‘killing’ each other. You are right to feel outrage. I also don’t know if my question is viable. But I do allow myself to ask this question.
Divorces. A situation where 2 people who once loved each other and decided to bring children into this world, demonize each other. Do everything you can to make the other person the ‘bad guy’. A situation that is, above all, unimaginably damaging to the children who are part of the divorce fight scene. What I want to focus on is the question to what extent the social services might offer these parents a platform? unintentionally. Specific; Every day, youth workers receive many, many emails from struggling parents. One even uglier than the other. And always in their perception there is a ‘guilty one’. Supported by their own belief system. We see what we believe.
The counselors I know and work with are all trained in multi-partisanship. They are not so easily maneuvered into a split. Are trained to instruct parents to cc’ the other parent in the mail. If they don’t, they just take the email as a notification. But my point is that I’m curious what the course of a fight divorce would be if the social services were to keep aloof. Nor is a spectator or mediator, but simply letting parents boil ‘temporarily’ in their suds. Let them take their own responsibility. A voice in me sputters instantly; ‘You can not do that. The kids!”. I get it. This is exactly the reason why the aid work continues for so long. Because of the children. For the sake of their well-being. But honestly; I wonder if we really help the children with it? Because the emergency services want to be there for the sake of the children, we create the arena together in which the fights can take place. And are we willing, yet unintentional, spectators. And very occasionally we fight in a parallel process. Because fair is fair. After all, we secretly have a very slight preference for that one ‘winner’. Parents are keen to find out in that nuance for whom we now have that preference. Even though we think and say we don’t have it. We usually do find something. We find out about the aggressive, screaming father who uses his money to maintain power. And we also find some things about the passive aggressive mother who uses the children as a shield and thereby manipulates everything. Short, little nuanced and classic. But what would happen if there were no more audiences? School that aims to create a safe haven for the children at school, youth care workers who do not concern themselves with the parents but set up a safety net for the children to ‘escape’ as much as possible from the fighting arena. And as I write that, I realize that we only reach the children through the parents. Loyal as they are. Dilemma.
To what extent can we allow parents who are in a divorce to bear their own responsibility? To what extent are they as such immersed in their own – emerging – psychopathology that they can even take a meta position to view themselves from above? I don’t have an answer. What I do know is that our problem-solving capacity is quite great. That time sometimes also does its job and that being thrown back on yourself is in some circumstances the best learning experience. But yes, the kids.What if we care providers no longer respond to all, usually page-long emails, no longer carry out interventions that are intended to break destructive patterns? What if we social workers just sit on our hands for a while, bite our lip and focus on the well-being of the children.
What would happen?
I honestly don’t know. I suggest, on a trial basis, that parents, as soon as they start a fight mode, make it compulsory for Kids to follow suit. Really at the beginning of that fight mode. Because once they fight, they keep going. Because that’s how it works; what we do, we do more. Otherwise it has been for nothing. As soon as we pick up the signals of ‘fighting’, all social workers, lawyers, mediators and so on withdraw, and all eyes are on Children from the Knel. Nothing without obligation. Obligated. Would it be possible? Ahhhh the next dilemma; in a voluntary framework we cannot oblige parents to anything *Deep Sigh*.
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