A couple of days ago, I wrote a post that dismissed David Brooks’ column on the new age of virtue. I didn’t understand how he defined virtue. I thought that he left out some important variables that could explain recent improvements in family life. I was afraid that he saw the world through rose-colored, Republican glasses. (Cold Springs Shop has a nice follow up.)
But I don’t want to write off the fact that some important social changes are occurring at this moment. Less domestic violence, more interest in good parenting, more interest in creating a stable home life. Look, I’m a family values kind of girl, and I have to celebrate those developments.
Yesterday, I took the kids to visit my friend, Margie, out in Long Island. On the way, we swooped into the city to pick up another buddy, Susan. Margie has a pool in her backyard, and her property overlooks the Sound. We splashed around in her backyard, until Ian started falling asleep while playing with trains. We had to coordinate the nap with the traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway, so off we went.
As we sat in traffic, Susan told me about a book she was reading — The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce : The 25 Year Landmark Study
Susan explained that the author found that divorce has a huge impact on children. Kids never completely understand what happened, and parents fail to properly discuss the divorce to them. Kids would prefer that unhappy parents stay together rather than divorce, which counters the argument that goes “if the mom is happy, the kids are happy”. As the parents struggle to put their lives together, the children are often emotionally neglected.
The author also found that these early traumas have profound life altering affects. As adults, the children of divorce are far more likely than others to say they never want to have children. Or if they get married and have kids, they are far more likely to fear uncertain disaster and to painstakingly care for their relationship.
Based on highly unscientific observations of my friends, that sounds about right. I’m going to check out this book.
Then we got into a long discussion about whether we would stay in an unhappy, but not abusive relationship for the sake of the kids. No answers.
UPDATE: I’m beet red. All these people here (Thanks, Megan), and I’m not wearing any lipstick. My web design sucks, and I wrote this post during Playhouse Disney this morning and forgot to spell check.
But thanks, everyone, for showing up and contributing such amazing comments.
Apt. 11d 
My wife and I divorced 20 years ago, with kids aged 8, 6 & 4 (boy,girl,girl). Having the “advantage” of a 20 year historical look, I must agree with the conclusion of lingering, lifelong impact on children of divorce.
While one can never mitigate totally the damage – and it is damaging – that divorce inflicts on the children, parents have an obligation to try every possible avenue before divorce.
Nothing is as heartbreaking as hearing your children take blame for the divorce. And they all do it to one degree or another. “If I had only done my homework like Mom and Dad asked me to…”, “if only I had kept my room clean…” ::Sigh::
And no matter how often you try and explain it had nothing to do with them, that they are loved, etc., the doubt is there.
Why? Because to a child, a parent is, by definition, eternal. They have always been the one they could run to with problems. But what does a child do when it is mom and dad who are the problem?
Children know mom and dad promised to love one another forever. And they know that promise was broken. Now, mom and dad have promised that they will always love them.
Kids are very, very good at drawing the logical conclusion that if mom and dad can break a promise to one another, can’t they break that same kind of promise to them?
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People often make the mistake of thinking that because a child can’t cogently express that they are thinking they must not be thinking. My experience with my daughters has been that they have an amuzing ability to put two and two together, even if they don’t always get four.
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Is there an age at which the kids of a divorce become less impacted by it? If you hold out until they’re 18, for example? Or 20? Or 40? Not to imply that grown kids aren’t also impacted by divorce, but my sense is that it wouldn’t be as traumatic.
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Years ago I went on a camping trip with a bunch of male friends. We were all married and, amongst the guy stuff, we spent a lot of time talking about our families. One of the men had divorced and remarried. His second marriage was a very good one, blessed with two children. At one point I suggested that he’d obviously learned something from his first marriage that had made his second marriage so special. So, maybe it was all for the best, etc.
He looked me in the eye and said, “Yes, I learned something from my first marriage: Never get divorced! Absent a threat to the physical safety of you or your children, never get divorced. We could have made that marriage work, but we didn’t. A good second marriage does not compensate for a failed first. Just, never, ever, get divorced.”
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Holy-Shmoly. The bit about no kids, fearing uncertain disaster, pain-stking care of the relationship….Man that is my wife EXACTLY. The child of a nastily divorced set of parents who split 22 years ago. My parents are still married coming up on 50 years… And I can never understand some of her seemingly irrational fears that will end up splitting up after 12 years of marriage.
It’s simple. Divorce is all about ME. Marriage is the opposite.
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Thanks for the kind words. Unexpected Legacy is somewhere among the unread stuff; perhaps it will be one of this year’s fifty. Enjoy the Instalanche!
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I wondered once to a friend why my circle of high school friends (like hers) avoided the sex/drugs/drinking/trouble that visited so many others in our small school. Without a pause she answered, “How many of your parents were divorced?” The answer was two sets out of of six. They were by far the least stable of the six families and the least important, least involved adults. The intact families in our circle of friends (not all of them happy) became the most influential families. I wonder if they not only kept their own kids safer but helped their kids’ friends too.
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As I remember, the book was good – rang pretty true to my own experience of my parents’ breakup when I was about 10.
It also helped answer why, when I look around at my friends, the closest ones are all from “intact” families. The other kids of divorce are almost always (understandably) less willing to trust, even in friendships.
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My divorce was as amicable as was possible, I think. She wanted to “find herself” (with her boss) and I finally quit trying to fix things and didn’t oppose it. She got the kids, I got the bills, she got the house until she married her boss after his divorce, then I got the mortgage. It was about the most painful thing ever.
My son is divorced with a child (he was 13) and my daughter is never married with 2 kids by two guys (she was 10). How much of this is a result of divorce? I don’t know, but it surely couldn’t have helped.
I am now contentedly married (almost 13 years) after being single for over 10 years. I’ll probablly never lose the belief that my divorce hurt my kids.
I would say 1) don’t ever rush into marriage (I didn’t, either time), 2) stay married if at all possible (physical violence is out), 3) stay married if at all possible.
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Good post!
I would stay in even an unhappy marriage. Having been married since 1982, I know that sometimes what seems to be an unhappy marriage will become a happy one given time, especially if both partners are committed to staying married. And because my children really do come far ahead of me in what matters most to me.
My parents are still married to each other and I’m in my forties.
My husband’s parents split when he was small, and then he watched his father divorce several more times (his mother was nearly completely out of the picture), and he went back and forth to Grandma’s in between his Dad’s marriages.
For years everytime we had any sort of an argument, no matter how small, he would interrupt it just when I thought it got interesting to say in worried tones, “I love you!” He can’t stand for us to have any sort of disagreement. It frightens him.
I watched my parents disagree all the time and still stay married, and it didn’t bother me. He watched his dad go in and out of marriage like some people change suits. He and both his siblings have suffered greatly from their parents’ selfishness. I can see the effects lasting even to their fifties in dh’s older siblings.
My best friend’s in-laws divorced when their children were around 16 and older- and while I’m sure it was less traumatic than it would have been if they were all 6 and under, it wasn’t easy for them. It was a grief to all of them the rest of their dad’s life. It was very hard for them all- like a death in the family that you never quite get over.
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Would I stay in an unhappy marriage for the sake of the kids? No way.
For the record, I have four kids and have been with my husband since 1978 so the issue has not actually come up. My parents are still married as well.
