Spoiled Children of Divorce

There is definitely a strong Cyclic Return emphasis at Age 5 as regards Planetary Returns.  Unfortunately, I can’t really say what it is with any certainty.  Age 5 represents the time in a child’s life when he experiences his first strong phase of the Nodal Return Cycle.  He actually will have passed through the first Square of the Nodal Axis to his natal position before his 5th Birthday.  What the Nodes mean is actually sort of a mystery.  There are a number of poles which are used by Astrologers in readings which are actually Abstract points in the sky, not represented by any specific rock or block of gas or ice.  The Nodal Axis pole has a Northern End and a Southern End.  They are supposed to indicate a karmic balancing act that a person must work on spiritually.  The South Node is said to show a person’s comfort zone which will tend to pull him back in life if he relaxes too much into it.  The North Node is said to show the ways that a person can balance out the non-constructive tendencies he naturally falls back on to.  These will show opposing signs and houses and will be further colored by aspects made to planets.  Often, the Nodal Axis is thought to show Karmic Path and Past Life activity.

I’ve noticed that often the Nodal Axis, both the natal and the transiting, will show times when major life changing events will occur.  And I think this is how I’m tending to interpret their influence on Children of Divorce.  The actual return for the Nodal Axis comes a couple of months before Age 19 so their cycle lines up very well with modern society’s idea of entrance into adulthood.  Before this they seem to influence Children right around the times of their 5th and 10th Birthdays.  I say this because the Gessell Institute (became the Yale Child Center for Child Development) books all specifically point out that these ages are very positive times in a child’s development.  In sections on talking about childrens’ behavior at age 5 they say “Five is a nodal age; and also a kind of golden age both for parent and for child.  For a brief period the tides of development flow smoothly.  the child is content to organize the experiences that he gathered somewhat picemeeal in the less deliberate fourth year.  …  the five-year-old is self-contained, on friendly and familiar terms with his environment.”  (pp. 51-52  The Child from Five to Ten by Arnold Gesell, MD, Frances L. Ilg, MD and Louise Bates Ames, Ph.D.).

I’ll add a description for Age 10 from the book when I get to that age.  It says pretty much the same thing.  It’s amazing how many correspondences with Astrological cycles these Doctors came up with in their books.

All of the planets have Nodal Axes.  The “Nodal Axis” that is generally used for interpretation shows the “Nodes” for the Moon so they are related to Lunar qualities.  The Lunar Nodes are the points where the Moon’s path crosses the Sun’s path (called the Ecliptic) in the sky.  They are related to the Eclipses which occur very close in time to wherever the Nodes are.

A major rulership of the Moon, of course, is connected to the relationship with the Mother and with women and with child birth and homelife.  Gessell Institute says that Children at Age 5 are very close to their Mother.  I have no idea how that would play out in a divorce.  Many Children of Divorce are much closer to their Mothers than kids from intact families.  I’d imagine that if the Mother has to leave the nest at this age or rejects the child in some way, the child might not get over the hurt very easily than he might at other ages when his interests and needs are elsewhere.

And that’s great because otherwise I simply can’t find a whole lot to say here as to what to look for.  I suspect that these children might not feel as heavily influenced by their parents divorces as children at some ages.  It’s sort of a gift, in a way, to be “stuck” at this age.  I have one friend from this age period and when talking about her parents divorce she says that she had known that it would happen and that it helped.  She didn’t have any memories of her parents getting along so the divorce seemed to be a relief.  She did, however, carry a lot of anger and resentment about her life for the rest of her childhood because she went through a lot of difficult times.  It has always been amazing for me to see that she had such a pragmatic attitude about the whole thing.  That’s pretty much what the Gesell Institute says about this age.  Children at this age are more realistic than they were at fantastical Age 4.  They like to fit in wherever they are.  I have noticed that this might tend to put them on a cyclic loop in their own relationships and they might be extra vulnerable to go through their own divorces at the times of future Returns (Around Ages 19, 37, 55-6, etc.).  Sometimes they will say that going through their own divorce has helped them to understand their parents’ divorce.

I sort of wonder if people who are traumatized at this age just see the event as being an event in their lives.  They don’t really register the emotional side as much.  Maybe because they are “stuck” in a docile phase they don’t draw much attention to themselves.

