The day my parents officially announced they were divorcing, I was newly 30. It was, if I’m completely honest, a relief. They had already been separated for about two years by this point, a long, acrimonious process that grew even more caustic after my mother moved out of our family home. Before the ink dried on their divorce papers, I cried.
Things were different for Ellie Coverdale, whose parents’ divorce shook her world when she turned 23. Now 36, Coverdale can still recall the precise moment she was told. “It was over a video call,” she says. “I was in my flat, I was working late. It felt surreal, like the ground shifted under me. I remember I was completely quiet, I didn’t know what to say. It took some time to accept it as a fact.”
Our experiences may differ, but the thing we have in common is that we were both fully fledged adults when our parents split up. It’s an aspect of divorce that is often overlooked – after all, adult children will have already flown the nest, may be settling down into their own relationships and careers, and may even have children of their own. But there is a growing number of us due to the increase in “silver splitters”, a term coined to describe couples divorcing in later life.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that divorces among people aged 65 and over have been steadily increasing for the past two decades. In 2021, one in four divorces took place after the age of 50. Some of the reasons behind “silver splits” are cause for celebration. For example, it’s undoubtedly a positive development that more women are becoming financially independent enough to leave an unhappy marriage – a far cry from the days when women had little choice but to stick things out in misery. Divorce has also become much more of a societal norm and, with the introduction of no-fault divorce in the UK in 2022, the path to less contentious separations has also been made clear.
But while there are plenty of resources for families of young children and teenagers navigating the choppy waters of divorce, adult children are usually left to their own devices. “There is an expectation that adult children will just get over it if their parents get divorced,” says Kate Daly, a specialist in all things divorce. “But it’s just not true – the impact on adult children is just as big as it would’ve been had they been kids when their parents made this decision.”
Daly, who co-founded separation service Amicable, explains that some things stay the same no matter how old children are when their parents split, such as how to navigate birthdays, holidays, weddings and other life events after the fact. Parents with younger children also feel more of a need to shelter them from the more contentious aspects of divorce, whereas those with adult children feel like they should be able to handle the darker side of things.
The emotional aftermath of my parents’ divorce left me reeling. One moment I was re-evaluating every relationship I’d ever had, wondering if my own marriage was doomed. The next moment I was trying to push my feelings aside to focus on my work and setting goals for my future. My younger sister found the news especially difficult. I imagined myself as her buoy, keeping her afloat among the crashing waves of turmoil. The storm went on, and on, and on. It is only now, nearly three years later, that I feel like I’m on the other side of it, and I can’t help but wonder how other adult children cope with it.
Coverdale says her parents’ divorce brought up a lot of questions about her childhood, despite sensing “constant tension” between them as she was growing up. “They weren’t openly unhappy,” she says, but recalls “lots of silence, small arguments, misunderstandings – like if they were not on the same page. It felt like they were more like roommates than a couple.”
“We hear from a lot of people who question their entire childhood when their parents announce a divorce,” Daly says. “Some even start to question their own relationships, because they’re not sure what a happy relationship looks like anymore. If there are grandchildren involved, more questions arise: how do you tell them that Grandpa and Grandma aren’t living together anymore? What about inviting them to birthday parties and Christmas if they don’t want to see each other? Are they getting enough time with the children individually? Is it fair?”
My childhood until the age of 10 was, for the most part, a happy one. But after that, the cracks in my parents’ marriage began to reveal themselves. They tried to plaster them over with religion, becoming active members of a local evangelical church, but the cracks grew into chasms that not even a divine miracle could heal. But instead of conceding that the relationship was over, my parents stubbornly stayed together, believing that it would be better for me and my siblings if they held out.
The idea of “staying together for the kids” has long been the source of unhappy, yet enduring marriages. But therapist Mandy Saligari says this approach can cause more harm than good. The unspoken agreement here is this: if parents are to sacrifice their happiness so their kids have a good childhood, their children had better be worth it – which is a wholly unfair position to put them in.
“Staying together for the benefit of the children means that parents put their happiness on hold because they ‘want their children to be happy’, which is a tremendous pressure to place on your children if you’re not modelling that behaviour yourself,” she explains.
One of the reasons some parents stay together when they don’t want to is the belief that the traditional nuclear family unit is their best chance at – to put it bluntly – not messing up their children. But Saligari says that children pick up way more than most parents think they do, even learning attachment styles between the ages of nought to six that will go on to shape their own future relationships.
“If Mum and Dad are pretending to be happy through gritted teeth and they go, ‘No, nothing to see here’, their child is taught to distrust their instincts because they feel something is wrong but are told everything’s fine,” explains Saligari. “This means that when they go on to form relationships, they’re likely to have an anxious attachment or anxious-avoidant style because they will not trust their gut instinct. ‘I like this bloke, we seem to be happy – but are we?’”
Thankfully, modern developments in the divorce process, as well as more access to support for families, means that parents have less reason to stay in a relationship for the sake of the kids. My parents, and other silver splitters, were part of a generation that saw divorce as a great failure and felt pressure to make things work even when they were desperately unhappy. At the end of the day, everyone suffered. I can’t help but look at friends whose parents split up when they were between the ages of 13 and 15, and wishing mine had done the same. While there is no “good” time for parents to divorce, there are ways to ensure it does the least amount of harm possible to all involved, says Saligari.
“How a divorce is handled is what damages children, not the divorce itself,” she explains. “So if parents get involved in blame and ask children to take sides, that’s when the divorce becomes toxic. If your children are genuinely your priority, then put your ego aside and listen to one another, and try, as adults, to come to some kind of decision. Either work through whatever’s going on, with or without help, or come to a peaceful decision that the relationship is over.
“Children, no matter how old they are, just need clarity. They need to know that Mum and Dad are as happy as can be, given that ‘happy’ is a relative term. Then they’re able to take that responsibility for themselves and make up their own mind about their parents.”
I often wonder what my life would have looked like had my parents called it quits when I was younger. I’m not alone, either.
“Sometimes I wish they had done it earlier,” Coverdale tells me, with a sigh. “Maybe we all could have been happier sooner.”
