At Divorce360, some fresh writing last night from young adults telling the story of how it feels–from their point of view–when parents leave to find their bliss:
I am 25 years old. My parents divorce[d] when My twin sister and I were just 10 years old and our little brother was 8 years old. 2 weeks after the divorce became final my father remarried. My mom remarried awhile after that. I still struggle with the divorce and get frustrated when people tell me to get over it and move on. I don’t think some people really understand the effects it has on the children. It doesn’t matter if you are 1. 10 or 20 when your parents get a divorce….it affects every child. I understand it wasn’t our fault but that doesn’t mean i don’t still wonder what life would be like if my parents were still married. I have forgiven my dad for the hurt and the pain it caused me. I struggle mostly with the fact that he remarried so soon and has more to do with his “wife and step-daughters” than he has with his 5 biological kids. I don’t understand why he did what he did. I cry, because of all the time i have lost with him and how my step sibling and step mom rub it in our faces. why are some people cruel? I know I can’t change the past…but I wish some adults would act like adults instead of hurting people. I am just so thankful I have my mom in my life who has been with us through EVERYTHING! Adults if you are gonna cheat and end up causing a divorce stop and think about your children first….We in the end are the ones who get hurt the most! -Brandi
Categories: Children of Divorce
This is the voice of something most social scientists have yet to capture: the question of loyalty. Every divorce is a declaration that something is more important than the family–unless (in difficult cases of abuse etc.) it is a declaration that the good of the family requires the divorce or separation. In which case the kids suffer from not having a good father or mother, but not from the divorce itself which was logical.
Other things were more important to this Dad than his kids well-being. His own needs were more important. That’s the fact the divorce openly declares.
Hard to get over having facts like that rubbed in your face.
Good parents work hard to shield their inadequacies and failings from their children. We try to present them with our best selves. Fake it long enough for them to grow up.
Good thoughts Maggie. This could all be re-worded to fit with “donor conception”/”surrogacy” as well….
“Good parents work hard to shield their inadequacies and failings from their children. We try to present them with our best selves. Fake it long enough for them to grow up.”
Three cheers.
My two new mantras: “suck it up and wait for death.” “Fake it long enough for them to grow up.”
: )
“Fake it long enough for them to grow up.”….I’d add: “Then hope they can forgive, learn and grow from our mistakes”…
I’ll take the “fake it” one as a bumper sticker, please
I’ll take the “hope forgive learn and grow” one for a bumper sticker, please
(Other things were more important to this Dad than his kids well-being. His own needs were more important. That’s the fact the divorce openly declares.)
So it be would better to not have it openly declared?
the writer specifically points to the fathers behavior after the divorce as the most hurtful aspect.
Question for all those who think you should just suck it up: how long do you think you could continue in a marriage to someone who loathed and disrespected you? I’m not talking about physical abuse, but perfectly legal behavior like…being frosty, passive-aggressive, calling you vile names and other nasty insults, lying, teaching your children that you aren’t worthy of respect, etc. What self-protective tactics would you use to not let all that get under your skin? How would you teach your children what a healthy relationship is, when your partner does not exhibit that? How would you teach your children that infidelity is wrong with a spouse that continues to cheat?
There’s a lot of unknowns about the inner workings of other people’s relationships, but sometimes, as in the NYT story from Spain I linked to, a person “falling in love” with someone else precedes the vile behavior of the now-rejected spouse.
In that NYT story, the 45 year old wife (and I say this as an old boring 42 year old wife myself) fell in love with someone else which eventually leads to her husband feeling psychologically tortured by having to continue living with her, meanwhile she vacated the house before dawn every morning and he considered suicide, and finally they achieved their divorce and moved to separate small apartments in bad parts of town, says the reporter.
One wonders if falling in love with someone with whom you will probably, eventually, have a relationship not much different from the one you currently have with your spouse was worth all of that.
But I’m not her, so I can’t say for sure.
(One wonders if falling in love with someone with whom you will probably, eventually, have a relationship not much different from the one you currently have with your spouse was worth all of that.
But I’m not her, so I can’t say for sure.)
So as a boring 42 year old wife – under what circumstances can you imagine falling in love with someone else.
My guess is you can’t. Because happily married people don’t fall in love with someone else. You are making assumptions about other people’s marriages when you judge this woman.
