Most American 8-year-old girls are thinking about The Suite Life with Zack and Cody and not a married life with a man in his fifties. But in Saudi Arabia, girls just can't have fun, and how they're treated is no laughing matter.

According to the BBC, an 8-year-old girl is pleading to a Saudi Arabian court for a divorce. She was married off to the man without her knowledge — by her father. (How do you say jerk in Farsi?)

Child-protection organizations say Saudi children are sometimes given away in return for large dowries, or as a result of beliefs that marriage to cousins or other known persons will protect young boys or girls from illicit relationships.

What should be illicit is selling a daughter before she becomes of age to make her own choices and treating her like property instead of a prized individual.

Now, following the publicity, the child's mother is reportedly asking for an annulment. Although women have limited power in Saudi Arabia, annulments have a precedent with underage children.

Last April, a court in neighboring Yemen annulled the arranged marriage of a 9-year-old girl to a 28-year-old man.

Perhaps the court of public opinion will help make a ruling in Saudi Arabia as well that young brides have an age requirement.

Republican First Lady wannabe Cindy McCain has always said she's an only child — which came as a painful shock to her two half sisters. McCain's parents both had a child from previous relationships, but as was often the case a generation ago, these children were really treated as second class citizens.

Kathleen Hensley Portalski, 65, is the product of Arizona beer baron Jim Hensley and his first wife, Mary Jeanne Parks. Hensley and his second wife, Marguerite "Smitty" Johnson, had Cindy 11 years later. Cindy's other half-sister, Dixie L. Burd, was born to Johnson before her marriage to Hensley.

Kathleen Portalski told National Public Radio that being ignored by McCain has made her angry and hurt. "It makes me feel like a nonperson," she said.

How sad that anyone has to feel that.

Unlike today, where divorce settlements allow ample time for fathers to see their children — and many dads now are asking and getting joint custody — agreements years ago gave fathers little time with their children. Also, there wasn't as much effort by fathers to see these children and integrate them into their new family because there was a stigma around the word divorce (the divorce rate remained below 1% throughout the 1940’s) The idea of a "perfect" intact family and living up to that image was the driving force in society.

Portalski has told reporters that her father Jim would see her a few times a year, usually around Christmas and birthdays, and called “occasionally.” He also helped with school clothes and tuition. Later, he would also send some modest sums to Portalski’s kids.

Since there was no Firstwivesworld.com then — nor stricter laws enforcing child support payments based on income — many children like Kathleen were not integrated into their father’s new family.

Michael Phelps proved that children of divorced parents can achieve swimmingly.

With his record 8 gold medals for the Beijing Olympics, the 23-year-old Phelps is considered the greatest Olympian in world history.

The tribute goes to his mom Debbie, a school administrator, who diligently drove him and his two sisters, Whitney and Hilary, to swim in their hometown of Baltimore. As a single mom, she also helped him through his ADD and proved to be a loving, supportive parent — and a smart one too.

Since Michael’s father Fred, a retired state trooper, was an invisible presence in their lives after the 1994 divorce, Debbie realized that swimming was a great release for her young son.

When he was 11, Michael Phelps bonded with swimming coach Bob Bowman, who became a surrogate father figure to the young boy. This often happens when a father figure is absent. A smart mother often tries to find another male figure, either in a relative such as an uncle, or perhaps a coach.

Only 9.2 percent of households are run solely by single moms and the challenges often result in higher high school drop-out rates and behavioral problems. However, with the right parenting, focus, and outlets, children are less impacted and can learn other lessons from the experience.

When asked about his father in interviews, Phelps has said that they occasionally “email” but shrugs his big shoulders when asked how it impacted him. He always refers to the love his mother Debbie gave him and his sisters.

But a philosophy of coping did emerge from this experience. Although a fierce competitor, Phelps is known to take the rare defeats in stride or even the pressure of constant competing. His famous saying is, “Whatever happens, happens.”

