Posted on 10/15/2005 6:41:32 PM PDT by madprof98
bump
Few reasons for divorce that make sense:
1) Abuse of spouse or children
2) Addictive behavior--drugs, booze, gambling, sex
3) Infidelity
4) Spouse converts to Islam
That's what the TODAY show psychologists tell us...
Which is only one of MANY reasons I don't watch that show.
5)Irresponsible or impulsive spending of family income.
Money is one of the biggest rifts in many marriages.
Children should be taught to be better money
managers by the time they become adults and not make
materialism a top priority over their
relationship with their spouse and family.
I'll bet that some kids from a divorced family come out better than some in a miserable marriage or over protecting parents.
That thought consoles people, but the evidence really doesn't support it. Kids don't really care how their parents feel about each other. They care how their parents feel about THEM. And the way you show you love them is to stay with them no matter what.
Interesting.
One point that I remember from another books about divorce, was that even when the divorce was for survival reasons - spousal abuse, drug addiction, promiscuous infidelity - it was still very difficult for young children to understand.
You can't explain, "He contracted HIV from sleeping around with trash of mixed gender," to a 7-year-old. All the child understands is that one parent is gone, he's probably had to move away from his school and his friends, his mother has no money, etc.
By the time the child "understands," he or she has already repeated (or worse) the behaviors which led the marriage to collapse to begin with.
That's a good point. An early example of alcoholism or abuse seems to have a very strong influence. In that situation, whether the parents divorce or not, it's a losing proposition for the children.
There are tons of kids who grow up in single family homes.Or divorced homes. They survive, just fine. There are no parents fighting, creating angst.
I doubt many of us had " the perfect childhood".
And if they don't, well, hey, who the hell cares!?!
Unless, of course, mom is a lesbian.
I think it's best for everyone to take responsibility for what he or she does. But there's no denying that it much more LIKELY that a child in a single-parent home will engage in more destructive and self-destructive behavior than a child from an intact family. That's just the plain truth. Evidently it is easier for kids to do well when they have all the resources (not so much financial as emotional) that being raised with two parents in the home provides them.
Well madprof....I don't think I agree.
Loving the children's mother or father is essential for the healthy nurturing of the child. Mostly we learn to love from our parents love for us and their love for each other.
My wife's family had a great deal of criticism of the mother and it really screwed up the kids. Whenever I'd visit the #1 phrase I'd hear was, "Aw Ma!"
The father was always belittling her in front of the kids and they learned to do it too. It affected the whole household's attitude toward each other.
The daughters grew up determined not to let anything like that ever happen to them....and I married one of them...very defensive at any criticism.
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I agree with that. But I also think (and I believe the studies confirm this) that kids generally do better in households where the parents self-describe as "unhappily married" than they do in households where the parents have split up. Years ago, people used to "stay together for the sake of the children." More recently, in the age of ME/MYSELF/I, they decided that was too stressful and rationalized their behavior by claiming the kids were badly affected by their own unhappiness. Maybe, maybe not. But almost always, the kids get hurt much, much more badly when their parents divorce.
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