Yeah….I just think it’s reasonable to feel miserable when you have to share intimate space with someone who doesn’t like you. Forget “love”; let’s talk about “like”. It may be possible to cheat on someone you “love”….but frankly, I don’t believe it is possible to cheat on someone you like or respect.
That’s kind of what I’m getting at in my response on the other post. There are some things a couple can reasonably compromise on. Housework. Work/life balance. Family time. Many issues surrounding intimacy (finding time for it, being sensitive to one’s partner’s needs, trying out new things, etc.). Parenting practices (although this is a bit touchier, and may require professional help). Sharing interests/balancing together and apart time. In-laws. Financial goals/spending vs. saving practices. How to communicate effectively and respectfully. How to hang the toilet paper roll (kidding!).
But there are some things on which there really isn’t any reasonable compromise on, and I consider cheating one of those things.
@Mont D Law “My guess is you can’t. Because happily married people don’t fall in love with someone else. You are making assumptions about other people’s marriages when you judge this woman.”
You just made a huge, huge judgment – if someone falls in love with someone else, they must be in an unhappy marriage.
I think it’s also a wrong judgment. People can love more than one person. People who are happy with one partner do fall in love with another. The easiest situation to understand is when the couple are not living in the same place, but that’s not the only way it happens.
The other thing to keep in mind is that falling in love is partly a physical thing. So it makes sense to think that someone might be happy with their spouse and their life, but still enjoy the excitement of falling in love with someone else, or just of knowing that someone else likes you.
Affairs in particular are a kind of falling in love/romance that isn’t limited by reality. You don’t have to deal with the other person’s shortcomings.
I think we tend to want to believe that if you are happily married, you won’t fall in love with anyone else. It makes us all safer – we can control our spouse’s behavior by just making sure they are happy. It also makes the universe just generally seem more fair.
I also think the belief that romantic affairs are proof of an unhappy marriage or problem in the marriage is a dangerous one. It leads to blaming the non-cheating partner, no matter what. It pushes the idea that the couple must need to split up. It makes people less likely to consider whether or not they can work things out.
It also is a very convenient excuse for the cheating partner. It’s normal for someone to compare their spouse and their co-cheater. The spouse is going to look less good because you know them well and the relationship is more real. So you can tell yourself you’re unhappy and you have a reason to cheat and to leave.
@La Lubu and others – “But there are some things on which there really isn’t any reasonable compromise on, and I consider cheating one of those things.”
I agree. I don’t think anyone should have to suck it up or fake it if their partner is cheating on them.
I do think that the person who is cheating should stop for the sake of the children.
People tell their children that they are not divorcing them, but sometimes they do. It’s hard to really go live with someone else and have a new family of children and still be the same kind of parent to your children. I’ve seen an example of this where the parent was busy finding himself a few states away from his children.
However, I would add that if you are staying together for the sake of the children, you need to do more than just stay in the same house. You need to be getting some kind of counseling and making a truce.
This article and all the comments are really pissing me off.
Yes just fake it be miserable be demeaned and feel like crap every day with your kid hiding under a laundry basket to find refuge from the constant screaming
yall are holier than thou -
And the kid that wrote that piece needs to grow up a little bit too. They are probably fairly manipulated by a maryter of a mother and their father has a proximity deficit.
@Marilyn – I don’t think it’s fair to tell the kid to grow up. This is their story and their account of how they feel, just as adopted children or children made by donor reproduction feel hurt by what their parents did.
It’s not fair to assume they are being manipulated either. In this case, the young woman is an adult.
Children and their parents don’t always have the same story or perceptions of a situation.
Diane and all y’all
Don’t dare compare the situation of a person whose parents divorced to a child whose parents or parent gave them up or lost them or had them taken away. Honestly now she is a grown woman and she can have those emotions all she wants but she needs to get a handle on just what her parents responsibilities were to her and staying married is not something they owe her. Their responsibilities to her are entirely separate from their responsibilities to one another and them divorcing did not violate her rights to anything. She does not have the right to have her parents pretend to be in love for her freaking benefit. They don’t have to pretend to be something they are not anymore than she has to pretend to be something she’s not . They owed it to her to cooperate to her benefit and to make sure that she felt loved by both of them and safe that both would always be there for her and her siblings. They owed it to her to strike a balance and to speak respectfully about one another in front of her and her siblings. She had a right not to be forced into picking sides or being used a pawn in their private disputes.