Here’s one dynamic I have observed amongst my thirty-something children-of-divorce friends. Often, at least one spouse is so mortally afraid of divorce that he or she becomes really controlling, with the idea that if you don’t control your spouse, he or she will divorce you. Ironically, these control battles lead to divorce ….
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Jo(e): “Would I stay in an unhappy marriage for the sake of the kids? No way.”
Because of course things don’t change over time. If you’re unhappy at this moment in time you will clearly be unhappy for the rest of your life, so why not get divorced and screw up your children’s lives. It sure beats working through your marital difficulties.
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I work as a psychologist and post divorce cases are a large part of my practice. It is very difficult on the children and the adults. As a divorced and remarried father, one of the huge regrets and heartbreaks of my life is how my divorce affects my oldest daughter.
Divorce is gross. It sucks. A “good” divorce is bad for the children. There are times when it is the best alternative and the pain and damage of the divorce is less than the pain and damage of the marriage, but I believe that this is rare.
Trey
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I stayed too long in my first marriage. My ex thought that having kids would help our marriage. One day we were having one our usual shouting matches and the dog we were minding for a friend started whimpering and wetting the floor. End of discussion about kids. So, if it isn’t working, figure it out fast – and end it *before* you have children.
I am now remarried and have three great kids. Things would have to be pretty bad before I would inflict a divorce on them. I wouldn’t limit it to physical violence – things never got that bad with my ex – but even infidelity would be unlikely to make me leave.
Actually, infidelity may be the worst reason to split up, at least in the absence of a serious, ongoing affair, because from the kids’ standpoint the divorce comes out of the blue. And what could you say that would make them understand?
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My parents separated when I was six months old and divorced when I was 2, so I find myself in the seemingly rare position of having no memories of my parents together, ever. When I was little, of course I wished mommy and daddy could get back together, but since I was old enough to really look at things (maybe about the time I became a teenager) I’ve realized how terrible my parents must’ve been for each other. I love both of them, but they are just incompatible people, and from the stories I’ve heard, it sounds like they brought out the worst in each other. Both of my parents have remarried (my father when I was 4, my mother when I was 13), and I’m much happier knowing that my parents are in good, healthy relationships rather than at each other’s throats just for the sake of providing “stability” for me and my brother. It also means I get four parents!
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Wallerstein’s book is extremely controversial among sociologists and psychologists, you know. I only remember the gist of the critiques, but they accuse her of selecting only the data that supports her claims.
I have no doubt that some divorces are very damaging. Many of us would agree that some marriages are similarly damaging. What I have problems with is
1) her claim that *all* divorces are worse than staying together (and she includes many, though not all, marriages that get physically violent), and
2) her insistence that nearly all children of divorce are unable to form long-term relationships.
Of course, I’m guilty of confirmation bias myself. I’m the child of a “good” divorce (my parents stayed best friends — talked on the phone long-distance every day until my father died), and I’ve been with the same guy for 18 years. But Wallerstein is quite clear that somehow I am a damaged human being.
Oh yeah, one other thing that cheeses me off about Wallerstein’s argument: She’s deeply invested in blaming wives, not husbands. “Women finding themselves” is much more of a social problem than men doing the same or any of the other 10 million reasons that people divorce. Cue the Tolstoy!
(“Unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way…”)
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My mother married my father twice and divorced him twice. Neither of my parents were abusive (no drinking, no cheating, no hitting) but they are thoroughly and completely incompatible. My mother was contemptuous of my father – he’s boring (true), he has no outside interest (true), he lacks common sense (true), he can be paranoid and irrational (true), he can be a bigot (true), he can’t be trusted with finances (true) and after 46 years, he’s still besotted with my mom. He had been a good provider until the bottom fell out of the oil market in ’86. His job had taken us to interesting and exotic places.
The divorce didn’t harm my brother and I, the “non-abusive” marriage did. My brother went on to marry and divorce a horrific woman and I remain steadfastly single in my 40s.
If I were unhappy but I respected and trusted my spouse, I would attribute my malaise to my own inner drifting and not to the marriage.
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I was divorced with kids 2,4 and 5, and now, 10 years later, they are extremely happy and well-adjusted, with numerous long-term relationships. I fought for joint custody, and have them every Friday till Monday. I think the negative effects of divorce are really more the effects of not having enough contact with the non-custodial parent. Joint custody should be the default, not the exception.
Another thing my ex and I did right was to go to counseling together while we were going through the process. It helps to focus you on the fact that while you can’t stand each other, your children are innocent bystanders and need to be reassured. Fighting out divorce issues through the children is a major part of the traumatization.
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Cabbage: I didn’t say that I wasn’t in favor of couples working on their marriage: therapy, 12-step programs, etc. I am very much in favor of people working through their issues rather than just leaving the relationship.
I have had to work hard at my marriage to stay in the same relationship for 27 years.
But I do think the fear of divorce can be paralyzing. I often I see one spouse tiptoeing about, afraid to bring up anything that might lead to conflict because s/he is so afraid of divorce. Or like I said, one person suffocating the other out of fear of divorce. I know an awful lot of children-of-divorce adults who are absolute control freaks in their relationships.
If my spouse was not willing to work on issues, I would not stay in the marriage for the sake of the children. No way. The fact that we both accept divorce as a possibility — and can talk about that calmly and not as some big dramatic ultimatum — is one of the things that has kept us working on issues.
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I’m divorced. And, I chose it. I was married to a physician; who thought a nurse at the hospital was more important to him than coming home to his wife and baby. Perhaps, when he left he thought I’d take him back. Didn’t. I grabbed the divorce, since my son, then was only 18-months old. And, I knew I’d be living with a cheater, who’d do what he did, again; even if I took him back “the first time.”
Money wasn’t the issue. I came from a family with money. He was just starting out. So, he thought (given his girlfriend had been divorced), that he was “entitled to half of my assets.” Almost true. The divorce was expensive enough. But he wasn’t needed for financial reasons. And, he failed, big time, on being loving. So where would the benefits have been if I stayed around to be his emotional punching bag, huh?
Meanwhile, he remarried. And, has two wonderful kids. And, all three children get along well (to very, very well), together. This is the real gift.
And, I never lived more than a mile away from him. So contact was broad. As broad as the kids, themselves, wanted it. And, still want it.
Does divorce hurt? Sure. But what’s the real message from these books? Perhaps, they’re still selling marriage as the ultimate ideal? (As if couples can’t divorce after 48 years of marriage!) Tell me about it! My wonderful friend, now with Alzheimer’s, saw her husband toodle as soon as she was diagnosed. He enjoed the high end of his marriage; when she was in the best form. He could care less once she got sick.
I can only speak as one person. In today’s world, where people don’t even bother to marry; so one assumes they’re escaping from the loveless situations without enriching divorce lawyers; you still need coping skills. Without too many guarantees to happiness; even under the best circumstances.
Mort Sahl, long ago, had the best line, when it came to psychological counseling. He was asked if he had ever been analyzed. And, he responded, “why no. But I’m 55 years old, now. And, if I had been analyzed I’d be asking for a refund.”
I might point out that my ex married a Catholic woman on his second go-round. And, when it came time to decide on religion; though he practiced NOTHING, he forced the issue to be Reform Judaism. (His son is DELIGHTED with this choice. But, I’d bet it’s quite hard on his mother.)
There’s lots of ways to get disappointed in life. And, most of the times ya just gotta get over it.
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It is very easy to generalize about divorce and children of divorce. At what point is it okay for a divorce – only when there is physical abuse? What about mental abuse? What about a controlling spouse who won’t allow the wife to get out of the house?
