Adultery harms the relationship between parents and between parent and child.
Theresa Smyth explores the issue.
No-fault divorce has spawned an entire industry which family court mediator Judy Parejko has said no to.
How does adultery impact children?
The high-profile affairs of public figures and parents like Tie Domi and Belinda Stronach serve as a challenge to defenders of traditional marriage. We have frequently heard in the debates on same-sex “marriage” that heterosexual couples, with their rampant infidelities and divorce, are doing too much to undermine their institution to feel threatened by “equality rights for gays.” Such claims ignore the reality that many gay-identified individuals have left opposite-sex spouses for same-sex partners, themselves jeopardizing traditional families, and the undeniable influence of gay-culture utilitarianism on sexual amorality.
The contemporary instability of traditional marriage can also be offered as evidence that the redefinition of marriage is harmful and misplaced. Rather than tinkering with new arrangements, we would do well to examine how to shore up what we have always had, using the “best interest of the children” standard. An examination of how adultery affects children will help us gain insight into how they are harmed by threats to traditional marriage.
Under 1985’s Divorce Act, adultery remains a ground for divorce (along with physical or mental cruelty), but 80 per cent of contemporary divorces are filed on “no-fault” grounds, obscuring the actual prevalence of adultery. Data vary widely, with some American estimates of a lifetime frequency of 21 per cent for men and 11 per cent for women. Adultery does not necessarily lead to divorce; some spouses tolerate continuing infidelity and many couples recover, heal and rebuild their marriage.
Still, the contribution of adultery to divorce is too often overlooked. According to Elizabeth Marquardt of the Institute for American Values, “When the veil of a marriage is lifted and the parents’ actions are revealed, children of divorce are more likely to learn about an unfaithful parent’s behaviour.” Psychiatrist Frank Pittman has written, “In my 45 years of clinical experience with couples, divorce occurs quite rarely in established first marriages without someone being unfaithful and most likely keeping it secret throughout the divorce process.”
The consequences are enormous to society and its children. B.C. pastor Eugene Harder once estimated that “over 50 per cent of the income tax we pay is the indirect result of sexual sin. There’s a big part of our health, welfare and policing costs that have their genesis in adultery.” So what is the effect of adultery on children?
Children’s reactions
Children depend on both parents for a sense of security. Children expect moral behaviour and guidance from their parents, even when they themselves misbehave. When their universe is jeopardized by awareness of a parent’s infidelity, they are immediately frightened.
As they try to integrate the knowledge of parental infidelity, “they experience discomfort, disillusion, confusion and, at times, despair,” clinical psychologist Don-David Lusterman explained in a 2005 Journal of Clinical Psychology article. They ask themselves, “What will happen to me?” How particular children show the injury will vary according to their age, development, sex and culture.
Adultery always involves secrecy and lies. Children are often expected to be confidants to hurting parents or to maintain secrets from one parent and/or from brothers and sisters. The requirement to withhold information from an adult “may create anxiety about loyalty or tighten a bond with one parent at the expense of the other,” said Lusterman. “When two or more children are told a secret separately, each feels bound to maintain the secret, but at the expense of isolation from siblings.”
Harder believes that children who have been violated by a parent’s adultery may explode or implode as a result. Children neglected by an adulterous parent “experience the intense pain of abandonment and become prime candidates (for) juvenile delinquency. Today, we have legions of disillusioned youth not knowing how to deal with the anger they have been repressing for years.”
Custody and visitation arrangements are unlikely to be affected by the adultery or by the child’s reaction to it. Justice Department guidelines make clear that under Canada’s Divorce Act, “the past behaviour of a parent cannot be taken into consideration by the court unless that behaviour reflects on the person’s ability to act as a parent.”
When their emotional, moral and social development is disrupted, children’s physical health and appearance may also change. Counsellor Aubrey Hammack notes that, “Sometimes, children seem to, on their own, become overweight and unattractive. They become cold and indifferent and fail to take care of their personal hygiene.”
Jennifer Harley Chalmers, a psychologist and marriage counsellor, has identified three particular lessons that are conveyed to children in families experiencing adultery:
• Denial and justification: Children have excruciating feelings about a parent’s infidelity – “guilt, confusion, loneliness, sadness, fear, worry, abandonment.” Their pain and sense of helplessness is overwhelming, so they learn to pretend there is no problem at all.
