Jose is ten years old. He’s heading east today and steers his suitcase through the Phoenix airport like a pro.  He’s standing in the security line by himself, but knows exactly when to take off his shoes.  He doesn’t need to be told. Kaitlin is seven years old and she’s on a flight heading west.  She’s sitting next to someone she doesn’t know.  The Captain announces that they are flying over the Grand Canyon.  Kaitlin has a window seat, but she doesn’t look out at the landmark far below.   She’s seen it before and in four weeks she’ll be flying over it again anyway.

Anthony is twelve and slouching in the back seat of a car crossing over the state line between Illinois and Missouri.  He’s flipping through a comic book, and knows exactly how many issues of Spiderman he’ll be able to devour between his starting point - a small Illinois border town and his final destination inner-city St. Louis, MO.

Who are these boys and girls on the go? They are mobile children - a new breed of mega-commuters created on one hand by the American divorce epidemic and on the other by the changing climate of employment in this country.  Gone are the days when men and women can expect to be securely employed by one corporation for their entire working lives. As families travel further and further to maintain well-paying jobs and reasonable property values, the children of divorced parents can find themselves caught in a cross-country quandary, shuttling back and forth between mom and dad.

Kaitlin will spend her life traveling back and forth in order to uphold some semblance of a family unit with her mom in California and her dad in Maine. Her tooth is loose. She’s been swishing it back and forth with her tongue for the entire plane ride. If her mom were here, Kaitlin would ask her to pull it out. But she’s too shy around her dad to ask him to do it, and it’s his “turn” for the next month. Mobile children are entities unto themselves.  Their trips to and fro across state and county lines have created a generation that is both highly independent and terribly vulnerable.  From the outside, it might look like these little travelers are lucky. The get double everything - two homes, two birthday parties, two vacations.   But the reality of the situation is that often, in cases like these, one plus one equals zero.  Jose got an expensive ball glove from his father for his birthday that was two months ago. He loves it but it makes him angry. He’s embarrassed to play catch with his father and his half-brothers because he’s the worst player even though he’s the oldest of the kids. The only time he gets one on one coaching is during the three weeks he spends with his dad during the summer.

A generation of youngsters is growing up with an idea of family that includes infinite variables.  While divorcing adults are allowed to completely severe ties with each other and create another home or family all together, their sons and daughters don’t have that opportunity.  They’re left with a lifelong reminder of two halves that can never quite be whole again. With his childhood on fast-forward, what does the adult world hold for the mobile child? Who will he become and what will he leave behind? 

Anthony doesn’t want to get married; he saw what happened to his older sister Lisa. She just got married and spent the whole time crying. The dude she married, Marco, has parents who also split up and don’t get along. At their wedding, everybody fought over everything. Anthony’s already heard his mom and dad trying to get Lisa to come to one of their houses for Christmas. Marco’s parents are probably doing the same thing. Anthony figures he won’t see his sister too much anymore, but he doesn’t blame her.

The challenges that Anthony, Jose and Kaitlin are facing now, and in the future are numerous and difficult. I should know because I grew up a mobile child. For ten years, I crossed back and forth between my mother’s apartment in Missouri and my father’s house in Illinois. At eighteen, I left both states behind and traveled a thousand miles east in search of a place where I could put down roots of my own.  My life now in New York City may not be picture-perfect, but at least here, I live for the future instead of being constantly reminded of the past.