On Parenting and Divorce

While I was expecting my oldest daughter, like most new parents to be, I was bombarded with parental advice. Societal norms against being a jerk are set aside when you are a jerk for the children, so fights about screen time, cuddling, feeding, and everything else abound on the notorious momosphere. I am fairly skeptical by nature, and a cursory examination of childhood development studies led me to the conclusion that most stuff only matters a little bit if at all. There are tons of conflicting conclusions, but I pretty consistently saw a few control variables that always dwarfed whatever was actually being studied. From here I developed my own parenting philosophy.

Assuming the baby’s basic needs are being met, being a good parent means creating a stable self, a stable relationship, and a stable home. Everything else will flow from that solid foundation

From this advice, you can see the logic on the activist right’s growing fight against no fault divorce. In recent years, various state legislatures have debated ending the practice and the Texas GOP includes ending no fault divorce in their party platform, for the children, of course. However, I remain extremely skeptical that trapping people in unwanted marriages will lead to the stable homes for children we are supposedly trying to build, and may even wind up with the opposite of the intended result.

A marriage between two people is the most tested way of creating the stable relationship at the foundation of a family in our society, and it is the one with the most legal recognition and support. Married people are, on average, better off across a wide variety of measures. Yet, as any fan of true crime can attest, marriage can also have a darker side. Even when marriages aren’t bad enough to require calls to 911, most of us know couples who are always at each other’s throats, radiating misery and ruining social events. Even worse is when such couples only have one angry, aggressive partner and another left to meekly apologize for their bad behavior.

Now imagine what kind of home life is created by miserable people trying to cope. Lots of yelling. Maybe some shoes get thrown across a room in rage or toys get kicked against the wall. Everyone is always on eggshells. While manifesting rage as violence at your spouse is verboten, there is a lot more latitude to exercise rage on your kids that way and maybe that unnecessary spanking was more of a beating if we’re being honest. It’s an environment of constant stress and fear for a child.

My extend family has a pretty diverse array of parenting types. There are never married parents, divorced parents, people in terrible marriages, and a few marriages that are ok to great. While the kids of great marriages undoubtedly are the happiest, most successful, and well-adjusted, I don’t think there is a noticeable difference in outcomes between the parents in bad marriages and the single-parents. Obviously, that isn’t a scientific study, but it is the question we need to be asking when deciding what kind of marriage policy should be our goal.

Another potential unintended impact of eliminating no fault divorce is that it might backfire in the conservative’s goal of more marriages. Making marriage more difficult to leave is a way of making marriage more expensive. A risk of being unhappy forever with no recourse isn’t exactly a great selling point and it’s possible that a more stringent, less flexible institution will leave young couples more reason to avoid it altogether.

My husband and I have a very strong, happy marriage and we are not going to get divorced regardless of what the law says or what percentage of Ivy league students say nice things about single moms. Making divorce harder to obtain won’t impact great marriages or even average marriages: only the crappy ones.

While I am confident that making divorce harder will not create average marriages, I cannot be entirely certain that bad marriage is worse for kids.  I know that divorce is traumatic for everyone involved, even for people who want divorced, and especially for children. It is possible that the intense hot trauma of a divorce is worse than the slow burn of a bad marriage.  It’s possible that miserable marriage is caused by miserable people and having two parents increases the odds that someone in the house is in an ok mood. What is not possible is that marriages that end in divorce can be assumed to be the same for kids as the average. Marriage is not Lake Wobegon, and if you want to use the power of the state to try and expand bad marriages, you need to be certain that those bad marriages accomplish a goal beyond creating suffering for its own sake.

Keeping your relationship healthy is one of the best things you can do for your child. Remember that it’s the two of you against the world and not against each other! Make time for dates! Keep having sex! Just accept that the lazier, more slovenly partner is the one who sets the cleanliness standard. When you are reminded once again that your husband has never shut a single door in his nearly four decades of life – keep in mind that you have five pairs of shoes scattered around the door, but you still use his shoes to take out the trash – and let it go with a laugh.

However, sometimes it just doesn’t work out. People make mistakes and plan poorly. People change. People develop addictions or anger issues and relationships fall apart. Sometimes the most healthy and stable form of relationship means separation. The challenge for a parent is determining the when and how.