Parents also suffer “separation anxiety” in a divorce. Children might worry that if one parent moves out, will the other leave also? This is before they know that the moving parent will continue to be in their life, maybe even more than they were before.
But parents now are no longer part of “The Joneses.” They may suffer a loss of identity as a member of a family, a marital system and as such, a part of the community. Now each is just a mother or a father. And so they fear the loss of the child-parenting identity.
No wonder parents can get so obsessive about having control over the children, so obsessed with what the other parent is doing “wrong.” They lose sight of their parental jobs as being to raise the child to go off, leave them, and become independent from them.
