Although Breathing Lessons is primarily about a long-lasting marriage, it also deals with the problems common to marriages of partners too young and immature and perhaps too selfish to make the compromises necessary to sustain marriage. When such marriages end in divorce, the partners and children may suffer, but Tyler points out that grandparents may suffer, too, by being separated from their grandchildren. When Maggie's son and his wife divorce, Maggie's one grandchild, moves away with her mother.
The result is that Maggie cannot evolve from the role of mother to that of grandmother. She feels deprived and cut off from part of her family. She becomes a victim of the empty-nest syndrome. Her son Jesse has his own apartment and is involved with his band; Fiona and Leroy are gone, and Maggie's daughter, Daisy,.....
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