It is no surprise that a boy who didn’t have a father throwing baseballs, going to swim meets, or playing lacrosse with him had to find ways to make sense of this disappointment.

The Australian posted a recent article on the impact of divorce on the environment. The claim? That the results of divorce — multiple homes, cars, energy use — is eating way at the earth's resources. One can't argue with that, especially as a new report by the Australia's Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts released the following numbers:

"A four-person family that breaks up will generate around 43 percent more garbage than they did when they were together. They will use up to 34 percent more water and up to 70 percent more energy, depending on the type of new dwellings being occupied."

But what we can argue with is the alternative: Stay in a broken relationship? And keep the kids there, too, just to cut down on the garbage and utilities? Please. A rise in energy consumption seems far less detrimental than forcing kids to stay in a glued-together, patched-up broken home. With the electricity they save now, they'll be running up their therapist's bill with all the hours they'll spend sitting on the couch in 10 years.

And let's remember, with second marriages come a union of two houses to one. Live Science reports that the environmental footprint of U.S. households who had "weathered divorce and remarriage shrank back to that of married households."

If researchers are looking to pin the environmental crisis on something, divorce is really the least of our worries.

The man who abducted his seven-year-old daughter in Boston last month was arrested in Baltimore over the weekend, and the girl was returned to her mother. On Tuesday the father was charged in a Boston court with felony parental kidnapping, assault and battery. He was held without bail.

And then the mysteries deepened.

Who is "Clark Rockefeller"? Could he be wanted in California under another name? Is he, as he presented himself, a secret agent? Or is he, as investigators believe, a former German exchange student? 

Another question: How could his ex-wife, Sandra Boss, a high-powered executive at the London office of McKinsey & Co., be deceived by such a shady character? Actually, any woman who has ever been wooed by a psychopath will know the answer to that one.

The London papers reported that Boss, who made more than $1 million a year, paid "Rockefeller" $1.5 million last year in exchange for exclusive custody of their daughter, Reigh.

The sticking point for shared custody, Boss said, was that she wanted to see "Clark Rockefeller's" valid birth certificate, and to know, finally, who her husband of 12 years really was.

He refused to reveal his identity, took the money, and began plotting their daughter's abduction, including buying an apartment in Baltimore under another assumed name.

She, finally sure that he wasn't a Rockefeller, changed their daughter's last name to Boss.

What is the tipping point that makes the public outraged about an affair? “Brothers and Sisters” star Balthazar Getty and his sassy seductress, Sienna Miller, are finding out.

After they were caught in flagrante on a boat off the Amalfi Coast by prying photographers, their affair was on display for the world to see and comment on.

And now a tsunami of negative press has been splashed their way.

It seems that children, thankfully, do have an impact on public opinion — as they should.

When a couple without children breaks up, it is sad, but few are impacted outside of the person who is left.

Perhaps that is why when Angelina Jolie lured Brad Pitt away from Jennifer Aniston, who had no kids with Pitt, the tabloids tittered with delight but did not hurl many negative judgments.

Not so here.

Almost all of the commentators on the Balthazar Getty story, from tabloids to TV shows, have referred to his children. Four children. Young ones. One still in diapers.

“When you are a parent, even a Hollywood parent, there is an expectation of being parentally responsible,” observes Fox News’ commentator Roger Friedman. “When someone gets divorced with one kid, that is bad. But four, that is terrible.”

This week the blogosphere was churning with speculation that Getty was trying to woo his wife back with plaintive mea culpas and apologies.

He flew to Los Angeles to begin shooting the next season of the television show “Brothers and Sisters,” and hopefully to return to reality.

“Infidelity is sometimes used as escapism,” says Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil, author of “Adultery: The Forgivable Sin.”

“Many marriages can survive an affair and often do. But it takes a lot of work and the recognition that there was a problem that needs to be fixed.”

