Word: motheral
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...thousands of readers to the bizarre saga of the Wolff family. Although these two narratives have kinship and blood in common, they spring from dissimilar circumstances. The parents split up when the brothers were young. Geoffrey stayed east with his flamboyantly fraudulent father; Tobias drifted west with his mother, a lively woman who, the son writes, suffered from a "strange docility, almost paralysis, with men of the tyrant breed...
Sure enough, she eventually finds Dwight, who lives with his three children from a previous marriage in the remote village of Chinook, three hours north of Seattle. "I knew my mother would never let herself get tangled up in a mess like that," Tobias writes, but he is wrong. In fact, he is packed off to live with Dwight, and if all goes well, his mother will accept Dwight's proposal and move in too. All goes horribly. Dwight is a secretive bully who is either at his companions' feet or at their throats. With young Tobias...
...traumatic event for 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...
That afternoon, following an airport run to greet returning players, he meets with a distraught girl. Huddled in the Olds' front seat, she tells a sad tale. Her unstable mother has threatened her with a knife. She's afraid to go home, reluctant to call the police. A struggling student, she lacks money for needed books. And she'd like to play for Upward Bound, but fears the humiliation of failure...