• Deception: Children of adulterous parents are taught that “lying is allowed if it spares another from pain or spares yourself from punishment;” and that “lying is allowed when it protects your privacy. Everyone has a right to privacy in their life, even if it involves hurting people behind their back.”
• Thoughtlessness: Adulterers do as they like without concern for the needs of their spouses and children; their children learn how to disregard others’ suffering as if they are entitled to gratification regardless.
Adolescents who are learning to manage their own sexuality are taught by the example of adultery that adults cannot control their own sexuality; sadly, both boys and girls may be drawn into promiscuity despite their contempt for the infidelity.
Teenagers may become harshly judgmental as well as cynical, since the parent who had seemed dependable now seems untrustworthy. They may become so protective of the cheated-on parent that their roles are reversed; and without strong encouragement from the hurt parent, may fiercely resist forgiving the adulterous parent. Adolescents are also prone to believe the adultery is a personal slight, a rejection of the family and its members.
Young people of faith may particularly struggle with the commandment to honour one’s father and mother, when they discover the dishonourable behaviour of a parent. This creates a dilemma for some, which may linger into adulthood. Children may not be able to respect a parent who continues to justify adulterous behaviour, perhaps by solemnizing the new relationship. As Lusterman says, “There is general agreement that the worst possible case for a child’s acceptance of a second marriage is a marriage to an affair partner.”
Pittman and psychologist Tina Pittman Wagers worry children of adulterous parents are exposed to the soulmate myth, which they define as the notion that “the commitment of marital fidelity is valid only as long as this is your soul mate and you are ‘in love.’” As they attempt their own romantic relationships, such children may be very frustrated that no earthly person seems to meet all their needs. When parents “step out” of a marriage rather than face up to its problems, they deny their children exposure to the normal cycle of conflict and resolution, and awareness of the possibility of repair.
Children who know that their parents have been capable of adultery may grow up unsure of whether sexual fidelity will be possible over a lifetime – for themselves or their spouses. Sometimes, these concerns lead them to have a strong commitment to fidelity and to good marriages. Sometimes, though, such children are so afraid of abandonment that as adults, they express great anxiety towards their spouses, explains psychologist Karen Maudlin. The children may repeat infidelity as adults or they may choose spouses who become unfaithful.
Every child deserves to be conceived by an act of intercourse by married parents. Yet, more children are the products of adultery than is often recognized. In common law, a child born into a marriage is assumed to have been fathered by the husband. Several studies in the early 1990s that used blood samples to determine paternity found that at least 10 per cent of babies born to stable couples were illegitimate. Such paternity fraud can deprive children of their heritage and medical history, as well as secure fatherly bonding.
A child conceived from an adulterous union is initially at risk of being aborted and, if he survives gestation, is then at risk of being a source of ongoing conflict. The resulting child is a reminder of the affair, particularly if the unfaithful spouse must maintain contact with the affair partner, the child’s other parent. The arrival of a new child may bring about a decision that the original marriage will end and the illicit union will be formalized.
Healing the scars
Notwithstanding the enormous risks to children from adultery, it is possible that they will be blessed with good outcomes. Psychotherapist Loretta P. Cioffi believes that, when an affair is disclosed appropriately and the family receives help in healing, children can develop the skills to know themselves well, anticipate problems, judge relationships with care and tolerate human fallibility. Resilient children often are influenced by positive adult role models other than the parent.
The pro-life movement regularly urges society to make children a priority. Counter-intuitively, parents can sometimes put their children at risk by putting them “first.”
Psychologist Shirley Glass – who, before her death in 2003, was called “the godmother of infidelity research” by the New York Times – considered the “child-centred family” to be a tremendous threat to contemporary marriage. A couple that directs their energy and focus almost exclusively toward the children’s needs puts the marital relationship, as well as the children, at risk. Glass urged spouses to develop a “couple-centred marriage” with an identity separate from that of “Mom and Dad,” which expresses their faith, sexuality and mutual interests in time set apart for the relationship.