In Stephanie Staal’s book The Love They Lost, there is talk about growing up in split families.  One female (p. 169) calls herself “The Hub” between her parents. They seem to feel alienated and ripped apart between parents.  A male on p. 159 says that “love (was) doled out in increments.”  A female on p. 25 says:  “I really don’t see how my parents found the fifteen minutes of agreement it must have taken to conceive me.”  A 28 year old whose parents divorced when she was 5 years old says on p. 169:  “I’ve taken to spending holidays in my apartment instead of visiting my mother’s family.  I’ve done that for the past three Christmases.”  “I just don’t want to be reminded of what I’m missing or of what I think I’ll never have.  Sometimes when I’m really feeling sorry for myself, I’ll wish I were adopted.  I imagine that at least that way both parents would want me.”  They definitely talk about their parents as two distinct individuals who have nothing in common.  One male on p. 144 says that he developed a lot of anger of all the back and forth and eventually found guidance through a mentor who he sees as his real “Father” Figure. The Father is absent in a lot of the examples given.

He finds the Mentor at Age 19, by the way, which is just after the first Nodal Return.  One can see the Jupiter square and trine influence still in effect here I think.  Jupiter is related to High and Broad Mindedness and I’m think that children who have a strong Jupiter will look for role models who will help them develop this side of themselves.  Jupiter will look for ways to be happy.  The liberating energy of Jupiter is still felt at this age as well.  Perhaps this is the Nodal influence combined with the liberated Goddess Asteroids and Jupiter transits.  On p. 105 a female remembers being left with the babysitter while the Mother went out and had fun.  Another female (p. 116) became independent and immigrated to the U.S.  (Jupiter = Foreign Travel).  This female only seems to have short term relationships.  Independent people will struggle with long-term relationships, that just comes with the territory.

In Staal’s book there seems overall to be a backsliding with regards to the children and the parents when Divorce occurs at Age 5.  The children seem to lose all memory of before the divorce, their parents don’t discuss it.  The children know they are on their own, they know that a missing parent has screwed up.

In my list of examples I have a lot of performers, mostly Leo North Node people too.  Actress Lauren Bacall, Actor-Writer-Filmmaker Ethan Hawke, and Liza Minelli are famous people whose parents divorced when they were five years old.

Liza Minelli’s mother was the famous singer/actress Judy Garland so there is obviously a prominent influence from the Mother in her life.  Whether or not she received great parenting or not, Liza has followed in her Mother’s footsteps career-wise and is an equally great performer.  Judy Garland died in 1969 when Minelli was experiencing a Waxing Square to her natal Nodal Axis (to the degree).

Minnelli has been a working actress since she was 3 years old and she’s had a very eventful life so I’m not sure that I can really say that her Nodal Returns are more prominent than any other aspect she would have gone through.  When she was 19 she became the youngest woman to ever receive a Tony award for her work on Broadway.  She would have had another Nodal Return in 1983 and it doesn’t appear that this was a year which brought significant changes.  She has had a few marriages.  The last one was a social sensation and the man she married turned out to be a louse.  She married him on her 3d Nodal Return.

Ethan Hawke lived with his Mother after his parents’ divorce.  She remarried when he was 10 years old which would have been Hawke’s first Nodal Opposition.  Hawke began acting in his teens and became famous for his role in the movie Dead Poet’s Society at Age 19, time of the first Nodal Return.  Hawke’s biography seems to show that he was more interested in becoming a writer than an actor but that the acting just took off.  Although his great success is not considered such a problem for the rest of us, Hawke may feel unfulfilled by acting.  He actually has written a book and a screenplay which centers around divorce.  If he has a conflict at all about having followed his true life path this may be why.

Lauren Bacall never saw her Father again after her parents divorced when she was 5 years old.  Wikipedia says that she remained very close to her Mother.  She also had an early blockbuster success at Age 19 when she was cast in the movie To Have and To Have Not.  This is where she met and fell in love with Humphrey Bogart.  Bogart died in 1957 from Cancer and Bacall married actor Jason Robards in 1961 during her 2nd Nodal Return.  She also gave birth to a son that year.  That marriage ended in divorce.

So, it appears that a divorce at Age 5 might be beneficial for a child who wants to go into acting.  Bacall has a Leo North Node and Hawkes has Leo South Node.  Leo is the sign of the Actor.  Minnelli has a Gemini North Node.

