![]() His mother divorced his stepfather when he was in his late teens and only at this time did he learn the truth about his biological father, who by that time had died of multiple sclerosis. His mother remarried, and he grew up believing his stepfather was his biological father. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder was born in 1964, and his parents divorced when he was only one year old. Why wouldn't they be happy or hopeful for the opportunities of a post-Cold War world? The stories and lyrics of these lead singers suggest divorce holds part of the answer. These frontmen were all middle-class white males living in the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. All these bands released their most popular work after the Berlin Wall fell and the stagnant American economy of the 1980s began to take off. The themes of grunge rock are incongruous with other events that defined the era. Five of the six lead singer/songwriters in the bands mentioned grew up in broken homes. ![]() From 1960 to 1980, the American divorce rate more than doubled. Within fifteen years, virtually every state in the Union had followed suit. In 1969, then-California Governor Ronald Reagan signed America's first no-fault divorce legislation. The members of all the most popular grunge bands were born between 19, at the origins of an era where divorce, and particularly no-fault divorce, became a culturally and legally acceptable decision for many Americans. ![]() It typically features slower tempos and dissonant harmonies, offering angst-ridden lyrics reflecting social alienation, apathy, and confinement. Grunge was the most popular rock for the first half of the 1990s Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, and Stone Temple Pilots being the most famous bands. Interestingly, the deep feelings of despondency, disconnection, and isolation that divorce delivers to America's youth are the same sentiments that define much of the sentimental ethos of grunge rock. If the United States enjoyed the same level of family stability today as it did in 1960, one sociologist estimates that the nation would have 750,000 fewer children repeating grades, 1.2 million fewer school suspensions, approximately 500,000 fewer acts of teenage delinquency, about 600,000 fewer kids receiving therapy, and about 70,000 fewer suicide attempts every year. Adolescents with divorced parents are more than twice as likely to drop out of high school when compared to children from intact families.Īdolescent girls with divorced parents are three times more likely to become teen mothers, while their male counterparts are twice as likely to spend time in prison. She notes that he was photographed with his kids only “a handful of times in fifteen years of fatherhood.” She mourns that her ex-husband won't be “with his children barbecuing in the backyard and waiting for a Notre Dame game to come on.” And she pleads with her readers to help children suffering at the hands of their parent's broken relationships, to give them some sort of “normalcy.”Ĭhildren exposed to divorce are two to three times more likely than their peers in intact marriages to suffer from serious social or psychological pathologies. His second wife in the days following his death penned a poignant reflection on her late husband, noting the dark spiral of drugs, alcohol, and prison sentences that ruined his life.īut her eulogy suggests also that his life was made more miserable by his aversion to commitment, something he struggled to provide both for her and for their children. The singer came from a broken home and was married three times. Weiland was both the product and perpetuator of America's divorce culture. It may surprise the reader to know I am speaking of divorce. Yet a more hidden factor also bears some responsibility and is also indirectly responsible for grunge rock's mainstream popularity. His off-and-on crack addiction-something that had plagued him for decades-appears to have been the immediate cause. ![]() Scott Weiland, the lead singer of the nineties grunge rock band Stone Temple Pilots, died in early December. ![]()
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