"Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over," by Deirdre Bair

Having very recently read and posted on (2/18/20) Deirdre Bair’s new book on her experiences researching and writing biographies of Samuel Beckett and Simone De Beauvoir, I picked up and read her earlier book on a completely different topic, late-life divorce, titled “Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over” (Random House, 2007), and found it almost (not quite, but only because the new book was exceptional) as engaging as the more recent book. In other words, she is a good writer and teller of stories, no matter what the topic. Before going further, I will note that yes, my husband and I have been married for a long time, but no, we are not considering a divorce! But I was fascinated by the many, many stories of those who did divorce, including consideration of why they divorced, how their lives changed afterward, the problems and rewards of divorce, and how the divorces affected the (mostly adult) children of those divorced couples. Bair did extensive research on the topic, but this was not surprising considering how much deep and far-reaching research she did on her biographies. The research for this book included interviews with 184 women, 126 men, and 84 adult children, as well as with many lawyers, mediators, judges, therapists, social workers, and others who work with those divorcing and divorced. The reasons for divorce were of course various, but without simplifying too much, almost all came down to “freedom.” Bair delves into the emotional, financial, and other consequences of divorce. She notes that when people really wanted to divorce, they did so despite often having drastically reduced financial security. Although not explicitly labeling her book feminist, she does in fact show that very often women are more harmed by divorce financially and logistically, not only because of sometimes vindictive husbands, but also because of outdated laws, conservative judges, and societal mindsets. These older women often did not work, or did not have real careers, because at the time they married, it was generally assumed that women would stay at home to take care of the children, houses, and all domestic matters. Or they had careers, but their husbands’ careers always came first, and some of these required many moves, making it hard for the wives to have any continuity in their own careers. Fortunately, these assumptions and related laws have changed somewhat over the past years, including after this book was published in 2007. But to go back to the stories themselves, those shared by these interviewees (and informed by the author’s research of the literature as well) are what make the book so compelling. As always, the stories of human lives, loves, problems, struggles, failures, and triumphs, in all their particularities as well as their universalities, are what I -- and most of us, I believe – find irresistable to read about. Bair’s presentation of her research in such a riveting way is impressive.