After trying to make my marriage work for 18 years, I finally gave up when my ex-husband said he would never, ever go to counseling. I got married right out of college, and it was a mistake – and I knew it was a mistake the day after we got married.
We have one son, now 20 years old, who so far appears to be doing pretty well (he was 7 when we got divorced). He is an excellent student, has never gotten in trouble and has good friends.
His dad was a much better dad after divorce than when we were married, and he and our son have a wonderful, close relationship.
I have never said a word against my ex and he has never said bad things about me to our son.
We are unusual. Too many parents try to poison their children’s minds about the other parent.
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“he saw the world through rose-colored, Republican glasses”
You people keep saying this, and then act surprised when you’re brought up short, having to acknowledge that Republicans have been right all along.
Being a DIMocRAT is not a family value.
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Did we really need a 25 year remove and “studies” ad nauseum to conclude that divorce is bad for children? Can we just be honest, the notion that divorce is not bad for children was a patently lame attempt to assuage the guilt of parents that know damn well, deep down that their divorce will be devastating to their children. Why should it be surprising that it was the Woodstock generation that went on to get PhDs in psychology that gave us this silly notion.
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My personal piece of anecdotal evidence: me, 32, parents divorced when I was 11. I’m in a stable relationship for six years now, relatively unscared. I certainly don’t wish my parents didn’t divorce. They were too young when they married, and bad for one another.
I have a good friend right now with two kids (1 and 3). She and her husband have been married for six years. During those six years her husband has:
Been cheating on her with people he’s been meeting on the internet. (She found this out when she discovered the photographs of the acts he’s been exchanging with others on their home computer.)
Been hiding bills and letting them go unpaid so that they’ve been evicted twice and had the gas turned off twice. Their car is also illegal, due to revoked tags and license from unpaid tickets and violations.
Been fired from several jobs due to inability to show up at work. During the days he doesn’t go to work, he simply disappears somewhere else and she doesn’t find out until he’s fired.
Been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and refuses either counseling or medication.
Due to all of the above, not surprisingly, they fight constantly.
So all you folks comfortable with running other people’s lives for them — there’s no physical violence going on here – is it better for the kids if she stays or goes? What would you tell her to do?
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Beth raises a good question, and one I can’t answer very well, “At what point is it okay to divorce?”
I’m the child of a horrible divorce, one that wreaks havoc in our family to this day, and in ways I never would have anticipated.
Though it’s hard to calculate, I’ll hazard this answer to Beth’s question. “When the situation becomes more damaging to the kids then the divorce would be.” Otherwise, you chose to bring them into the world, and it’s your responsibility to be miserable if it’s for their benefit. When your misery begins to hurt them worse than a divorce, then it’s better to end the marriage.
Sounds cold, yet every mother or father, when asked if they would dive in front of a bullet to save their kid, would reply, “Of course.” Isn’t the divorce question the difference between a single instant and sustained endurance?
And no, I have no idea how to evaluate against that test.
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Well, count me as being among those who think that, yes, we need to actually study human behavior systematically in order to understand it instead of just assuming that we already do because of what we feel “deep down.”
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As always, Jo(e) is thoughtful and on point.
My parents fought endlessly when I was a teenager, to the point that I wished they’d just divorce and get it over. They didn’t, and they seem to be much happier now.
I’m sure that part of the explanation is that my mom was convinced that my dad was going to ask for a divorce as soon as I (the youngest child) left for college. He didn’t, and I think she relaxed a great deal, and stopped putting the worst interpretation on everything.
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My wife comes from a set of divorced parents. She was about 16 when they divorced. It CONTINUES to be difficult. It was not amicable. And that was over 20 years ago. Having to decide which set of the three grandparents to go see, having 3 grandpa’s, 3 grandma’s, etc. How to explain to your kids why…
I have long thought that divorce often (not always) harms the children in one way or another. Even joint custody. How is it stable or normal to have to sleep in one bed during the week with one parent and then in another on weekends with the other parent? And what kind of baggage comes from having parents quibble about who gets them for what time periods (sorry, I can’t take them this weekend or that week because….)?
Marriage is hard work. Sometimes the relationship is frosty and you have to work at it to improve it. Then it’s better. Then you keep working on it until you hit a dry spell. But that’s life.
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Social scientists have researched the question of when a divorce is better for children. Paul Amato and Alan Booth report in their book “A Generation at Risk” that children benefit when “high-conflict” marriages end, and they suffer when “low-conflict” marriages end. Alas, I can’t find the book at the moment, so I don’t have an exact definition of high vs. low conflict marriages, but IIRC, a high-conflict marriage is one that includes abuse, violence and/or frequent arguing. By their measures, about one-third of divorces end high-conflict marriages, while two-thirds end low-conflict marriages.
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I haven’t read the book or the data, but:
what are the comparisons? I mean, we have adults saying they wished their parents hadn’t divorced, which is interesting, but not proof they are worse off than they would have been. I know people who wished their parents had divorced, or are very happy that it happened: this is not proof that all parents should divorce.
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For all those folks who hammer on the divorces in their lives and how those involved turned out okay, anecdotal data sucks. It sucks, sucks sucks. Say it with me. It SUCKS! You cannot generalize it, you should not build policies on it, and you definitely shouldn’t build social values on it.
Good social science tries to look at a representable portion of society (ie, through random sampling, perhaps?) look at XYZ and then generalize that to the population. That’s what this study did, and the effects of a divorce rate pushing 50%. Children whose parents divorced were more likely to have specific problems than children whose parents didn’t divorce.
Married to flake who won’t change? A serial adulturer? A violent drunk? I’ll not tell you to stay with the louse. But don’t think that your experience is somehow the norm for society in general, because it isn’t.
So, yes, Matilde, your ‘friend’ picked an idiot to marry, and let’s hope he feels enough shame for his actions to change his behavior, otherwise his children will suffer for it, divorce or not.
And Beth, I’m glad that your son is doing well and that your ex was able to get his act together (let’s hope your son learned more from your behavior than from his).
These are intersting examples, but how exactly do they relate to the population at large?
Rant off.
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Divorce sucks, but I think that living in a society that allows “easy” divorces is better for us in the long run.
I speak of a child of divorce who has a lot of divorce anxiety and trouble maintaining friendships. My parents seperation is still with me. But my mother remarried, and on the second round she got a guy who loved my brother and I as much as he loved her. I am very afraid of what my life would have been if we’d been stuck with my father all those years.
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In addition to physical violence, I would have to add the other aspects of domestic violence: obsessive controlling behavior, threats, and name-calling. And no, after two years of marriage counseling, he had no desire to change. Everything was my fault. Even his chronic unemployment. His compulsive spending.
But the worst, I think, was his pathological inability to tell the truth. You cannot make anything work with a person like that. Believe me, I tried.
I was ready to put up with being chronically unhappy. But not with being lied to and set up for his debts. Even after the divorce, it has taken me years to get caught up. How far in the hole would I have fallen if I had stayed married to him?
