Word: fathered
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mother about this abuse and possibly dissuade her from marrying Dwight, but he does not: "I had come to feel that all of this was fated, that I was bound to accept as my home a place I did not feel at home in, and to take as my father a man who was offended by my existence and would never stop questioning my right...
...Wolff's main interest is not the harshness of his childhood but the strategies of survival he learns, tutored by domestic eccentricities and the promise of a vast land where memory is short and every morning promises a brand new life. Though separated by a continent, he remains his father's son, a princeling of deception: "I recognized no obstacle to miraculous change but the incredulity of others." Hence he adopts a name, Jack, that he feels suits him better than his real one. An indolent student, he routinely alters his report cards, displaying what he could have done instead...
...children. But many parents are consoled by the notion that most youngsters can recover from the painful split-up of their families. Within two or three years, they will resume their normal development and ultimately they will benefit. After all, if the divorce is good for Mother or Father, it will be good for the children...
Whatever the scientific merits of the study, Wallerstein and co-author Sandra Blakeslee provide vivid portraits of just how devastating divorce can be for children. Deborah, for example, saw her parents split up when she was five, shortly after her father beat up her mother. Fifteen years later, she is a top student in college, but she has a habit of falling in love with "jerks." Deborah says her latest boyfriend really loves her: "I know he cares about me because he hits...
This sense of loss appears and reappears in a series of densely detailed flashbacks. It begins when her father, a field naturalist, abandons the lyrical Canadian woods for a university job. She and her brother exchange a "rootless life of impermanence and safety" for the urban wilderness of conformity and cliques. The boy, a prodigy, retreats into a private world of abstruse science and physics. Elaine seeks acceptance by her peers, a gaggle of victimizing girls led by a meanspirited brat named Cordelia. Atwood understands that no subsequent humiliations can ever cut so deep as those of youth. The cruelties...