Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit

by Helen Rose Ebaugh

Book Overview

The experience of becoming an ex is common to most people in modern society. Unlike individuals in earlier cultures who usually spent their entire lives in one marriage, one career, one religion, one geographic locality, people living in today's world tend to move in and out of many roles in the course of a lifetime. During the past decade there has been persistent interest in these "passages" or "turning points," but very little research has dealt...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226180700
• ISBN13: 9780226180700
• Release Date: June 1988
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 268 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Entering Roles, Leaving Roles...

Helen Rose Ebaugh began researching this book while a Catholic nun, and ended it as an "ex-nun" and married woman. Don't let that fool you. This fascinating book is not an attack on organized religion, or a defense of it. It is instead an exploration of social "roles" each one of us inhabits, and the curious and usually painful process of leaving one or more of those roles behind. Her contention is that no matter what role we are leaving (anything from a marriage--'husband' or 'wife' being the role left--to leaving a religious group to [even!] sex-change via surgery) there are commonalities in the process that will tell us much about both ourselves and our former and future roles. As an evangelical Christian who is part of an intentional community, I read this book initially to try and understand why former members of our community (Jesus People USA) sometimes became so angry with us, and interpreted their time with us so negatively. Ebaugh's book enlightened me somewhat on that score. But for anyone trying to understand "conversion" TO a role, this book is an interesting corellary. Also, see David Bromley's "The Politics of Religious Apostasy."

Redefining the Human Self by Leaving

Helen Rose Ebaugh began researching this book while a Catholic nun, and ended it as an "ex-nun" and married woman. Don't let that fool you. This fascinating book is not an attack on organized religion, or a defense of it. It is instead an exploration of social "roles" each one of us inhabits, and the curious and usually painful process of leaving one or more of those roles behind. Her contention is that no matter what role we are leaving (anything from a marriage--'husband' or 'wife' being the role left--to leaving a religious group to [even!] sex-change via surgery) there are commonalities in the process that will tell us much about both ourselves and our former and future roles. As an evangelical Christian who is part of an intentional community, I read this book initially to try and understand why former members of our community (Jesus People USA) sometimes became so angry with us, and interpreted their time with us so negatively. Ebaugh's book enlightened me somewhat on that score. But for anyone trying to understand "conversion" TO a role, this book is an interesting corellary. Also, see David Bromley's "The Politics of Religious Apostasy."