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Meg, read all the comments here and see if you still agree with the “controversial accusations” from mainline social and psychological scientists against Wallerstein’s findings. Divorce trauma is a complex issue and it’s rare to find a country or a culture where they hit the right balance re. marriage and kids. I’m sure Wallerstein missed it in certain spots although i read her book and have to disagree w/some of what you site, but even if she got these issues you raise wrong, still, her basic thesis, that goes against 40 years of the dominant 60’s/70’s ideological perspective on divorce is hard to argue against when the interviews with the adult children of divorce are there in black and white. Re. the claim that she “stacked” interviews toward her own presuppositions, it’s possible, but my experience of growing up in both the conservative South, the liberal northeast, and 8 years of counseling Americans and Europeans in western Europe, is that she’s only scratching the surface in terms of the effects divorce has had on a generation. Maybe she has an agenda, maybe not, but even if she does, she’s onto something very big, just read the comments here alone from those who experienced it firsthand.
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I’m kind of like Jonah in that my parents divorced when I was very young. I was 4 when they split up and my mom moved out. The only memories I have of them together is of them fighting. I concede that I’m one of the lucky ones: once they split, things were and have continued to be amazingly amicable between them.
So, from my perspective, I always had a hard time understanding the kids of divorced parents who so badly wanted their parents to get back together, even if it meant their parents were unhappy. To me, unhappy parents together = unhappy family, myself included. That’s why I have such a hard time with the notion of “staying together for the kids.” I think marriage counseling is a good idea (my parents tried it, apparently), but at some point if it’s not going to work, cut your losses and try to be civil about it. Kids can recover.
Oh, also, the counterpoint to my situation was my high school friend F, who basically lived every day as a ball of stress, wondering whether his unhappy parents would get a divorce. (We lost touch after high school, so I don’t know if they did or not.)
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Thousands of years of social evolution resulted in a societal tradition for marriage as the best approach to raising children. It was not and will never be the apex of individual happiness; such was not its intent or goal.
In general a two-parent household works far better than single, communal, or no parenting. Certainly, exceptions will occur. But the family unit arose for a reason. Only modern man is so arrogant as to question the wisdom of the past so throroughly as to hack at the pillars of civilization, and wonder when the results are suboptimal.
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Right on, Kevin F.
I don’t know how familiar you folks are with Wallerstein (author of this book) and her research, so here’s a little background: this is about the 4th or 5th book she’s written on the same group, about 100 Marin County families she hooked about 25 years ago. She interviews them every five years or so and writes a new book. Her conclusions have jumped all over the map; in the early days it was all about how resilient the kids were, then it was on the virtues of joint custody, and then on the importance of high child support payments. She’s been a very active player in the California legislature, and has generally taken the pro-feminist, pro-divorce, anti-father line.
Her early work was better than the recent stuff, mainly because she had better people working with her than the current crew, and she wasn’t as old and creaky.
Wallerstein admitted a few years ago that she doesn’t know what a happy family looks like, so it would have been helpful if she’d had a control group. It also would have been helpful if her subjects had come from someplace other than Marin County, CA, the divorce capital of the known universe.
Don’t take her work too seriously, she’s a bit of a crank.
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I’ve been thinking about this post. I am a child of divorce, almost exactly 25 years ago. I am not ruined by it. Nor are my siblings. In fact, we used to divorce as a scapegoat for our own bad behavior. We used to say, when we felt lousy, oh, it must be that our parents divorced. That’s baloney. Life is full of ups and downs that have nothing to do with my parents.
Here’s another thing: divorce today is QUITE different from 25 years ago. Wanna get a divorce in my state today? The state demands counseling for the couple and the kids, and it appoints a court advocate for the kids. Parents are enjoined from the leaving the state, and it they do they relinquish any custody. The state is tough on parents forking over big bucks for kids.
When my parents divorced, the children were a non-entity in the court’s mind. No one asked about us, or sent a representative. We got no counseling. Nothing. And here’s the kicker: we are okay. WE did not turn into relationship flameouts.
Also, what about the folks from two-parent homes who are bonkers? What’s that about, if marriage is the answer?
FTR, I have two kids and am 18-year-old marriage.
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The letter (I hope) I’ll never get
This post (h/t Megan subbing at Instapundit) and the ensuing comments swung wide a door I’ve kept shut here on this blog since its inception. Behind that door lies a number of thorny, controversial issues that are all far too close to home to di…
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I stayed in an unhappy relationship for 28 years. It subsequently turned around – my mate had some deep serious problems which I knowingly took on – still for quite some time they were more than I could handle.
We have some friends who got divorced over the husband’s serious long term infidelity and the wife’s unwillingness to fight for the marriage. A few years after the divorce the oldest son ODed on drugs. Obviously the boy was in a lot of pain (he was in a lot of trouble with the law before his death).
My advice? No. Matter. What. – Do not get divorced. I would make an exception for heavy (life threatening) physical abuse. Nothing else.
I had separated from my wife when my oldest boy was 4. Every time we had a visit he would cry when it was time to leave. No way I could hurt him (actually by then there were three sons – the oldest was the most obviously affected) for the rest of his life (bad enough during the year of separartion).
Once there are children – Do Not Get a Divorce. Get a lover if you must (and keep it secret from the kids). Do not get divorced.
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JennyD asks why some kids do not have a problem with divorce – my theory – genetics.
Here is how genetics relates to drug use:
Addiction or Self Medication?
Heroin
Genetic Discrimination
My take: parents who are most susceptable to divorce are more likely to have the “I can’t get over it” type of genetics, which they pass to their children. In a year or two we will have a test for PTSD and all this will be put on a more scientific basis.
A test for PTSD
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I would make an exception for serious child abuse too.
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My chidren never had to cope with divorce, but we saw the impact close up through their friends.
When I was a college prof, I had students crying on my desk asking how to settle a problem when the parents were fighting over them at Christmas break.
I’ve been a Scout leader for a long time, and divorce really hurts children.
My own parents divorced when I was 30 years old and it still is traumatic thirty years later.
And as a man, I have to say men have caused the majority of the divorce problem (although some women seem to take great pride in being bitches, which I don’t get).
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Gee, this is the science of the anecdote. So here’s another one:
My mother was a lazy, self-involved slob. She didn’t hurt anyone, and she didn’t help anyone.
When my father and she divorced, she dragged my siblings across the country in outrage, but I demanded to stay and finish high school.
Thank goodness I did. My father quickly married a smart, dedicated, generous woman. I learned more about a quality relationship from watching them than from watching my parents. I also learned how women can be both smart and generous.
Do not underestimate the damage that children might face from watching their parents in a lousy relationship.
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Half Canadian:
Children whose parents divorced were more likely to have specific problems than children whose parents didn’t divorce.
But this proves nothing about the effects of divorce! It only proves something about the effects of having parents who chose to divorce. Do you see the difference? To really measure the effects of divorce, you would have to take a sample set of married couples from one population, randomly assign them to two groups, forbid divorce for one group while allowing it for the other, and then compare outcomes. Good luck with that.
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“Do not underestimate the damage that children might face from watching their parents in a lousy relationship.”
And wouldn’t that be the comparison we’d really want to see? Not children of divorced parents vs. children of any married parents. Rather, to isolate the ramifications of DIVORCE, we should be looking at children of divorced parents vs. children of parents who are unhappy and have considered divorce but who have stayed together for whatever reason.
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One piece of research I’ve seen quoted alleges that children who lose a parent to death suffer much less than children who lose a parent to divorce.
Perhaps O. J. was right.
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An elective divorce, done for ‘happiness’ or ‘freedom’ or ‘self-actualization’, when there are young children involved, is a crashingly barbaric act. The traded-in spouse is also a victim, though not innocent of original bad judgement. The kids are total innocents, and a person who would willingly punish total innocents–even if mouthing the things that cannot be known (such as ‘the kids are resilient’)–for the sake of some some vague sense of being owed more love or more something-or-other, is long-term unforgiveable. That’s my anecdote.
