Divorced Mothers' Guilt

Abstract

The deficit view of female-headed single-parent families continues to be reinforced through the dominant sociocultural discourse and research from the modernist paradigm. Exploration of divorced mothers' experiences from a feminist perspective illuminates interpersonal and intrapersonal sources of guilt for these women, and how guilt is reinforced by social, economic, legal, and religious institutions. Guilt impedes the divorce recovery process for mothers, and an integrative intervention is proposed that blends three postmodern approaches to therapy (feminist, collaborative-linguistic, and competence-based) so as to (1) invite divorced mothers to share their meaning systems, (2) encourage these women to extend their meaning systems beyond that of the dominant sociocultural discourse, and (3) empower these mothers to create a positive vision of the future through exploration of the resources and potential benefits of female-headed single-parent households.

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