Even if they choose to see it and admit it, honestly, the chaos coming from the government without a heart, without a conscience, is worse than 'fighting parents'. The government is not and never has been a good parent - it cannot be. Look around today and see what chaos the government has produced everywhere !
Not sure what this has to do with parents divorcing...?? As for people staying together in our parent's generation, I think a lot of times women simply had no place to go and no personal resources. Combined with the stigma of divorce, they simply stayed.
The damage done to children , of divorced parents and even not divorced parents, when government tries to be a "parent", has increased exponentially since 1960 . The harm done everyone by divorce being/becoming so popular and so easy to do, is not well understood. Perhaps , if it was better known, there would be a lot less unfaithful marriages, and a lot less divorces.
Perhaps if people who spawned children were more concerned with actually being parents the government would not have to assume the role of nanny. And this is a topic for another thread.
Pretty much what I was saying. More choices = the illusion of more instability...but the instability has always been there. Perhaps exercising the choice to jettison is made too easily these days, but it beats (no pun intended) the alternative.
I understand what you're saying. But then we talk about people "doing the right thing" when they make a baby. So that thought regarding taking a vow really needed to be a thought before giving in to one's urges, which is really what led to the vow in some number of cases. I know lots of first-born in my generation who start doing some uncomfortable math when they become adults.
And the women's excuse was "A divorce could hurt the kids." In fact, the fighting, cheating, indifference...hurt them ten times more. Sil
A problem rises when both are at fault (since water seeks its own level)...then there is no good option for the kids. I don't believe either parent gave much thought to us. I don't believe they gave much thought to themselves. It is interesting in a twisted way. One wonders exactly how many relatively "normal" households there really are. My guess is that it's less than 50%.
No, I wasn't being snarky. I got no reason to do that. I really thought your students indicated that "normal" exceeded 50%. On can hope, huh? I recall going to some friend's houses and feeling "weird" because their parents were actually civil to each other. My inner cynic says that's the minority, but I have no deep data set.
My mom and dad were married until into their 80’s, and then they passed away, within a month of each other. If they had arguments when I was growing up, they did it privately, and I never heard one of them call the other one a name, or even swear at each other. No matter what, they always treated each other with caring and respect. I think that I had the best parents that anyone could have; but I didn’t realize that all parents weren’t like mine until I was grown up and married myself. The other side of that, is that when I realized that I was married to an abusive alcoholic husband, and wanted to escape; like @Beth Gallagher said, I had no place to go and no resources. I had a little baby by then, and no job experiences, and was only 19 years old. To make it worse, my husband told me that if I tried to leave that he and his mother would take me to court and say I was an unfit mother, take my son, and I would never ever see him again. I knew that my MIL would have done just that if I tried to leave; so I stayed. We didn’t get divorced until all three kids were grown up, but sometimes, I think that they (and I) would probably have done better if I had left him when they were little.