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APL: “Rather, to isolate the ramifications of DIVORCE, we should be looking at children of divorced parents vs. children of parents who are unhappy and have considered divorce but who have stayed together for whatever reason.”
Actually, I think that this is what the author does. She does compare children of divorce v. children of unhappy married and the children of unhappied married are still better off. She says that kids are so self centered that they don’t notice that their parents are unhappy. They only notice if they are there or not.
BTW. These comments are amazing. Thanks everyone for continuing to contribute your stories.
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Hey guys, get a grip. This is clearly a whine of the white and affluent. There are loads of kids who have lots bigger problems than whether mom and dad have to fight over who gets the SUV. And lots of these kids come out fine. Kids who’ve been through wars, and grinding poverty, and things much, much worse than divorce.
I think the biggest problem is neurotic parents–regardless of their marital status. Kids are resilient. As long as parents aren’t crazy.
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Ability to adapt to stress is, at least to some degree, a genetic trait, and kids are all different. Consequently, their reactions to divorce are going to be all different; just as their reactions to ‘bad’ marriages and even ‘good’ marriages are going to be all different. That’s why anecdotal ‘evidence’ just doesn’t mean much except to the individual involved. Some day it might be possible to study individuals and determine how they will be effected, but it isn’t likely to happen any time soon.
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My parents divorced when I was 12. I never had kids. I don’t know that one thing led to another, but I do know that I was anti-marriage until I finally married at age 37 to my love who was 46. Kind of late to have kids, now. I’m 46 now, and kind of regret it sometimes. I know I used to tell my mom I’d never marry when she asked me when I’d settle down.
I got married to my long time sweetie after an acute myocardial infarction. (severe, almost fatal heart attack) I got paddles on chest, six broken ribs from CPR and everything. Kind of changed my outlook on life.
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not being 46. just not having kids, haha.
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My parents divorced about a decade and a half ago, when my brother and I were in our mid-twenties. We had both long since left the house. They had been married for about 35 years, about 25 of which had been happy.
The separation and ensuing divorce was a wonderful thing for everyone involved. Both my parents became happier people. My dad has since (very happily) remarried. My mom is unmarried, but involved in an (also happy, if a bit more unconventional) long term relationship (both of these relationships, incidentally, began before the divorce). My relationship with each of my parents has improved. They remain on good terms with each other. About the only thing lost in the shuffle was the house we grew up in. My mom got it after my parents split, and she subsequently moved to a different state.
At any rate, I suppose I’m happy that my parents kept their marriage together while we were kids, despite some hard times. But I’m very happy that they made the right move and eventually left each other. They were driving each other crazy, both deserved better, and now they have it.
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[Actually, I think that this is what the author does. She does compare children of divorce v. children of unhappy married ]
But this is like comparing people who bought a Ford with people who said they really like Fords but didn’t buy one. It’s not at all an easy problem to be sure that this sort of comparison is valid and the correlation and chi-squared methodology used isn’t going to pick it up.
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All this attention to unhappiness and what makes kids unhappy or troubled. Where’s the focus on how to make happy, untroubled people?
It’s clear from some of the comments that divorce can create happy families. Maybe it’s a crap shoot, but I prefer that knowledge to presuming that divorce is the Devil.
I also wonder how many people complaining about the wreckage of divorce are also people who grew up with or faced chronic unemployment, the death of a parent, forced migration, famine, or civil war. Having grown up with a couple of those, I can say that separation or divorce is a piece of cake.
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The Madrid El Pais English edition printed this letter of mine in July, responding to developments in Spanish divorce law. The PP is the Popular Party, i.e. the conservative and Catholic-influenced opposition. I’m not myself divorced.
“The Cortes is right to worry about the impact on children of the proposed liberalisation of divorce. In England and Wales, child custody disputes after divorce called for a staggering 67,000 court orders in 2003*. But why is the PP opposing powers for Spanish courts to award custody orders against the will of one parent (El Pais, 30 June)? This looks to me like soft-headed sentimentality. Surely a principled social conservatism would strive to entrench in law the truth that marriage can be dissolved in the eyes of the state, but parenthood is for ever.
Spain could even take a leaf from Muslim law and draw a sharper distinction between divorce by mutual consent (the typical case) and without it (for example after violence). One could imagine the former concluding in a dignified and sober public ceremony before the mayor, at which the parties confirm their desire to end their union on the terms previously laid down by the courts – and reaffirm their ongoing joint responsibility for any children.”
* See UK government Green paper “Parental Separation: Children’s Needs and Parents’ Responsibilities”, July 2004, p.7.(http://www.dfes.gov.uk/childrensneeds/docs/DfesChildrensNeeds.pdf)
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I’ve read some of the more technical studies, and they don’t solve the methodological problem either. They don’t ask people if they considered divorce, but ask them how happy their marriage is (again and again over time); they then compare couples who divorce with couples who don’t who nevertheless give the smae self-reports of the happiness of their marriage. But, as dsquared implies, those that divorce are displaying that there is something different either about them, or about their marriage. Its a hard problem.
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Are the findings in the other technical studies similar to the findings in this book, Harry?
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Kids would prefer that unhappy parents stay together rather than divorce, which counters the argument that goes “if the mom is happy, the kids are happy”.
Uh, I certainly hope the book doesn’t rely too heavily on this sentiment to try to prove its point. Sure, put people, especially children, through a painful experience, and they’ll tell you that they’d prefer almost any alternate experience – but that doesn’t mean they can grasp what that experience would be like or how they’d react to it.
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“As adults, the children of divorce are far more likely than others to say they never want to have children. Or if they get married and have kids, they are far more likely to fear uncertain disaster and to painstakingly care for their relationship.”
Gosh, that describes me perfectly. Except for the part where my parents were happily (as far as either one would say) married for almost 38 years. I know that an anecdote does not data make, but then it’s not clear whether 100-odd anecdotes make data either. My gut feeling is that, given the impossibility of putting together working control groups for divorced vs unhappy-but-not-divorced, that it might be interesting to spend more time on other measures of emotional health within such families.
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Someone told me recently that one major source of stress for kids is having to shuttle back and forth between two homes, and that some experts now suggest that divorced parents, not children, should have to do this. That is, there’s one house where the kids live, and the parents take turns living in it (thus inconveniencing themselves and giving up their own sense of permanence while allowing the kids to preserve theirs). I wonder if this could make a difference in the effects of divorce?
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I’m the child of a no-fault divorce. My mom was a part-time teacher at an all boys prep school. She couldn’t get full time status because that would require doing evening dorm duty (men only) and coaching sports (couldn’t have a woman teaching boys how to play sports. More generally, she felt like a second-class citizen on the faculty and on the campus grounds where women are supposed to be housewives.
So even though she would be the first to admit that my dad is a good husband and a good father, she got a divorce and took me and my sister 800 miles away to a full time job at a new prep school. I was the new kid at my new school and got picked on mercilessly.
Now I’m married myself, a born again Christian who sees marriage as a lifelong committment. The single biggest thing I want for my kids is that they never have to experience divorce.
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Laura — the findings are pretty much as Sara Butler Nardo reports above: 1/3rd of divorces good for kids, 2/3rds bad for them. Notice that this will be highly context dependent — different legal and social norms produce different divorce patterns, presumably. I’ll come up with some good reading suggestions for you next week! (on this, and other topics).
