The Dreaded "D" Word

This might be a bit more serious than most of my previous posts, but I've lately been thinking a lot about what many people label, "The plague to American families...divorce." Sometimes, I wonder what this does to influence the youth of today. I come from a divorced home, but have not thought about it much on the grand scheme of things. Last night thanks to the miracle of DVR, I watched the teen drama, One Tree Hill. One thing that the character Brooke Davis says as she's applying to be an adoptive parent is, "I don't come from a two parent household, I come from a no parent household." Her reasoning for this was to point out the neglect that she had growing up by her parents. Obviously, this is fictional and a little extreme, but I started to wonder how divorce and "broken homes" are viewed by the younger generation. With the frequency of divorce or even kids brought into the world to a single parent home, one has to wonder what the perspective is. Brooke was obviously upset about the lack of direction and support she was given, but at the same time, blame was strictly put on her parents. But then we see movies like Juno, where Juno McGuff flippently talks about sex and having a baby, but when it comes to divorce she seems to break down and still find so much value in a "traditional" home. Overall, yes, "broken" homes are everywhere, and you have to entertain the idea that there are probably many "broken" homes where there has been no sign of divorce as of yet. But I haven't lost faith in the All-American family...but I don't know exactly what that family unit looks like. Regardless of the specific events, I tend to think that no matter what, most kids are going to take a divorce or separation pretty hard, but how that affects the majority of young people, since so many come from a home that has experienced this, might begin to think of divorce as benign. Hopefully, morals are not inextricably attached to this ideal of family.