Divorce happens – but Camilla and Kamala are changing the public face of marriage breakups

Two women on the world stage – a Queen and a presidential contender – are changing the public face of divorce, writes Angela Mollard.

What I remember most is that she stopped doing handstands. My little flibbertigibbet of a daughter, my sunshine child who was always upside down or cartwheeling or cosplaying some circus character, suddenly became still.

At 10, she couldn’t articulate her pain but her body could. Her Dad and I had just told her that we were separating. When she stopped being airborne I thought we had irrevocably hurt her, and her big sister.

Back in 2014, divorce still had an ugly stigma. It only came in one flavour: Failure garnished with shame. No one willingly picked it because it rendered you a “broken family”, which is a horrible descriptor to heap on humans who are already swimming in self-loathing.

The truth is it does hurt. So much. It hurts kids and it hurts their parents, and it hurts their wider families and friends who have to adjust. But the chasm it creates doesn’t last forever.

More than anyone before them, two women on the world stage are currently changing the public face of divorce. One is a Queen, the other a presidential contender, and together they are responsible for the Camilla/Kamala effect that is creating a massive vibe shift around marriage breakups.

A woman as instinctive and patient as Queen Camilla wouldn’t have given up her privacy and retirement for anything other than real love. Picture: Chris Jackson/Pool/AFP

Next year will mark 50 years since the “no-fault” divorce clause was introduced into the Family Law Act in Australia. While it lessened the stigma, it’s taken half a century to turn divorce from a scandal into a healthy decision and potential stepping stone to new relationships that are love-filled and functional.

The Queen, 77, rarely references her divorce from husband Andrew Parker Bowles or her long, not-so-secret affair with the King, but theirs is a love story for the ages. For many years it was riven with drama with Camilla positioned as the evil husband-stealer who snatched a hapless prince from his beautiful ill-fated princess.

But anyone with half a grasp on humanity and its inherent nuance can see that what they have is real love. A woman as instinctive and patient as Camilla wouldn’t have given up her privacy and retirement for anything else.

Camilla and Charles have four children between them and, while Prince Harry has been scathing about his stepmother, that’s likely less to do with her than him. Prince William appears to have a warm and respectful relationship with his stepmother while Camilla’s son, Tom, is fond of the bloke she has chosen. Charles, he said recently “is the loveliest man in the world, and I’m not just being oily”. The King and Queen, he added, were “very well suited” and he and his sister were “happy our mother’s happy”.

For all of us who feared our children might suffer long-term damage as a consequence of our divorces, the Toms of this world give us hope.

The stepchildren of Kamala Harris coined the name “Momala” for the woman who married their father. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

So do Cole and Ella Emhoff, the stepchildren of Kamala Harris who coined the name “Momala” for the woman who married their father Doug a decade ago.

Whatever you think of Harris, who turns 60 today, her interview last week with Alexandra Cooper of the Call Her Daddy podcast showed her countering the “childless cat lady” sentiment, or variations of it, that were used to diminish Julia Gillard’s prime ministership in Australia and, to a lesser extent, Helen Clark’s in New Zealand.

Instead, Harris made the blended family sound modern and acceptable. She doesn’t sidestep the fact that she’s a stepmother or that her husband has confessed he had an affair during his first marriage. Rather, she leans into a new definition of family that is playing out globally as we live longer lives characterised by greater individual agency.

“I feel very strongly, we each have our family by blood and then we have our family by choice,” she said. “And I have both. And I consider it to be a real blessing.”

Referring to Cole and Ella, who she met when they were teenagers, she added: “I love those kids to death. Family comes in many forms, and I think that increasingly, all of us understand that this is not the 1950s anymore.”

The Camilla/Kamala effect does not take away the pain of divorce but it softens its aftermath. It legitimises the blended family and recasts the fairytale trope of the evil stepmother into an invested and loving extra adult in a child’s life. I don’t see myself as a stepmother to my partner’s three grown sons, who lost their mum to cancer, but I hope to always be a kind and supportive presence in their lives. My partner is the same for my daughters, the youngest of whom did resume her acrobatics.

And that’s the point. Divorces happen. It’s what people do with that shattering life event, how it leads them to grow and better understand the human condition, that matters. I’m sure the Queen’s extraordinary work with domestic violence is partly informed by her own experience with shame.

Nearly a century ago an American divorcee’s love for a King forced him to abdicate. Thank goodness our layered imperfect lives are not just destigmatised but welcome on the world stage.

Do you have a story for The Telegraph? Message 0481 056 618 or email [e-mail]

Originally published as Divorce happens – but Camilla and Kamala are changing the public face of marriage breakups