Comedian Lenny Bruce had a terrible childhood because of his parents’ divorce at age 5.  He was shuffled from one home to another for ten years or so.  From his biography it seems that Bruce may have been more of a product of the loquacious and potty mouthed Jupiter Trine Age 4 crowd.  He became legendary for his break through use of taboo language on stage and was arrested several times during his life on obscenity charges.  I wonder if his parents may actually have split up earlier and the biography their divorce became final when Bruce was 5 years old.  Lenny Bruce remained very close with his Mother and worked on stage with her as an adult.  He gave a legendary performance at Carnegie Hall in 1961.  This would have been very close to his 2d Nodal Return.  Bruce died of drug related problems at age 40.

Princess Diana of Wales also went through her parents’ divorce at Age 5.  She lived with her Mother for that year and her Father sort of abducted her and her siblings when she was 6 years old.  This shows something odd going on in the relationship with the Mother.  Her life biography falls right into place with her Nodal Returns later in life.  She was married right after her first Nodal Return and then she was killed in a car crash during her 2d Nodal Return.  Of course her natal Nodes were highly afflicted.

Going back to the 16th Century I’ve found that Johannes Kepler also may have gone through a divorce in his childhood.  His Father was a mercenary soldier and left the family when Kepler was five years old.  Kepler is an Astrologer’s best friend because he was a brilliant scientist and astrologer.

Lenny Bruce, Diana, and Johannes Kepler all had Leo North Nodes as well.  I’ve discussed before how Children of Divorce who become successful seem to do so in the types of professions that can achieve success at a young age.  Acting would be one of those.  So perhaps this is something that would be looked at further.  Maybe it’s just a coincidence.  I don’t have enough examples to say for sure one way or another.

Copyright 2010.  Spoiled Children of Divorce blog.  All Rights Reserved.

A person who experienced a parent’s divorce between the Ages of 4 and 5 has a number of different influences to check on.  The first influence is the child’s first trine that transiting Jupiter makes to itself in the natal chart.  This extends the Jupiter vibe that was discussed in the last post from Age 3.  So everything that I described during the 3d year will apply.

Difference is that the Age 3 influence is that of a square which can be considered a difficult or challenging influence.  A child is catching on to all kinds of Jupiterian aspects which involve developing Abstract Thinking and Having thoughts and Opinions about what goes on in the environment and is struggling with them.  A child’s vocabulary is expanding rapidly and he is beginning to play.  I even mentioned at that point that Jupiter can be clumsy (or at least I think I did.  Anyway, Jupiter is clumsy).  Turns out that a child does go through a clumsy phase at that age because his body is growing so quickly (from Yale Child Center/Gessell Institute).  Some children will also begin to stutter at this age so their communication style can also go through a difficult phase.  I talked as well about how Jupiter is concerned with International Affairs and literally crosses borders between cultures.

Well, then we move to the Trine aspect.  The Trine influence is considered an easy aspect.  Jupiter who already represents Luck and Optimism and Joviality might become too much of a good thing.  At any rate, Jupiter’s energies It will flow well at this point.  In Jupiter’s case this can sometimes lead to overdoing and overkill.  Just plain old too much is too much.

In Gesell Institute’s Child Behavior (which is the early version of the Yale Child Center study books I’ve been referring to), authors Ilg and Ames literally use the Key Word phrase to describe this age as “out of bounds.”  They say that Children “out of bounds” “motorwise” and “Emotionally.”  Children at this age are especially loquacious. They begin to use “potty mouth”.  In addition to the Jupiter trine fun, one must remember that a child will have his 2d Mars return around the time of his 4th Birthday.  And, of course, the Birthday is the “Solar Return”  and he will be very conscious of how much fun Birthdays are at this age.  This is a convergence of all the fire energies put together at one age.

Gesell Institute also describes how the Imagination at this time “has no ‘reasonable’ limits.”  I described how Jupiter also co-rules Pisces and the Imagination.  Jupiter exaggerates.  from p. 31 of Gesell Institute’s Child Behavior:  “Yet to the average 4-year-old the line between fact and fiction is a very thin, flexible line.  He may not actually be telling falsehoods.  It’s just more interesting that way, and he may come to believe his own imaginings, which become real to him.”  There is talk about how parents must use firmness to keep the child’s thinking straight.  Imagine what step-parents could do to interrogate a child at this age, rather than to just let him/her go on a bit with the stories.  It seems that in the 50s when Child Behavior says that children will naturally grow out of this phase with proper parenting.

