{"id":108883,"date":"2022-01-19T07:30:33","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T12:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=108883"},"modified":"2022-01-18T18:30:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T23:30:58","slug":"plough-erika-j-ahern-divorce-wrecks-childrens-lives-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=108883","title":{"rendered":"(Plough) Erika J. Ahern–Divorce Wrecks Children\u2019s Lives Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just after Christmas 2021,<\/span> Honor Jones, a senior editor at the Atlantic<\/em>, published \u201cHow I Demolished My Life: A Home-Improvement Story<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s a self-portrait of a mother who, while wrangling with kitchen renovation plans, decides she doesn\u2019t want a new kitchen.<\/p>\n

She wants a divorce.<\/p>\n

Jones spends the next three thousand perfectly manicured words trying to justify her decision to break up her family. She displays all the self-congratulatory bravado of middle-aged white women who read Henrik Ibsen\u2019s Doll\u2019s House<\/em> or Oscar Wilde\u2019s A Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em> for a high school literature class and then imagine themselves forever in the role of Brave Protestor of Victorian Oppression.<\/p>\n

Jones describes her marriage, which produced three children who are still young, as her cage. Her imperfect suburban home is, to her, an icon of her imprisonment.<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t like the \u201cchaos\u201d of her house and, even with the help of sensible Luba, her hired cleaning woman, she finds the lived-in quality of a home with children irksome.<\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cShe\u2019s swallowed the lie that only by breaking free of commitments and disappointments and the daily grind of life together will she find out who she really is.\u201c
Divorce Wrecks Children\u2019s Lives Too by Erika J. Ahern https:\/\/t.co\/PfdELHj5XL<\/a><\/p>\n

— David (@_DavidCSmith) January 12, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n