By: Graciela Maniscalco

I was 18 years old when my parents’ divorce was finalized.

I remember feeling like I was too old to be upset, but I was upset. I was anxious my entire senior year of high school, waiting for the day when my mom would move out of the house we lived in for my whole existence; the day all of our secret issues would be revealed to the neighborhood that watched me grow up.

I used to think the 18 years of my life leading up to their divorce were all a lie. Looking back, I understand I was just afraid of the impending life I never knew. This was unmarked territory for me, made harder by the fact that my parents would only communicate via lawyers. With both of my big brothers away from home, I became the middleman, the peacekeeper and the information-seeker. In an attempt to provide myself some closure, I would seek information, avoid some information and try to reduce the uncertainty of it all. As it turns out, the strategies I used are consistent with that of other adult children of divorced parents.

Sylvia Mikucki-Enyart, a Professor of Communications at the University of Iowa, headed a study in 2018 which unveiled the relational uncertainty tactics in adult children of divorce. This study, which was published in the Journal of Applied Communication Research, aimed to understand how adult children of divorce utilize information acquisition strategies to manage relational uncertainty, and which goals fuel these information searches.

To do this, the researchers conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 25 participants who experienced a divorce of their parents when they were 18 years or older. The interviews were centered on the participants’ perception of their own relational uncertainty management strategies and why they felt they did these things. Eighty-seven percent of the group “reported engaging in deliberate information seeking” which is the intentional pursuit of information. Why might they deliberately engage in this? Well, participants had two common goals for seeking information. The first goal was to reduce uncertainty, and the second goal was to facilitate coping.

One participant named Ralph noted that “just getting basic questions answered [by his parents] and having the knowledge available if [he] wanted, really put [him] at ease.” Another participant named Margo, who had younger child siblings, expressed that she “was always asking questions relating to parenting and how they were going to make parenting work after the divorce.” Receiving the answers to these questions made her “feel better.”

In contrast, many participants recounted information avoidance strategies, in which they “purposefully evaded conversations which would reveal unwanted information” in order to maintain certainty, avoid feeling caught and protect themselves or a parent.

Uncertainty is something all children of divorcing parents experience, so why focus on adult children of divorce? Well, the importance lies in the fact that adult children are also navigating their own independent lives which complicates the process of uncertainty management. Because they appear so independent, adult children of divorce are “thought to be largely unaffected by their parents’ divorce” however, this is not the case. Many participants in this study reported that their parents’ divorce, even in their own adulthood, was a “serious emotional trauma” and I would have to agree.

As an adult, you are not always allotted the same patience to deal with the trauma of divorce as are children. You may even feel like you aren’t allowed to be upset because you’re not a kid anymore. However, you are allowed to be upset and uneasy, and you most likely will. There is a need to cultivate an environment where openness around the topic, as well as personal boundaries can be stated and heard. With relational uncertainty management, you can help cultivate this norm and further allow yourself the means to cope, and to reduce uncertainty around something that is so new, and scary to the child you once were.