We love hearing when a husband comes to his senses and returns to the loving embrace of his wife and family. Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood was in the news lately for his fling with Ekaterina Ivanova, a 19-year old Russian cocktail waitress.

He had left his wife, Jo, in Britain and jetted off to his home in Ireland with Ivanova.

Friends said he was in the midst of a serious crisis, and his drinking had escalated to consuming two bottles of vodka a day.

Wood has been candid over the years about his struggle with alcoholism, and entered rehab in at least six times before, most recently in 2006.

He had been sober for some time, but relapsed after the end of the last Rolling Stones tour. He met Ivanova in April in an escort bar, and she immediately became a drinking buddy and nude model for him. (Wood is a serious painter.)

One thing is for sure: Ivanova wasn't telling him to reduce his vodka consumption.

Wood's publicist said on July 10: "She is a drinking partner. When you're an alcoholic and your family are all telling you to stop drinking, you simply find someone else to drink with. You can see how it happens, you end up pushing away the ones you love because you don't think straight."

What got him back to his senses? Seems like his oldest son, Jesse, 30, was able to remind him of what he would lose if he left the family nest.

Page Six reported that Jesse "flew to his side and convinced him to return home and get help."

According to the BCC, Wood entered rehab yesterday.

Wood, 61, married Jo, 53, in 1985, and have two children, Leah, 29, who got married earlier this month (Wood is pictured with Jo at the wedding), and Tyrone, 24.

Jennifer Butler has filed for divorce from husband Bill Murray after more than a year of separation. The two have been married for 10 years and have four children.

Unfortunately, Butler's divorce petition detailed Murray's "adultery, addiction to marijuana and alcohol, abusive behavior, physical abuse, sexual addictions, and frequent abandonment."

Aside from a storied acting career, Murray is co-owner of the Charleston Riverdogs, a South Carolina minor league baseball team — although is official title on the team's web site is "Director of Fun." I don't know...from the aforementioned allegations, he doesn't sound like too much fun to me.

Seriously, though, it must be tough be married to these full-throttle, ad-lib kind of guys like Murray or Robin Williams (also in the midst of a divorce). Maybe the show never stops — and they never stop.

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Saudi men who divorce non-Saudi women are currently allowed to force their wives to leave the country and in many cases never see their children again.

Unlike in Western countries where marriage to a citizen grants automatic citizenship in and of itself, non-Saudi women who marry Saudi men do not get citizenship and can be asked to leave the country at any time. Since the children are the property of their father, the ex-wives can't take the kids with them.

One divorced mother of six who is originally from Syria told the Saudi Gazette that since she got divorced she has not been allowed to see her kids. She is terrified of being expelled from Saudi Arabia and never seeing them again. Her oldest child is only eight years old, and they "still need the care of their mother," she said.

The Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry is in the process of examining possible solutions, including granting residence permits for women caring for their children.
While this is great in theory, I have a feeling that most Saudi ex-husbands will find a way to throw a monkey wrench into the best laid plans. The Foreign Ministry might let the women stay in the country, but the ex is under no obligation to let them anywhere near the kids.

While I sympathize with the plight of these women, there's an element of "What did you think was going to happen?" going on here. We've said it enough times before — Saudi Arabia is not exactly known for its women's rights movement, and the laws are barbaric at best. When it comes to Saudi marriage proposals, let the buyer beware.

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We reported a while back that more U.S. men are seeking alimony these days, and in a recent Telegraph article, it appears that British husbands are seeking financial support, as well.

One U.K. law firms states the number of men attempting to claim a piece of their wealthy wives' assets has increases threefold in the past year.

The number of "house husbands" has doubled over the past 20 years, as more women become the breadwinner. When it comes time for a divorce, SAHDs are looking to be compensated for their efforts.

I don't know about you, but it's not really a gender issue for me. If you've dutifully served as the homemaker and helped your spouse build a successful career, aren't you entitled to some sort of support?

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