Mark leaves his mark

A reporter called me for some quotes about substance abuse, relating to the death of Michael Jackson. I run a drug & alcohol/mental illness treatment center, and this was the third journalist to contact me with such a request for background.

I answered her questions and then had one for her. “How come none of you are calling about the travails of a child with a known adulterous parent?”

“Joe Jackson was adulterous?” Somewhere, Mark Sanford breathed a sigh of relief and gave some thanks for the spate of celebrity deaths.

The coverage of Sanford has focused on him and his political future, with gaining momentum for the plight of his wife. The four children have been given the obligatory nod.

But, they’re the ones who have long lives ahead of them. They’re the ones who will bear the scars for decades and decades.

Adultery goes back to the Bible and, undoubtedly, before that. Let’s not kid ourselves, it will continue to go on. If accepted as a given, the question becomes damage control. The damage, if any, multiplies geometrically with the levels of discovery. The primary innocent victims can be the children.

There are degrees of harmful situations:

1. The infidelity is undiscovered, but children detect a diversion of attention and priority.

2. The infidelity becomes known to the spouse, and the children sense the tension.

3. The infidelity becomes known to the children.

4. The infidelity is known inside and outside the family.

5. The adulterer involves a child (as in asking the child to keep the secret or otherwise abet the betrayal).

It was once assumed that the first two had minimal impact on children. But more recent studies have shown otherwise. Children don’t miss much and they imprint easily.

In the next two cases, the scarring is obvious. A primary impact is insecurity and anxiety, leading to long-term mental issues. Children rely on the shelter of the family relationship and the betrayal shatters that sanctuary. Older children experience extreme and protracted anger.

Self-esteem is further wounded when awareness of the adulterous parent leaks beyond the family circle. The children are stigmatized by picking up the tag, son/daughter of the betrayer. They will carry those scars and embarrassment for life, even though it was not of their own doing.

The message would seem to be clear that if you must stray, at all costs, avoid hurting those you have the most responsibility to. Who wants to harm their own children? And yet, there is #5 above because of a small deviant segment that not only fails to protect their children from the knowledge of their infidelity, but actually involves them in some manner, ranging from boasting about it to asking them to cover or otherwise assist.

Child psychologists deem this the worst thing a parent can do. Dr. Frank Pittman of Emory University wrote, “It’s like incest. The child is forced to carry an awful secret and is alienated from the other parent.”

Effects vary with the genders of the parent and children. Since the mother is deemed the focus of the family structure, her infidelity can have a greater impact in warping the child’s perception of relationships.

That’s also why I doff my hat to Jenny Sanford for not putting politics first and standing up beside her husband. She put her children first and stood apart by them. If the journalists want to draw something from all of this hoopla, they should focus on her.

Many politicians are motivated to leave an impression. Mark Sanford definitely left his mark. Unfortunately, it’s on four children.