People have the right to live an authentic existence and that means living honestly and truthfully as who they really are as kin to one another with all the rights of a child to her parents and all the obligations of parent to child. Don’t dare compare a person who thinks that her parents owed it to her to feel differently about one another with the plight of someone whose true identity is not just concealed but never recorded. Don’t dare compare a person who thinks other people should live a farce to appease her when other people are forced to live a farce to appease the ego of a parent whose married to someone that can’t have a child or to appease a parent who does not have a partner. They have to pretend they have no missing father no missing relatives no missing rights they have to pretend to be someone else’s child they don’t get to live an authentic existence and the whole world fights them every step of the way and says they’ve lost nothing and they have nothing no tools at all to prove they are right and all the records of who they and their families are legally locked away from them like they are not even human like the rest of us – they have been compromised, their rights have been violated, they are treated unfairly.
Are you freaking kidding me? Nobody owes anyone a false reality and if she can’t handle the fact that it would not have really been reality if she’s sad that they really were not happy together anymore she’s just going to have to deal with that like a grown up. If she wants to be pissed about something it can be whatever it is they stopped doing for her that they owed her. If they used her and her siblings as pawns or if the mother kept them from the father or vice versa if he stopped seeing them stopped supporting them – then she’s got a legitimate beef. Otherwise she’s just a spoiled bitter little brat that did not get her way.
I can’t believe that anyone would compare those situations.
All that what LaLuba said how do you? I’m dealing with it tonight as we speak with my child falling asleep after screaming and crying because her father who I’m married to called her 12 sheets to the wind drunk telling her he gave her gunni pig away because she never cleans the cage and she said i want someone new someone who does not fight with you someone whose nice mommy and i said he’s a good man baby and she looked at me stone cold and said no he’s not he’s not a good man.
She told me every time he tells her to clean the cage then they go out do other things it gets dropped. He did the same thing to me. Its so hard to teach her that he’s right because he is she should clean up after her pet and there should be consequences when she does not – but when I know the dirty trick of him how he sets a person up to fail in his eyes. He once stole my bike to teach me a lesson for locking it up in front of my work instead of brining it in I know he sold it…he’ll never admit it. He once locked me on the fire escape for taking one of his cigarettes from a pack i bought him to teach me a lesson. The cops had to come. Suck it up yes I still suck it up and my child is having a lovely time I assure you. Tomorrow I’ll negotiate for custody of a guini pig i don’t want in order to make up for his drunken antics. This is what staying together for the kids looks like ladies. pretty. I’d go with any guy that could make me laugh at the moment.
Marilyn I’m so sorry you are going through this. If it were me, I would tell him to leave the house and I would not consider living with him until he had been sober and going to AA for at least one solid year.
We forget when we are being flippant how much and how many people are suffering from cruelty.
I have had experience alcoholism in my close circle and its not something you can or should just live with.
Well thank you Maggie he does not live here and I pay $2K rent a month and all the bills all by myself – really spotty though by the skin of my teeth. His work pays our health insurance and he pays for my cell phone because I would not bother to have one otherwise and he likes to know where I am at all times. He lives for free at a house owned by his mother and drives a car bought by his father filled with gas bought by his mother stoned as hell from dawn till dusk when he starts drinking but he is a good man in between all that I mean I love him but he’s pretty mean and puts me down and I should get on with my life there is nothing redeeming about it and plus he’s a big old cheater from way before we were married only I did not know until after. I forgive and forgave and sucked it up and faked it for my kid and because I love him. We have broken the spirt of more counselors than I can count in 20 years we started going before we got married just because he was a jerk and I wanted to work it out. He’ll never go to AA or quit drugs so every day is an adventure in drama and whatever that problem is when people flip back and forth between nice and mean and you never know what your going to get out of him like telling me and my child to get out of the car and walk home when I told him he was tailing too close after he had something to drink we were at a wedding 2 years ago on valentines day that is February for those who don’t know and at night its cold and my daughter was 3 and I had no money in my evening purse and we got on the bus my daughter and me 2 busses home no coats valentines day no appology that’s just a normal day with him and me married with me not arguing and trying to fake it for the kid don’t mind daddy he just gets angry sometimes, he loves us.