In keeping with my idea that a child going through a divorce will hold on to much of the influences of whatever planetary return phase he is at into adult life, I’ll try to show how this may play out.  The group of successful people I have on my list is longer for this age than for most which might show the Jupiterian abundance theme in itself.  Many on the list are actresses and performers and politicians.  They are people who show a positive and upbeat vibe to the public.

There is another set of influences at this age which begins around the age of 3 1/2.  There is an Asteroid Belt which is held between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter called the Kuiper Belt.  In Astrology these Asteroids mostly represent female principles.  They became popular in astrology at about the same time that Divorce began to boom in society and the feminist movement took hold.  They provide a nice balance to the Mars and Jupiter influence.

I talked about Vesta, ruler of Hearth and Home, in the last post.  Vesta has a return roughly around the middle of the 3d year.

During the 4th year there are a few more returns that occur within this Asteroid Belt.  Each one shows a different aspect of strong female archetypes.  There is one more after this, that of Lilith.  Lilith doesn’t really play by anyone else’s game.  Her story is quite another thing so I suppose she celebrates her return off somewhere during the 9th year.

First Kuiper Belt Return for Age 4 is the Juno Return.  Juno in ancient mythology was Jupiter’s wife and therefore she represents the woman’s side of a stable marriage. If I remember correctly, the Romans portrayed her as a very dignified married woman.  The Greeks showed her as more emotional.  She is the jealous wife with the philandering husband.  In any respect, she is “The Wife,” she is a Goddess, and she is Queen.  Many years ago there was a movie called Short Cuts which patched together several different Raymond Carver stories about relationships.  Jennifer Jason Leigh, who I already talked about under the Age 2/Mars post, delivers an incredible line about being “The Wife.”  She stakes her claim as a power to be reckoned with.  I suspect that Children of Divorce are going to be much more aware of the power of the Institution of Marriage as it relates to women as they have watched their single Mothers go through what is generally considered a great social demotion for many wives.  Children growing up in Divorce have to deal with self-esteem issues that might grow out of this extra demotion.

I had actually noticed within my list of famous people who went through a parent’s divorce at Age 4 that many seemed to have a sort of “nesting instinct.” One can really sense the influence of the Vesta Return and the Juno Return and the Ceres Return which all occur between 3.5 and 4.6 years.  Actresses who withdraw from their careers to raise families, that kind of thing.  There is an ease about giving up “power” here.  Interesting that the list of successful people from this year seems longer than most of the others (the lists aren’t very long in any category).

I was happy to find that Stephanie Staal actually provides a description of “the Nesters” in her book The Love They Lost.  She does include an Age 4 person in the section which discusses the Nesters.  Staal’s book also describes a lot of descriptions of practical housing stories from grown adults.  Perhaps this means that this is  the aspect of the divorce that they remember best.  She talks about one person who said that his Mother saved the children’s feelings by keeping the kids together and insisting that everyone still get together for dinner every night.  That makes practical sense, but in split homes with single parents it’s often not possible.  It’s just very interesting to me that the person who mentioned this just happened to belong to the Vesta/Juno/Ceres age of 4.

There seems to be a lot of famous people on my list from this age, many are women, which is odd, and many seem to withdraw from the limelight in order to raise kids and to be wives.  Tipper Gore, who served as Vice President’s wife for eight years, belongs in this group.  It’s pretty interesting that the Gores have just announced that they are splitting after 40 years of marriage.  That’s one hell of a nest to give up.  Tipper must also be under the Pallas influence as well (description coming up).

The next two Asteroids seem to have Returns very close in time with each other.

Pallas is very interesting from a Child of D’s point of view because she doesn’t have a Mother. She is also interesting from a modern feminist’s view point because she is a very independent and wise woman.   Athene popped out of Zeus’ head (or so Zeus said – Zeus is the Greek name for Jupiter).  Pallas has no mother which is probably a lot of women’s ideal existence.  Athene never marries and remains a strong and stable influence of higher intelligence in the Greek Pantheon.  Her Myth adds the concept of Mercy to how Justice is delivered in Society as a whole.   The old idea that “An Eye for An Eye” provides proper justice became a barbaric concept in the eyes of the Greeks.  Two wrongs rarely make a right.  Since I don’t have actual dates for the splits of parents for people who went through divorce at this age I can’t really say for sure but I will just say that these children do seem to succeed in teaching people to think about what Justice really is.  Julia Roberts and Truman Capote both celebrated great success through the creative fields.  Roberts won an Oscar for her portrayal of Erin Brokovich and Truman Capote got inside the mind of a killer in “In Cold Blood.”  Of course, Tipper Gore has been outspoken about many aspects of the law as well.  Julie Andrews also belongs to this age group and she became a superstar for portraying freedom loving and wise Single Women such as, well, as Mary Poppins and also as Maria van Trapp in The Sound of Music.  For today’s crowd these roles may not seem to be very significant but in olden days when I was a kid most single women were seldom praised within society’s structure.  Dian Fossey, an anthropologist who studied and cared for apes out in the wild could also be seen as a strong Pallas figure.