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…and harry b, if I may add a speculation to your post, 3/3 of kids are better for having two parents who honestly persevere to place the children’s welfare above or on par with their own.
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My parents have been unhappily married for 38 years. My father is a drunk, and he was an abusive parent. My mother is a passive aggressive nag who would goad my father into fights. They had 5 kids together, and only one of us has her life pretty together, and that’s because she lives comfortably in a state of denial.
Sometimes married people are putting themselves ahead of their kids by staying together. My parents will never get divorced because they are Catholic, but I’m sure my siblings and I would have been far better off if they had divorced.
I love both my parents despite their flaws, but sometimes divorce is the best solution.
I am happily married, btw, have been for 17 years. I still have lots of problems that I deal with due to my upbringing, but maintaining a relationship is not one of them.
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I am not prepared to defend Wallerstein’s methodology. (This post was just a note to myself to check out a book.) However, I am prepared to say that while some kids bounce back from divorce with no problems, there are many more than have life long issues with relationships. (That 1/3rd good, 2/3rd bad statistic works for me. ) Are they better off than people whose childhoods consisted of two bickering parents? Who really cares. Both sounds like bad childhoods, and there should be attempts to think through how to prevent bad marriages.
Bush’s marriage classes have taken a lot of heat, and I’m not sure why not. Why not provide more funding to churches and private organizations to prepare couples for a life long commitment and to scare off the flakes? Sounds like an excellent program to me.
How about providing support for couples that are in unhappy marriages? Free marriage counseling and maybe in house mediation.
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The trouble with marriage counseling is that most of it is so bad it makes matters worse.
The emphasis is on communicating clearly, which really doesn’t help when the issue dividing the couple is different values. In these cases, the couple needs to learn how to sweep their problems under the rug rather than constantly pick at the scab, and to divide areas of authority to reduce conflict.
Pre-marriage counseling is always a good idea, however, and Bush is certainly right about that.
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A bad marriage with kids around hurts kids and is very destructive. A divorce with kids involved is very destructive and hurts kids.
Onlyh a decent and good marriage is good and helpful for kids. Neither a divorce or a contined bad relationship is good. There is no easy out.
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In my personal experience the only thing harder than being married to a dingbat is being divorced from one.
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I didn’t mean to dismiss the unhappily married couples in my last comment.
I have deep respect for the commenters who say that they stayed in unhappy marriages for the sake of the kids. That level of sacrifice is rare to see today, and the love that you’ve shown for your kids is admirable.
Those who were in truly untenable situations, you really do seem have had no choice. One of my best friends from high school was married to someone who blew all her money on the stock money without her knowledge and insulted her in front of the children and had some undiagnosed personality disorders. I cheered when she left him. The kids have had to suffer through a bad divorce and on going bad relations between their parents (both doctors, btw).
What to do about the somewhat unhappy marriages? The ones where the spouse isn’t abusive, a gambler, substance abuser, or anything else horrific. It’s just a loveless marriage and now you think you could do better. I’m sorry, but in these cases I’ve got to say, suck it up.
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How many loveless marriages have the kind of backbone where the spouses can have a talk which goes “I’m kinda neutral about you, you’re kind of neutral about me, we both love the kids though, so we’ll agree to tough it out”?
But if you don’t have that talk you’re presumably running a reasonable risk of your spouse leaving you sooner or later for someone else, or at least of them conducting an energy-sapping and potentially painful (to the kids too) long-term affair.
Even an unhappy marriage (maybe especially) is going to need both partners agreeing to make it work, and part of what seems to make an unhappy marriage is the loss of the kind of trust in your spouse that allows for you to trust them to make long-term sacrifices like preserving the marriage for the kids. I guess I don’t really understand how staying-together-for-the-kids happens. One spouse may be trying this, but unless both are, it seems to me that it won’t work. And many people in unhappy marriages must be caught in the situation where they don’t trust their spouse enough to actually be sure that they’re both heading the same way wrt to the marriage and the kids.
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I haven’t read all the comments, but I read enough to see that good points have been made, and that strong feelings have been evoked.
Someone commented that anecdotal data cannot be generalized,and that is quite true. But I am not sure that Wallerstein’s data are representative either. Her earlier research, which I have read, was based on a clinical population. And you can’t generalize from that either.
So here’s my .02 worth (and I am both a developmental psychologist and a divorced person–I will admit to my own bias). Yes, divorce sucks. Of course, it would be preferable for all kids to be raised in the context of a loving marital relationship. But the long term effects of divorce can be mediated by MANY factors–such as individual temperament/personality, attitude of parents, level of dysfunction in family pre and post divorce, community and family support, etc. So it is difficult to predict any individual outcome-positive or negative.
I believe in life-long marriage, and as I said before, that would provide the optimal enviornment for raising kids. But I would never advise anyone to stay in a bad marriage just for the kids–because if it is really bad, that will hurt kids, too. That said, I also recognize that it is really easy to walk out of marriage instead of working and trying to save it. But sometimes you have to know when to cut your losses and move on.
I was divorced when my kids were 11, 8, and 5. Yes, it was hard for all of us, and my children have had a lousy relationship with their dad. But my daughters, now in their 20s, will tell anyone who asks that they are stonger women because they saw that I could make it on my own.
I think our culture doesn’t make it easy for families whether one or two parent–despite all the talk of “family values.” The low priority that child care, quality education and health care have in the grand scheme of things is indicative of where cultural/societal priorities lie. But perhaps that is a different discussion.
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“Once there are children – Do Not Get a Divorce. Get a lover if you must (and keep it secret from the kids). Do not get divorced.”
So bring children up in a homelife based on a lie? Somehow I can’t see how that is preferable to divorce.
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Regarding Affairs: I could see how this could actually work well and be of great benefit to the children.
In cases where the romance between the couple has died, but all other factors remain roughly equal (i.e. they mostly get along about decisions regarding childrearing, finances, etc.), an affair for one or both spouses would allow the marriage to survive long enough to raise the children. The affair would give a certain level of emotional support and sexual outlet to the spouses while keeping the household together.
Essentially, at least at the emotional level, it would be a divorce, but would not substantially disrupt the children’s lives. Like all compromises, this isn’t perfect, but it might be preferrable to the alternatives.
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When parents are married, their children are an investment, a hope for the future.
When parents are divorced their children become another bill, hopefully paid off at 18. (Sometimes this attitude is intensified by remarriage and further progeny).
Don’t ask me how I know this, it is too painful.
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Ah, what a painful topic. As an evangelical Christian (and plz don’t assign me the usual baggage that goes with that label these very depressing days), I could offer the usual moralist platitudes. Except… my wife left me in 1987. There are two girls (now women, of course) from that marriage. I got custody of them, for what that was worth, but also saw the incredible damage the divorce wrought, and apparently still is wreaking, in their lives. I was extremely fortunate in that I met my current wife (also abandoned by her first spouse), and her love for my girls (and mine for her boys) is intense. But all that said, I cannot but agree with the afore mentioned book’s conclusions regarding divorce’s effects on children. But that’s in general. Trouble is, no divorce is “average” — every one is a special case. I hate how easily people give up on marriages that are actually quite redeemable. But I also hated the ease with which people only marginally knowing me were more than willing to suggest that the divorce was avoidable, my fault, and so on. I also — and perhaps this is surprising for an evangelical (which is sad) — think that “marriage at any cost” often ends up victimizing the wife more than the husband. (I do some riffing on such topics on my Are Men Really Human blog.) In the end, for me, it was a loving community of Christian friends around me and my girls that allowed me to pass through the fires of abandonment, feelings of rejection and brokenness, and stresses of single parenting. There are just no easy answers…
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Yes, dsquared, the data is imperfect, but such is social science; we don’t get to run controlled experiments on people. Within the parameters that social scientists have to operate in, Wallerstein’s study seems to be about as good as it gets. I’ve heard rumours that they’re doing longitudinal studies in Ireland; perhaps that will shed some light.