I am out of my mind to still think we could somehow get back together and I am getting older and I could have had a shot at a relationship with a man that was nice to me if I’d divorced him but I have not and now its a spector of a relationship and he drags my child on dates with women I would never do that if I dated she would never meet them or know anything about them until we were getting married and I don’t think I’d even want to marry someone but the point is that hanging in there is BAD ADVICE because I’m not the exception to the rule. It’s not like I should give up but everyone else should hang in there. Those marriages end because for whatever reason they are intollerable for one or both people and its very very sad and its hard to get divorced it costs lots of money and takes time its way too hard to get divorced so people that do it do it because its not good for them to be together.
I’m going to drag this out feeling guilty and teaching my daughter to be a door mat just like my mother taught me and I’m not proud of that. I fake it for the kid suck it up for the kid cover up for the kid and I don’t want to get divorced. That is not normal. Normal is having some self esteem and not wasting time with people who don’t appreciate you or have harmony with you and not wasting the precious years you have on earth wishing and hoping and working for something someone else does not want as bad as you do. You guys with your marriage stuff are really making it like we owe it to our kids to stay married and we don’t we owe it to them to take good care of ourselves and take good care of them.
Its too late for me I’m all too brainwashed by all this but someone else someone younger they have a chance not to be this way if their mothers and fathers don’t teach them to hang on till the bloody end with trauma and drama and crying just being a normal part of everyday life. Its not cool. I don’t know how to stop it. But have some compassion and respect for the people with balls enough to stick up for themselves and not stay where they are not wanted. I wish I was tough like that.
sorry my kid was like 6 not 3 either that or the wedding was longer ago than I thought. Ironically it was a stranger whose son I found in one of my surprise internet family reunions – they invited me to their mom’s wedding cause I found her son.
At what point is a parent putting their kids interests ahead of their own (healthy) and at what point is a parent becoming a human sacrifice (unhealthy)?
(Not to presume that divorce is always bad for kids… some marriages are worse for kids than divorce.)
Yeah what Ki said. This blog is heavy on the marriage and anti divorce. I wonder what the agenda is sometimes. Like if your pushing for healthy marriages maybe encourage people to get divorced if its clearly unhealthy? People that can work it out will people who can’t won’t and as much evidence as you have about kids from broken homes doing poorly did it occur to you that you’re comparing them to kids whose parents are married and likely get along? If you think the kids from broken homes do badly when the parents are separated I bet it would be twice as bad had they stayed together. Tension 24/7. You are forgetting that people can’t act like adults for 2 people. If you are not a doormat then your yelling back in retaliation. The only responsible thing to do is retract yourself from the situation.
Elizabeth, if you fake it they never learn to do it right. The one area of my marriage that’s never bad…never fake itor they get lazy
My two new mantras: “suck it up and wait for death.” “Fake it long enough for them to grow up.”
Wait, I thought that we were talking about the bests interests of the children? How selfish and horrible to load the burden of one’s own choices on one’s children, or to use them as an excuse for wallowing in self-congratulatory martyrdom. Own your reasons for staying in a marriage where you’re unhappy instead of blaming them on your children for not having left the home yet.
As you probably remember from your own childhood, parents are nowhere near as good at fooling the kids as they like to think. Few of us are Oscar-class actors who can live with our children every day and manage to present a totally believable, totally false front to them. Kids are pretty good at noticing that Mommy wears long sleeves after she and Daddy have had a fight, or that Daddy is very sad when Mommy “works late” on Saturday nights.
It’s one thing to acknowledge that marriages are imperfect, that adults should (where this is reasonable and possible) try to make things work, and to put the interests of their children over flights of fancy or boredom. It’s another to try and resurrect the old corpse of Staying Together For The Sake Of The Kids, No Matter What. There’s a reason people rejected that, and it wasn’t the sexual revolution.
As for the original poster, this isn’t someone shattered because the parents divorced, but because Dad has abandoned his kids and favored the brand new family over the one he already had.
@Mont, the idea that happily married people never fall in love with anyone else is silly; it’s the flip side of blaming a spouse whose partner cheated because ‘s/he wouldn’t have done that unless something in the marriage was lacking’. Certainly we don’t know the circumstances of a particular person falling in love with someone other than their spouse; that goes both ways, doesn’t it?
