Divorce adjustment as an interpretive accomplishment: Narrative strategies and themes in stories of divorce

Denise Margaret Baird, Purdue University

Abstract

Once a decision is made, what sense-making activities are invoked which aid in the creation of an orderly, meaningful experience? This is the key theme in this research. The study explores the sense-making activities utilized in narratives of divorce. Literature on divorce has shown ambivalence to be a common experience in the event of divorce, but has not explored the means by which divorced people resolve that ambivalence. This analysis of fourteen narratives of divorce and post-divorce adjustment focuses on the expression of mixed feelings toward both marriage and divorce. Three narrative strategies utilized to reduce that ambivalence are identified and explored: strategies of inevitability, external validation and transposition. These strategies are defined and grounded in this narrative data. In addition to a focus on these narrative strategies for coming to terms with divorce and dealing with the accompanying mixed feelings, clearly gendered themes emerged as key features of the divorce stories. The six men in the study constructed narratives with deep concern for the difficulty of separating their roles as husbands and fathers. Narratives from the eight women in this research emphasized a confinement felt in their marriages and constructed divorce as an escape. Ambivalence is an understudied phenomenon in sociology. Given its centrality to the experience of divorce and other difficult life decisions, it deserves further attention. This research offers an interpretive sociological perspective on the expression and management of ambivalence. While divorce cannot be said to be an understudied phenomenon, the process of adjusting to divorce has not been thoroughly explored from an interpretive sociological point of view. The research presented here indicated that a key aspect of this process is the way in which divorced people make sense of this experience through storytelling.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Grauerholz, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Individual & family studies|Social research|Sociology

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