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The problem with generalizations/blanket statements is that they are not 100% accurate. There will be exceptions. So no, every marriage should not be stayed in “for the sake of the kids”. But most should be.
If it is a not-so-good marriage stay in it for the kids. If it is a bad to horrible marriage don’t.
When one spouse is staying in it “for the sake of the kids” how often does the other spouse know? I would guess not all that often. If he or she did I wonder how that would affect the whole dynamic. If there is an understanding that you two are basically just roomates would that relieve a lot of the stress?
If you want to stir the pot a little more, 🙂 , here’s another blanket statement: if your a guy and you are going through a divorce the odds are you are going to be screwed to the wall. So you better think about it long and hard…
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What these anti-divorce commentators ignore is that fact that some people make TOXIC parents. Sure, if you’re a normal couple with ordinary interpersonal problems, you should try to work things out for the sake of the children.
But when there’s an ongoing severe substance abuse problem, for instance, whereby the user’s actions negatively impacts the rest of the family, then I think divorce is a GOOD choice. Or when there is ongoing verbal, emotional, and/or physical abuse, then I think divorce IS warranted.
I was a child of an alcoholic home, and I often wished that my parents WOULD divorce. I still believe that my Mom made a flawed choice to stay in a bad marriage. We’d all have been better off, less maladjusted, and less socially stimatized if she’d just had the courage to boot out the door a man who was a bad husband and p*sspoor father.
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“I think our culture doesn’t make it easy for families whether one or two parent–despite all the talk of “family values.” The low priority that child care, quality education and health care have in the grand scheme of things is indicative of where cultural/societal priorities lie. But perhaps that is a different discussion.”
Perhaps. I should note, though, that just because society leaves it up to individuals to get child care doesn’t mean that it’s a “low priority” in our culture – it just means that it’s something that individual parents are supposed to be competent to procure for themselves on the market. (Health care is a whole nother ball of wax – letting people get quality health care is considered less important in our culture than preventing them from hurting themselves, leading to serious shortcomings in available treatments…)
“So bring children up in a homelife based on a lie? Somehow I can’t see how that is preferable to divorce.”
Hell, we do quite a bit to carefully hide reality from them as it is, I don’t see how hiding an affair is that much worse.
But seriously, how much damage can an affair conducted by a parent that stays in their lives compared to the damage caused by the other parent throwing her out? Even if the kids know about the affair, and know that the other parent knows about the affair, by what mechanism is this supposed to screw up their little minds?
In short, it seems to me that it might be better for the kids to overlook or forgive an affair.
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cs,
The only obvious way your suggestion seems to work is if the other party in the affair is also trying to preserve their own loveless but compatible marriage for the sake of their own children. (How frequent are these compared to loveless and also hostile marriages where the state of battle forbids a truce along the lines of “hey honey, let’s shag other people and stay together for the kids, ok”?) And that may have its own problems, since both affairs and family life are significant and not always compatible commitments.
Otherwise, this other party is likely to be displeased with their role as “the one who Alice lets off steam with so that she can save her family life with Bob and the kids.” This third party will, especially if left in this role for years, either end the affair (hurting Alice and probably through her her kids) or agitate strongly for the end of her marriage, or both.
And I suspect that not everyone in loveless marriages, even friendly loveless marriages, is therefore automatically OK with sexual infidelity (sometimes, even if they say they are).
I don’t know how realistic this picture of unhappy marriages being the union of two sane friendly people who are no longer attracted. Most adults I know who claim to have been raised in an unhappy marriage describe their parents as locked in a running battle of mutual emotional abuse and tell stories about crying themselves to sleep every night for ten years and things like that. Perhaps this is a sampling bias? (Children don’t recognise the equitable unhappy marriages, they just recognise the abusive ones?)
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I don’t know how realistic this picture of unhappy marriages being the union of two sane friendly people who are no longer attracted.
It’s very realistic. When the question “Why did you divorce?” is polled, the leading reasons are things that basically point to boredom and “growing apart”. Dramatic reasons like abuse and alcohol are way, way down the list.
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I haven’t seen a 25 year study of the children of intact but unhappy or dysfunctional marriages so I have nothing to compare to.
I come from a family with no divorces but I asked for my ex to leave and I fought for the majority of shared custody.
My son was 4. His mom has since grown up after a number of pitfalls and she’s now a good mother. Our parenting relationship is solid and my son is a loving, well rounded kid.
Did I do the right thing for me? I never wanted to get a divorce.
Did I do the right thing for my son? Hell yes.
His mom is now an active and involved parent in not only loving him but also guiding him.
Would that have been the case otherwise? Definitely not. (She did, by the way, come from a family with multiple divorces so maybe their is a corrolary but I doubt it is as simplistic as your study leads one to believe).
Show me the 25 year studies about kids with married but bad role model parent(s) and let’s have another discussion.
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WELCOME VISITORS.
Thursday turned into a rain day, and Friday into an end-of-summer-research Hiawatha excursion, although the hits kept on coming.
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I’m 19 years old and my parents were divorced when I was little. I don’t know what people are talking about with “taking the blame,” but my parents were always very clear that they were hurting and they sat down and explained to us that they needed some space to stop hurting each other. We (my two siblings and I) heard them fight and we were glad to agree. They both also made sure that we knew that they still loved us no matter what. They would fight over weekeneds and bitterly complain about each other, but never let us think that we were going to be any less of a family. My parents are much more at peace than they ever were when they were married, and I think we have turned out okay so far. Anyway, I’m not saying that divorce is good or that it’s healthy, but I’m saying that sometimes families need that to be better for everyone. Even us kids.
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My parents were married for 36 years. They divorced when I was 29. For those of you wondering whether it hurts the kids less who are grown up? Hell no. It hurt unimaginably, for all that I hadn’t lived at hom for ten years, had my own life, and was married myself. I had almost 30 years for their togetherness to become part of my identity. I do not believe in god, but I believed in my parents. I would sooner have believe the law of gravity had been repealed, than believe they could split up.
That said, am I glad they got divorced? Hell YES. I wasn’t at first, not so much for my own pain as for the devastation it wreaked on my younger sisters. I got off easy. BUT, I am so proud of them — they are stronger, better people than they were before. They have really pulled themselves together, and come out of it ahead. My parents, too, are stronger, better people than they were before, and my relationship with both has improved tremendously. I can relate to them as individuals, now. I no longer feel like I have to hide anything from them because hey, I know things about them that make my secrets look like NOTHING.
So to sum up: it may, in fact, be better to wait until the kids are grown and can seek therapy for themselves. But never imagine it doesn’t hurt.
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“I think our culture doesn’t make it easy for families whether one or two parent–despite all the talk of “family values.” The low priority that child care, quality education and health care have in the grand scheme of things is indicative of where cultural/societal priorities lie. But perhaps that is a different discussion.”