@Marilyn – First, I think I need to say that I think it’s good you’re divorced. Getting away from an alcoholic who sounds abusive is a good thing to do for your children. And the research also supports the idea that if you are having lots of fights, it’s bad for the children and divorce may be better.
I would actually tend to think that you are being too nice to him. I know that people are supposed to encourage relationships with the other parent (and if you don’t, you could lose custody, ugh), but if you are drinking in front of your child and taking them on dates and behaving abusively, you shouldn’t have custody of them. Sometimes it’s better for kids to have less contact with a parent. However, you may not have a choice and there may be more that you’re leaving out, so that’s just my reaction to your story.
My concern about divorce is that I really don’t think your story is what most divorces are. Divorce shot up in the 70s for various reasons, but we didn’t have a sudden increase in alcoholism and drug abuse or domestic abuse at that point. With a 40% divorce rate, higher among certain groups, I don’t believe that 40% of couples have someone who is addicted or abusive or even cheating.
It’s not just my gut feeling, though, you read over and over again that most divorces are not caused by problems like those and that many aren’t even high conflict.
@mythago – “As for the original poster, this isn’t someone shattered because the parents divorced, but because Dad has abandoned his kids and favored the brand new family over the one he already had.”
It’s hard to separate the abandonment from the divorce. The reason he got divorced is that he wanted the new woman and chose her over the family.
Also, realistically, you can’t spend as much time with your children if you move out and marry someone else. You’re not in the same physical place. The new family wants your attention. You may decide to move for job reasons.
This isn’t true of all divorces, but I think it does get at what happens in some of them – a parent decides they want a different life and leaves.
@marilyn – But here’s where we disagree.
I think silencing the voices of people about what their childhoods were like is wrong. I think the young woman in the story did have a right for her father to put more effort into his family after he made her. That was part of his responsibility to her.
There might be extenuating circumstances, but in general, I would say that a parent should not have an affair and leave their family for the affair partner. I would make exceptions, but I think there is a responsibility parents have to work harder on their marriages – and also to get out of abusive marriages.
Mostly though I think it’s important to not silence the children. Their perspective may be different from the adults, and they should be able to talk about it.
ki sarita – “At what point is a parent putting their kids interests ahead of their own (healthy) and at what point is a parent becoming a human sacrifice (unhealthy)?”
That’s the $24,000 question. If there’s abuse or addiction or adultery, the answer is obvious. Otherwise, it’s much harder to figure out.
I definitely think that if you are staying together for the sake of the kids, you owe it to them to be in counseling trying to work things out.
I am not sure how much sacrifice is required, but I do think that we normally expect parents to make sacrifices. We think it’s wrong if the just run away to find themselves. So there is at least some balance and limits on what you can do to make yourself happy.
Ok, look—I’m a divorced woman who has not been in an exclusive, committed romantic relationship for a long time, so I could be completely out of my water here, but: where is this narrative that a marital relationship should be this difficult, torturous, conflicted relationship coming from? I mean, from the cheap seats here (*smile*), I’d expect at the bare minimum, for any future husband of mine to treat me with the same level of care and concern that he would treat a close friend. I’d expect him to treat me as if he liked me.
I think there’s a lot of toxic narratives about “love”. That “love” is full of drama (read: conflict, anger and resentment). It’s full of “passion” (read: acting out that anger and resentment at full volume). It’s “tempestuous”. And that all of those things serve to prove that a couple “really loves each other”. (My ex-husband used to say that he hit me because he cared. That his violence proved he really loved me. No, I didn’t buy it even then, but he didn’t create that narrative himself—didn’t “lick it off the ground” as my grandma would say.)
And y’know, all the couples I know who have really good relationships, long-term relationships that are way past the “honeymoon” stage….have none of that drama. No major conflicts. Nothing in them that would be recognized as dealbreaking actions. Sure, they have disagreements or even snap at each other occasionally when they’re in a bad mood…..but they treat one another as friends because they are. They respect one another. They aren’t vile to each other.
I don’t think it’s useful to portray marriage as this singular relationship that is magically more difficult than any other relationship. Marriage is simply not supposed to be that much work, and is not supposed to be filled with that much drama and mood swings and emotional rollercoaster. If it is, there are serious problems present that need to be addressed, and “addressed” means up to and including divorce.
