[bbgtpm]

Right there with you, my mother entered marriage number four as I turned 10 (not a competition - at least not one I feel I won).

Hearing parents talk about how they went the extra mile to make things better for the kids after the divorce honestly strikes me about like John Wilkes Booth offering Lincoln some gauze for his head wound. Like, it's a nice gesture, but he'd probably have been better off if you hadn't shot him in the first place.

[denton-scratch]

Staying together "for the sake of the kids" isn't generally considered helpful (to the kids). Teenagers know exactly what's going on with their parents. Trying to make out that everything's fine is a hopeless mission.

Incidentally: both of my kids were quite pleased that we divorced; most of their friends were from "blended" families of one kind or another, and once we divorced, they felt that they fitted-in better.

[ido]

Do you think growing up with parents that would rather not live together would have given you a better experience? Not asking cynically, genuinely curious. Nobody marries expecting to divorce.

[bbgtpm]

Oh absolutely! The psychological safety benefits of having a stable home, the ability to "be a kid" with emotional support from parents instead of having to grow up way too soon and serve as their emotional support, the luxury of not always feeling like you're waiting for "the other shoe to drop" when things are going well, having fond memories of holidays instead of anxiety-inducing split days where you feel guilty for not spending them evenly between households. Not to mention all of the logistical nightmares (never time to spend with friends because you're in transit or the parent wants to have "their" time with the kids, different rules in different households, schoolwork getting mixed up/dropped between cracks, clothing, etc.).

Even for married parents that have struggles and disagreements, the fact that they stay together serves as a rock-solid signal to a child that the family as a whole is important and that ultimately the parents care about the child even more than they care about themselves.

Except in cases of physical violence, I believe it's always better for the children if the parents stay together. And it's not close.

Also, while I'm certainly jealous of people raised in married households, I don't blame them in the slightest for not having much of a sense of how the other half lives. The only way to know is to live through it, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

[dcthrowaway123]

This may be a grass is greener situation, but my personal experience basically differs from yours completely. My parents should have been divorced long before they actually did. They stuck together because Chinese parents were expected to do so for their children. They got along ok as long as if they treated each other as regular acquaintances, but I never got a hint that they liked each other at all and they often fought when they had to cooperate. I always felt a sense of unease on vacation unless if I was traveling with other friends and could just ignore my parents. I treat people I'm close to worse than they deserve, and I think part of that reason is because my parents were so cold to each other.

> Except in cases of physical violence

This reminds me that my mom blames my dad for making her angry, and taking it out on me. Part of it was her being a Tiger Mom and I think she genuinely has some anger management issues, but I think there was some truth in this. If she had another partner, they probably have an easier time controlling her emotions.

To be fair, my situation was unique because they had barely known each other before they had gotten married, and I think they were simply fundamentally incompatible with each other, like oil and water. I'm completely baffled about why they decided to get married in the first place, but thinking about this more, it might have been a shotgun marriage.

[tsol]

Honestly I have a very similar experience, but the opposite conclusion. Two parents from an Asian country who don't really get along and are very different. I'm glad they stayed together. First of all I know my mother wouldn't have fared very well alone, with outdated skills in a country foreign to her. I also don't think my father would have really done so great either given how different he is from the greater culture-- Asian culture is just so far from western culture that after a certain age you have an impossibly hard time trying to fit in. They may be like oil and water, but I'm glad they have each other. Despite the arguments they both have their needs met and provide a stable home for their kids(and are rewarded for it with regular visits from grandkids during which all their distance seems to evaporate).

I also think their marriage can seem strange, but given where they come from I just don't think marriages based on love were common. Heck it's basically a modern convention. It's nice that we have the(some of us anyways), but it's by no means the norm for humanity. Even today many people get married to people they don't know well. For a lot of people staying single and just feelings things out isn't doable.

[throwarerain]

Also, while I'm certainly jealous of people raised in ~~married~~ divorced households, I don't blame them in the slightest for not having much of a sense of how the other half lives. The only way to know is to live through it, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

As someone who spent their childhood wishing their parents would get a divorce already, I felt like I was in an upside down world reading your comment.

- I have never in my life gone to my parents for emotional support. They would come to me to tell me how horrible the other parent or my siblings were. And I was constantly tending to my siblings after they had been upset by my parents. Plus the normal things I heard them argue about, mostly my father stressed about losing his job and my mother spending too much money.

- I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop via 1) one of them directly blows up at me 2) blow up at each other and then take it out on me 3) blow up at my siblings, who would then take it out on me.

- We didn't take holidays, but even them driving together to the dentist was extremely stressful as they were guaranteed to start fighting over nothing (see above point).

- There were no logistical nightmares because we all lived in the same house. No argument there.

- I assumed they stayed together not because they cared about us, but for the same reason they treated us like burdens to kick when they were down: their culture taught them that a certain hierarchy and structure in life was more important than stupid American values like happiness, especially the happiness of children. Also my mother couldn't financially support herself without my father's income.

And, yes, there was almost no physical aspect to this unhappiness for me. My older sibling, who did suffer physical abuse, said that, both growing up and to this day, they preferred it to all the emotional injuries.

Much as you may idealise married households, perhaps I'm idealising divorced ones. If my parents had divorced, maybe I would have written your comment.

[skissane]

I remember reading a paper which argued that the impact of divorce on children is determined by pre-divorce family functioning level. Children in low-functioning families often experience parental divorce as a relief, it removes them from conflict/violence/abuse/harm, and it can have a positive impact on their lives; by contrast, in high-functioning families, the parents do a good job of hiding their marital issues from their children, and the children often experience divorce as an unexpected, even traumatic, event, which disrupts the stability of their world, and can produce lasting (even lifelong) psychological harm. I think using that model is a good way of integrating the kinds of contrary experiences expressed in this thread.

If divorce laws were written to put the welfare of children first, they’d make divorce easy for the first kind of family and difficult for the second. However, I don’t think children’s welfare is really a priority for most contemporary divorce laws.

[bbgtpm]

My heart breaks for you and your siblings, I'm so terribly sorry. I wonder if a better delineation might be "broken" households (divorced or not) versus functional/happy ones.

One thing I didn't mention is that as kids growing up in broken households, we often have no frame of reference so our lives feel "normal", and it's only later in life that we piece together the damage our narcissistic parents have wrought. It sounds like this may not have been the case for you and your siblings though - extremely curious as to how you see it and how your perspective has changed over time (if at all).

[meepmorp]

As someone who grew up with two parents who shouldn't be together and stayed together to provide stability for their kids, it's not better. It actually just trains you to deal with your SO in a disrespectful, passive aggressive way and bury things to make the situation bearable. It's destructive in an insidious way.

It seems more stable, but only from the outside.

[physicles]

For some more anecdata, an ex of mine grew up with parents who had a terrible relationship but stayed together anyway. She once told me she wishes they had just gotten divorced. She can’t know for sure what that particular hell would’ve been like, but the fact that she said that means parents staying together isn’t obviously always better.

[ido]

My parents would scream their lungs out at each other and I had the same thought a few times growing up. Interestingly once my father passed away my mother started insisting he was the love of her life & a great husband, and that she will never again find such a man.