Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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OCTOBER 1-7, 2014 UCW 5 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@upandcom- ingweekly.com.. 910.484.6200. THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Serving Fayetteville Over 50 Years! 484-0261 1304 Morganton Rd. Mon-Sat: 6am-10pm Sun: 7am-2:30 pm Daily Specials • Breakfast • Lunch • Dinner Fresh Seafood • Hand Cut Steaks • Homemade Desserts • Italian & Greek • Children's Menu Banquet rooms available up to 100 guests Contest&RequestLine: 910-764-1073 www.christian107.com KeepingtheMainThing...theMainThing. visitusonline FocusontheFamily 20Countdown Magazine Adventures in Odyssey My September and October weekends are consumed with weddings; all friends of the Precious Jewels. These young adults are at the "coupling" age, that time of life when most people pair with the person they believe is the love of their lives and walk off together into the happily ever after. These are occasions that make grown women weep into their hankies and grown men clutch their checkbooks. On the other hand, my generation seems to be "uncoupling." While the divorce rate for most Americans is either steady or on the decline, the divorce rate for people over 50, including those in their 70s and even their 80s, is rising. Dramatically. This new phenomenon is being called "gray" or "silver" divorce, and it is drawing attention from many quarters, not to mention the families experiencing it, often with great shock. Many Americans were floored when Tipper and Al Gore, who famously smooched on stage at a Democratic National Convention, quietly threw in the marital towel. That was nothing, though, compared to the public implosion of Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger's union years after he and the family housekeeper had a baby. Those were high-profile silver divorces after decades of marriage and housefuls of children, and there are plenty more in ordinary American homes. According to statistics from Bowling Green University for people over 50, most of them of them of the epic Baby Boomer generation, the divorce rate has doubled over the last 20 years. What is more, please take a moment to digest this little factoid. According to U.S. Census figures, divorce among men 65+ doubled from 5 to 10 percent, and among women in the same age group it tripled, rising from 4 to 12 percent. Apparently women want out even more than men. So what on earth is going on here and what does it mean? Sociologists are busy studying and debating these questions, but fingers are definitely pointing at Baby Boomers, the first of whom are now staring down their 70th birthdays. The Boomers, that massive generation Americans born between 1946 and 1964, began changing American life from the moment we began arriving. We married and divorced in record numbers in our youths, a fact which may make it easier for us to do it again. In addition, we redefined and blurred the roles of husband and wife within marriage and put forward the notion of personal growth and individual satisfaction within that union. Prior generations of married Americans may have been more willing to execute traditional roles within marriage and just move forward, while we Boomers may be thinking "this is not really working for me, so I better move along." Toss in the reality that American women have become far less financially dependent on our husbands, and silver divorce becomes a more understandable option for both parties in a troubled, boring, or outright disastrous marriage. But is silver divorce worth it? That is an individual question, of course, but some seniors do profess to be happier, especially women who have some level of financial security. Men seem to fare less well, probably because they have been more dependent on their wives for household services and because women tend to have larger and more stable social networks than men. Silver divorce, like marriage, is not to be entered into "unadvisedly or lightly," as the Book of Common Prayer tells us, because there are pitfalls aplenty. First of all, it is costly. Two married people can live almost as cheaply as one, but two single people need two residences, two insurance policies, two incomes, and the list goes on and on. It can be psychologically isolating as well, as friends and family sometimes take sides and joint social support systems fade. That is why counselors often recommend seniors looking at divorce rethink the issue in ways that allow the partners to get what they want, more individual freedom for example, without actually dissolving the union. No one knows that silver divorce means in the long run, because it just has not been much a part of American culture, but it seems we are going to find out over the next several decades. My beloved maternal grandparents, known to all as Gobbie and Dee, were an ironclad unit to their seven grandchildren. Their names were generally uttered in tandem, and the only vacations I ever knew them to take were to Atlantic Beach with us in tow. The notion of their divorcing would have been met with the same astonishment as if they announced they were jetting off to Paris for the weekend. That is clearly no longer the case for millions of Americans who grew up with the Beatles as our iconic band. Way back in the 1960s, they asked us "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" For more and more of us, that answer is "no." Dude! Memaw and PaPa are Getting a Divorce! by MARGARET DICKSON Divorce is one the rise among Baby Boomers