Diane M., you’re right that there wasn’t a massive increase in alcoholism, abuse or adultery in the 70s. What there was, was an increase in women being employed outside the home and thus having the ability to choose what conditions they wanted in their marriage.
My view is this is precisely the question to ask about divorce: is it really in my children’s best interest to divorce or separate?
This is separate from the question: is it in my interest to find a new man.
Who may or may not be a better man. Presumably the “bad old husband” was once the “great new husband” too.
Its clarifying to ask it that way.
I would add: it is not in your child’s best interest to watch his mother being beaten. I would answer the question yes yes yes for domestic violence.
Who cares about finding a new man? How about not having to put up with lies and mistreatment? How about not having lies and mistreatment be the daily, lived example for your child on how Marriage Is Done? Remember, we’re talking about actions here; the “great new guy” is no longer the great new guy once he’s lied and slept with someone else.
Point blank: why is it an unreasonable standard for a person to expect his or her spouse to treat them with the same consideration one would treat a friend?
@LaLubu – “Diane M., you’re right that there wasn’t a massive increase in alcoholism, abuse or adultery in the 70s. What there was, was an increase in women being employed outside the home and thus having the ability to choose what conditions they wanted in their marriage.”
I just don’t buy that there was a 40-50% rate of alcoholism, abuse, and adultery up until the 70s. And I think what people report about why they divorced bears this out.
@Maggie Gallagher – I agree, the question is it in my child’s best interests to divorce or separate is completely different from the question is it in my child’s best interests to have an affair or leave to marry someone else.
And it is in the child’s best interests to leave a violent situation.
Diane, with all due respect, my divorce decree says nothing about domestic violence. Like rape, domestic violence is widely underreported. What struck me about the Oklahoma report on divorce that was featured on this blog (basically a form of divorce “exit-polling” of couples in Oklahoma was that 44% of the women surveyed stated that domestic violence was a factor in their divorce. That figure rang true-to-life for me.
@LaLubu – but I’ve seen other studies that say couples gave reasons that were less strong for their divorce.
I also have a hard time believing that there are so many men who hit women, etc.
I guess I’d like to see someone survey the evidence, including the Oklahoma study.
That’s the problem with “evidence” of domestic violence—it is difficult to prove you’ve been battered. My ex-husband never hit me in the face. He specifically avoided my face in order not to leave evidence. And if you don’t have facial trauma or broken limbs, most people don’t believe you’ve been hit. Or at least not in a way that qualifies as “abuse”. Just regular ol’ punches and kicks that don’t do permanent damage isn’t “abuse”. But it is. It’s just not the provable-in-court version.
LaLubu – I’m not thinking of evidence about whether or not there was domestic violence. I’m thinking of what people say is the reason they got divorced.
Diane I’m not divorced. I’m married since 1999 together since 1993. He moves out for a couple years every three years or so. This is the second move out since my daughters birth 8 yrs ago and he has been gone for going on 3 years. We talk every day and argue every day. He calls 5 or 6 times a day to say he can never reach me. We celebrate all holidays together and occassionally do family outings
My view is this is precisely the question to ask about divorce: is it really in my children’s best interest to divorce or separate?
Plenty of abused women (and men) answer this question “no”, because they genuinely believe that their children are better off than if they divorced; perhaps because the family would be destitute (abusers are very good at making their victims financially dependent), perhaps because they have been told, or otherwise believe, that they can keep their kids from knowing about it so they need only ‘fake it’ until the children are out of the nest.
@DianeM, yes, it is much harder to figure out. That’s why it’s foolish to insist that people were wrong to divorce unless they meet our rigid checklist (did he hit you? did she drink? did he sleep around?), and if it’s something less solid, well, you’re a bad parent and you should have worked harder.
As you say, it is wrong to silence the voices of children when they talk about their experience with divorce. Rather a lot of those voices are from children who grew up in homes where people who really should have divorced stayed together “for the sake of the kids”.
@LaLubu – Just wanted to say I’m sorry, I was thinking about it and 40% of divorces is not the same thing as 40% of all couples. I was confused. So if 40% of divorcing women say there was domestic violence and 40% of married couples get divorced, I think you’re ending up with only 16% of couples having violence. That is way higher than it should be, but it seems more believable to me.