So true. If society really wants what is best for children, society should focus on supporting children concrete ways (mat/paternity leave, health, child care, etc.) instead of bashing parents. It is evident in a lot of these posts that we assume that marriage vs. divorce is an important question in terms of kids’ well-being. I think our pervasive lack of social support for families is a more relevant question.
As long as we are sharing stories, my parents were not married and separated before I was 1. So I grew up with no dad, and that’s the way it was (fine with me). My mom struggled as a single parent, and has never been able to maintain a long-term relationship with anyone, a problem she attributes at least partially to her own crazy parents and their terrible but lasting marriage.
I have been married for 5 years and have 2 children, and I think my husband and I will stay together. We have similar values, trust, respect, communication, and a shared commitment to our marriage and our kids.
While I can’t imagine a marriage without love, I think some people make the mistake of placing too much importance on love when they first decide to get married. Love does not a great relationship make.
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My parents were divorced when I was a toddler. A bitter and traumatic divorce with a multitude of repercussions that are too tragic to even discuss.
But the heart of the problem wasn’t the divorce. The tragedy would have unfolded differently if they had stayed together, but it would still have been a horrific tragedy nonetheless. Of this I have no doubt. I believe there was no solution, for whatever reason.
I think the heart of the matter is health. Emotional and psychological health. If that guiding star is missing in either partner/parent, divorce or no divorce, then tragedy and misery will ensue. In many respects, I’ve come to see that my mother was more intransigently sick than my father, but that is merely a detail of my own experience. The heart of the matter is that the shadow conquered all, and it is not clear how or if this can really be changed. As I’ve grown into an adult now in my thirties, I’ve come to see that psychopathology is a profound and common reality–it doesn’t change easily and without profound effort. Identities don’t really change much very often, even with deep effort.
While I still deal every fucking day with the emotional holocaust that was my childhood, it is clear to me that divorce wasn’t the heart of the problem or misery. The unchangable, fucked-up portions of my parents’ deepest selves was the fountainhead of the problem. And yet I have compassion for what must have been profound suffering on their parts as well as what was inflicted on my brother and myself. These days, it’s harder to blame and easier to mourn.
What is of course bizarre is that they were/are both exceptionally good, wonderful, sophisticated people in some very real ways. But the shadow conquered all. There are so many paradoxes to these things. It’s still a mystery to me as to why some relationships are healthy gardens and others are perpetual infernos. Is there some infallible agorithm to making a relationship truly work? I wish I knew.
My own relationship, lasting for years has been very difficult in all too many ways, and it hasn’t been for a lack of effort or commitment. I have yet to have kids, because I swore years ago that I would never do so without a healthy, undissolvable marriage. But at the same time, it is becoming clear to me that I may never have an acceptable relationship that will allow me to believe that having kids is a good idea.
This is life. It is far from easy.
If you came from a healthy, happy family and have a healthy, happy family you are blessed. Step away from the computer, get down on your knees and thank God for what you have.
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“How many loveless marriages have the kind of backbone where the spouses can have a talk which goes “I’m kinda neutral about you, you’re kind of neutral about me, we both love the kids though, so we’ll agree to tough it out”?”
I had an agreement like this with my husband: that we would stay together until our youngest (of 3 living children) was 5. This was after he quit marriage counseling; the diagnosis that his jealousy issues were causing behavior that the counselor considered abusive made him think that the counselor had “taken my side.”
However, at some point one of his buddies convinced him that by divorcing during a year when his income was significantly lower (due to 2 job changes knocking out the industry-standard bonus for that year), he could lock in child support payments at half the rate he would pay if he divorced in a normal year. So he left. He didn’t mention that as his motivation–he just claimed he had a business trip and spent a few days holed up with a lawyer, then presented me with his offer and moved out.
How could I have stopped him?
(In the end, it turned out his buddy was wrong. It cost me a lot of money up front to get it dealt with, but child support is indeed based on actual current income and not your historical worst year. Oops.)
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Gee, I dunno … Would my parents’ staying together have made my father less of a selfish asshole and my mother less crazy and violent? (OK … maybe less violent, because he might have had her committed)
But really, it’s not just the fact of divorce, it’s the people involved, too. And sometimes they shouldn’t be together. And sometimes they shouldn’t have kids. But you know, lots of the time, people don’t think that’s going to happen to them. In fact, probably most of the time, people don’t think it will happen.
And my sisters and I are all divorced. And yeah, I kow I have some issues, but almost all of them relate to my mother, and not to her having been divorced.
But I stayed married for almost 11 years to someone whose love depended upon me being someone I wasn’t, whose affections were entirely absent (and nowhere else), who blamed me for everything (but relied on me to take care of everything) and berated me for being fat and stupid, but said he loved me because I was a really good person — but. And I let his daughter watch it all. She was terribly hurt when I told her I was leaving, but if I’d really cared about being a better role model, I should have left sooner. No one should be taught that sucking it up to the extent that one negates one’s own being “because I made a commitment” is a good thing.
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I am fairly astonished at the number of people who feel qualified to tell a couple..any couple..what they should do with their marriage and whether to divorce. Many of the commenters are married as well, and I would ask them to think about how little of what actually happens in a marriage is visible to the outside world. You cannot know what amount of “suffering” is “acceptable” for anyone but yourself and (possibly) your family, and to shake a finger at these supposedly selfish people lightheartedly getting divorced and screwing up their children is to display both profound ignorance and arrogance. You do not know whether their reasons are “good enough”. You cannot know. And it isn’t your place to know, or your business, either. Nor can you say for anyone but yourself whether staying is better than going for the children involved.
As for marriage counseling: well, would it be mandatory? Is that not a gigantic infringement of people’s rights? I personally did not feel the need for it, and would have greatly resented the government telling me I had to get counseling to get married (and who dictates what kind of counseling that is, anyway?). To the point I might not have had a civil ceremony at all as an act of protest.
This is just another example of using “it’s about the children” to intrude into the lives of other people and dictate their behaviour. People’s lives are messy and they make regrettable decisions. Some of those decisions affect their children, but short of actual physical or mental abuse, the govt cannot interfere without becoming extremely intrusive.
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I agree with emjaybee.
Aren’t we all being incredible busy bodies here – those of you in great marriages appear to be gleefully telling eveyone else to tough it out for the children’s sake.
There are cases where the children come out just fine, and are closer to both parents because the parents make an effort to make sure the kids know it ain’t their fault, know they can see mom or dad anytime they want and don’t have to deal with a parent saying awful things about the other parent.
Staying with an alchoholic is just supporting their bad habit – same with a drug addict or a womanizer.
The whole ‘ what’s best for the children’ meme has become a ridiculous excuse for butting into everyone else’s business.
What about women married to closet gays who are having unsafe sex with men and then coming home and possibly giving her AIDS? Should she stay in a marriage ‘for the children’?
I can think of thousands of situations where divorce is a better choice than the alternative. Certainly it is better to divorce one’s spouse than to kill him or her, don’t you think?
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Divorced Parents
Via Half-Changed World, I wandered into the thickets of divorce outcomes over at 11D, with a considerable detour across the dunes of non-custodial motherhood. Now I’m going to try to extract myself from the overwrought metaphor and get to the
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Where are 2005’s best posts?
They’re here. A compilation of the best posts we (and our readers) could find, from 2005.
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