The 3d Asteroid to look at is Ceres which is a very interesting influence to look at from the point of view of a child of divorce.  The Ceres Return occurs roughly around the age of 4.5, same as the Pallas Return.  Ceres was once considered a real planet but was demoted in the way that Pluto recently was.  Both are now considered Dwarf Planets.  By coincidence they share the same common Mythological story about Custodial Battles of Ceres’ daughter Persephone.  Ceres is ruler of Agriculture.  In Astrology she represents a person’s nurturing ability and will show the spot in a person’s life what the person will be able to truly love and care for.  Pluto rules the Underworld in Mythology and rules Death, Sex and Taxes in Astrology.  I’ve discussed what a prominent influence he is in Divorce as his House 8 rules shared assets.  In the story Pluto falls in love with Persephone and abducts her and holds her down in the underworld.  Ceres is so enraged that she casts a drought all over the land and all the crops die.  The two make amends by sharing custody of Persephone.  She lives with her Mother for half of the year and lives in the underworld with Pluto for half the year.  I suppose the fact that she’s not Pluto’s daughter doesn’t quite fit the Divorce family model, or hopefully it doesn’t, but it’s pretty interesting to see how commonly the idea of abduction comes up in the Children of D from this Age group, or at least the custodial battles seem to be very prominently exposed parts of their stories.

The Ceres Myth and the Persephone Myth plays very strongly in the lives of many Children of Divorce who go through abductions and custody battles and being shuffled back and forth between parents.

Beatle’s Singer John Lennon was abducted first by Social Services and raised by his Aunt and Uncle because his Mother couldn’t care for him.  Then he was abducted for a couple of weeks by his birth Father.  A very recent story in the news is about Journalist

Laura Ling is a journalist who was covering a story about human trafficking between the border of North Korea and China was caught, arrested and held in jail for several months in North Korea.  One can immediately see the Jupiter influence in her story through the Journalism aspect and the interest in foreign affairs.

It’s extremely interesting to see that she was going through both a Ceres and a Pallas Return when she was released last Summer on Aug. 4, 2009.  Laura was going through several much stronger transits as well, especially through Pluto and Moon and Venus. This shows that the Planets were repeating the same theme in her chart.  Laura’s older Sister Lisa was a strong factor in her release (sisters are indicated by Venus).  Laura also seems to be a Nester type as well.  She married before her older sister. And just yesterday (June 2 in the evening) she gave birth to a baby daughter.

At first I couldn’t figure out how magician David Blaine could possibly fit in with this age group aside from the fact that Wikipedia says that he was 4 years old when his parents split.  I know next to nothing about Blaine but it seems that a Magician might not show much influence from these Asteroids.  What the Gessell Institute says about kids at this age not being able to distinguish between reality and imagination would certainly apply.  The exuberant Jupiter influence can be seen, of course because considering the antics he pulls I’d say that Blaine is an over optimistic guy.  Then I realized that being a Magician is all about making things disappear and reappear.  That’s sort of like abduction and switching back and forth between the Underworld and the Real World.  Blaine had a really tragic childhood which shows that he may actually have a strong influence from his Nodal Axis.  I’m going to talk about the Nodal Axis as part of the Age 5 influence but the Nodes make their first square to each other before the 5th Birthday.  Blaine’s parents divorced when he was 4 so he could have been influenced by this other transit as well.  His Mother remarried when Blaine was 10 which corresponds to the first Nodal Opposition.  And his Mother pass away when Blaine was 19 which is just after the first Nodal Return.  His North Node is in the sign of Capricorn which rules parents and especially Fathers.  I suppose a child who has watched his Father do a couple of disappearing acts might have a whole lot of material to apply to a Magic Act.

Copyright 2010.  Spoiled Children of Divorce blog.  All Rights Reserved.