A.C.O.D. (Adult Child Of Divorce) explores how divorce affects the kids raised in that context. What do you do when your parents are acting like children, and you are forced to act like the adult?
For Carter (Adam Scott), his parent’s (Richard Jenkins and Catherine O’Hara) rancorous divorce has defined his life since age 9. He has always been the arbiter of their mutual hatred, so his younger brother’s (Clark Duke) requests to get their parents to an upcoming wedding. This proves difficult and ultimately challenges Carter’s sense of self.
He decides to go back to see the therapist he saw as a child (Jane Lynch) only to find out she wasn’t a therapist but a researcher who used him and the other children she was observing to write a book. With this and other revelations Carter understanding of himself and his life rapidly peels away. These changes force Carter to look at his core “wormy bits,” as author Anne Lamott would say. In being given this unwanted, off-kilter journey, Carter just might be able to see his true heart and self.
The struggle between adult children and their parents is a common one even if your parent’s haven’t spent your whole life hating each other. Each person needs to differentiate from her or his parents. For me this differentiation period began in early high school and still at times continues in my life today, whereas for others this process starts later and is at times harder, especially if, one has been raised by parents who are much healthier than Carter’s.
No matter what your parents are like, everyone is brought to a crossroads where they either cling to the idealized constructions of who their parents were in their childhood (good or bad or in-between) or take the risk of choosing to see their parents as the flawed people they truly are.
I think this is one of the key elements to growing up – allowing your parents to not just be the people who raised you (or didn’t raise you as the case maybe) but also people in and of themselves with their own issues. This seems simple, but it’s one of the hardest things to do. This difficulty becomes cathartically apparent as we watch Carter bumbling along his own journey of differentiation.
As I walked away from this film, I was left wrestling with my own relationship with my parents. Similar to Carter, I have felt the weight of needing to parent my parents instead of being parented by them over the last few years. I wondered watching Carter’s journey if I have been so focused on the rest of my family and their lives that I haven’t been living my own?
But this movie isn’t all that serious. In spite of the very real subject matter at the heart of the film, this a comedic reflection on the struggle to let your parents and family be who they are.