Book 1: Family Problems

In her younger years, Wurtzel constantly talks about her parents, who divorced when she was a toddler and now, as a teenager, she barely sees her father. Of course, she can't blame her parents, their divorce, and her lack of a father for her depression, but it definitely contributed to it. She is being pulled between her mom and her dad; she is an only child of divorce who just needs simple love but can't find it. Her dad abandoned her family, her mom is a single mom struggling to make ends meet, and Wurtzel feels like she is causing problems for her parents, like she is a burden to them. She reflects on this, realizing that, "“I am just one of a whole generation of children of divorce whose parents didn’t handle their personal affairs very well and who grew up damaged. Could family dynamics possibly account for all this trouble?” (Wurtzel 114). Wurtzel's family issues play an important role in her memoir, they affect her greatly. This is one of the very few ways I could relate to her; my parents are also (almost) divorced, and I know exactly what it's like to live with your mom and not have a father around. Below is a graph that polled 99 college students whose parents had been divorced for at least 3 years.