I think it’s clear that one way to advocate for marriage is to advocate for ending domestic violence before it starts. I don’t think it’s a given that you will have 16% of guys being violent in any society.
From a social point of view, the women who get the divorce have solved one problem, but the guys are still out there. They will either remarry or have new relationships.
@mythago – “That’s why it’s foolish to insist that people were wrong to divorce unless they meet our rigid checklist (did he hit you? did she drink? did he sleep around?), and if it’s something less solid, well, you’re a bad parent and you should have worked harder.”
I don’t insist that there’s a checklist and anything else means you should have stayed married. However, I think what you’re saying is that in effect you can’t ever question any divorces.
I think that when you have a social trend of more divorces, you need to talk about whether or not they are happening for good enough reasons. Our culture really changed its views from “you should stay together for the sake of the children, no matter what,” to “you should follow what you want because that is best for the children.” I don’t think the latter is true and I think it sometimes leads or encourages people to make bad decisions.
I don’t want to attack any particular person who is divorced, but I think we need to be able to question the cultural changes and talk about whether we should slow down on divorce and how to do it.
“As you say, it is wrong to silence the voices of children when they talk about their experience with divorce. Rather a lot of those voices are from children who grew up in homes where people who really should have divorced stayed together “for the sake of the kids”.”
I hear/read more voices saying that they felt their parents should have divorced. I have certainly heard people from abusive families talk about their families should have divorced, and I wholeheartedly support the idea that if you are in an abusive situation, you have a responsibility to your child to get out of it.
If there is any evidence about what most kids are saying, I’d be interested in it. Are there more adults saying they wished their parents had divorced than adults saying they wish their parents had worked it out or the other way around?
I think it’s most likely that there are more people who look back and wish their parents had worked it out than the other way. That’s partly based on what I read young people saying both in books and online.
It’s also based on my belief that there aren’t a ton of couples now who are staying together despite being unhappy. Divorce is easy and common. I think there’s just a higher chance that you will find a young adult whose parents divorced without having a high conflict marriage than a young adult whose parents stayed together despite one because there are more couples who divorced than who stayed together.
But I admit that’s not evidence. I don’t know if anyone on the site has the numbers on this – kids who wished their parents had stayed together versus kids who wished their parents hadn’t.
“I hear/read more voices saying that they felt their parents should have divorced.” – sorry that should have said “they felt their parents should NOT have divorced.”
Not sure if this makes any difference in your thinking, Diane, but your math assumes that no couples who stay married have violence, which is not a true assumption. So the percentage would actually be at least a little bit (and maybe more than a little bit) higher than “16% of couples having violence,” if the Oklahoma statistics are correct.
@Shroeder – I don’t think that would edge the statistic up hugely. The overall divorce rate is a long-term one and I don’t think people in 20+ year marriages include a lot of couples with domestic violence.
My real point is that the idea that in 40% of couples there is domestic violence doesn’t make sense to me, so I couldn’t believe the statistic. If you look at it as only the divorcing couples, it seems more believable – although bad.
(Note: the Oklahoma statistics are self-reported. There was a dramatic difference in the opinions of men and women on the matter; I believe it was something like 4% of men stating that domestic violence was a factor in their divorce—it was definitely in the low single-digits—and 44% of women stating it was a factor in their divorce.)
I dislike this notion of outsiders weighing in on someone’s divorce based on whether they think it fits into a “high conflict” or “low conflict” rubric. Many people use silence and “sucking it up” as a means of coping with their partner’s hostility. That practice of non- or de-escalation often bumps them into “low conflict” territory (which is where most people would have slotted my marriage, as most of the time my ex-husband used nonphysical means of demonstrating his hostility). It’s pretty telling though that so far no one has answered my questions about what they would do when faced with a marriage to a spouse that didn’t hit them, but flat-out didn’t like them and showed that dislike through so-called “low conflict” means.
@Diane: no, what I’m saying is that it’s a mistake to assume that divorces are always a bad idea unless the people in it have some external, objective justification for the divorce (like abuse).
As for how society has changed, I don’t see that we’re really in a place where everybody thinks kids will just deal with whatever parents do; that may have been true for our parents, but Generation X is far from the “me generation”.