WHAT TO DO: When Your 21 Year Old Decides to Tell All
We seem to live in an age of retribution. All of us are now used to the fact that everyone getting divorced needs to spill about their unique suffering. It used to be fodder for People Magazine or the tabloids. Alas, today, thanks to “X”, everyone has become a publisher and we have noted that many people seem to be anxious to tell us about their married lives a dozen years ago. Isn’t news supposed to be current?
Enter a new form of what I will call family calamity. If you have been reading the news lately, among the ghosts of television past, the Gosselins have re-emerged- 14 years after their joint show ended. It started last month with Kate Gosselin reflecting on the fact that the kids are now adults and that the immense money they once made is all gone. Sadly, she also reported estrangement with at least one of the kids. And there was some sniping at her ex and the vexatious lawyers who played roles in the legal show that appears to have gone on for a decade longer than John & Kate + Eight.
I wouldn’t have followed this story at all but for the fact that it had a Reading, Pennsylvania piece to it and I know both the attorneys who were involved back when the case first erupted (i.e., 2008). But, today, a friend and reader sent me the word that 21 year old Collin Gosselin has decided to publish a book about his odyssey as the child of former reality television stars. Collin Gosselin, 21, Comes Forward With Major Career News
Who would read such a book? I hope no one and my hope is intended as a mitzvah for the Gosselin family and the public at large. Divorce is a painful process for anyone who experiences it. It is especially grueling for children because (a) they rarely have anything to do with causing it and (b) when young they have no real ability to grasp what is happening. Sadly, they often adopt the false premise that they are the problem because we live today in a kid centered society.
Let’s start with Collin Gosselin and let’s assume he is some kind of literary rock star. What powers does a 21 year old have to reflect upon how his family could or should have responded to the demise of his parent’s marriage. I have sympathy for all Gosselin children for the reasons I just identified. But, where does a 21 year old have the life experience to evaluate marriage and parenting in a world where he has no experience with either?
What we will get will be the “tell all” and that is sad for another set of reasons. Collin did not travel the road of divorce, support and custody litigation alone. He had seven other astronauts riding on a multi-year voyage in the same capsule. Chances are high those kids are hurting as well and trying to either process or repress their own experiences. So, they will now have the burden of enduring thousands of questions beginning with: “Was Collin telling it right when he said your Mom/Dad did _______?”
Are there lessons to be learned from the Gosselin marriage? Certainly, any history can teach something but the background here is well-nigh unique. Because they had a huge family when the rest of us don’t, they were plucked from obscurity and suddenly found themselves hauling down a reported $250,000 an episode. Now, try raising children in a world where your family life is the “show” and you live your family life on a soundstage. That appears to have been Kate’s decision once Jon was decommissioned as a part of the “talent.” The propriety of all this actually came to the attention of the Pennsylvania Department of Labor in 2008. Pa. labor officials probing ‘Jon & Kate’ complaint – Yahoo! News But then again we live in a world where money is “good” and wealth is even “better.” The other issue about which I don’t need the input of a 21 year old is how one should have managed marriage and 8 children under age 8 years when age 32 and your husband is just a regular fellow with a high school education.
The story here is both simple and tragic. Two people in their early 30s seem to have taken fertility treatments a little too far, Thus on May 10, 2004 the household and its “needs” more than doubled. NBC showed up with a film crew to report on the anomoly and found a telegenic couple. Discovery and TLC saw dollar $ign$ and the Gosselins left Earth to enter “televised reality.” Imagine being a child growing up in a world where its your parents, seven siblings and a resident producer, director, set designer, cameramen, sound engineers-all there so that America can watch every minute and then turn off the TV to say: “Glad we stopped at two, honey.”
Again, we all need to stop the “presses” when it comes to the buttons on our phones or our keypads. We don’t need to know every detail of Brad and Angelina or Brad and Jennifer. We don’t need to have daily views and analysis of the President’s hair, hands or ankles. We need to make certain our kids are safe from active shooters and on-line predators. The flight manifests showing who flew on Epstein’s plane are titillating but otherise useless.
Again, I wish all Gosselins peace. But peace does not come when families ignore listening to each other so that they can share their outrage with “the world” at large. If I need to read a book by Collin Gosselin, it may be his reflecting on how he supported a household of 10 financially and emotionally when he was 32. Unlike his parents he can take a few years to prepare for that.
