Why do so many parents break up before their DC start school?

I was at school.in the 70s
Two of.my friends Iivedve with just their mums.
It was rare though
It's just changing times.
Now it seems more people are apart rather than together.

Not a single couple separated in either of my dc class and I know of one friend couple as well. Still a very unusual thing in my experience.

This is a good point. I had been married in the 60s and been a SAHM i wonder if would have had to stay married because I couldn't support myself and would have just turned a blind eye to the cheating and just been miserable. I feel lucky to have been able to avoid this fate as I grew up with opportunities and expectations.

It's pretty simple - marriage, even an unhappy one, used to be the best life choice for women. Only recently has this changed. For most of modern (and premodern society) marriage was the only source of security for a woman and her children, it had to be pretty terrible for her to take the alternative. Which was often unthinkable for the 99% who weren't rich.

(By contrast, an "unhappy" marriage remains the best choice for most men, who get significantly worse outcomes in terms of mental health, physical health and life prospects after divorce, than if they remains in an unfulfilling marriage.)

Now the alternative is fine. Not ideal, but fine. You can survive and be happy on your own. So why stay in an unhappy marriage?

Most marriages go through unhappy periods. Exciting strong emotions always fade. New things always become Boring. We all get older, less attractive, less energy, less excited. So when that happens, why not leave?

When the women isn't hot enough, why not leave? When the man isn't caring enough or useful enough? When he doesn't do his share, or she becomes unpleasant and selfish?

there is still a few things keeping people together.

Some people genuinely get lucky and end up with their "soul mate". Some people are very logical and pragmatic and work through every issue. Some people are religious or still have a strong stigma about divorce from their families or social setting. Some people do it for the kids some people, for their own reasons don't have a good alternative and are trapped.

But the truth is that for a lot, staying in a situation where you are unhappy simply doesn't make sense, if the alternative is better.

My contention with modern society though is -

We can't go back to a situation where everyone is married forever. But we know that in current society kids without married parents fare worse of (not their parents fault). So how can we re-think childcare as a society so that it isn't all 100% focused around a method of life (marriage) that doesn't work for a many any more. we can't keep organizing childraising around the idea of two present parents if there isn't always going to be. 2 present parents hasn't always been the norm across cultures and history. There are other ways we could consider arranging our society and communities.

It's say it's quite rare here. My exH and I split when kids were in year R and year 3 and they were the only ones. I felt awful. But no, it's not because I wanted to go kn dating apps, or was too quick to divorce, or didn't take my commitment seriously. It's because exH affair number 3 was the final nail in the coffin for me!

Better to do it earlier rather than keep putting it off for later.
Better to start building a life for yourself and your DC earlier on rather than wasting years trying to make a relationship work.

I broke up with my ex when DC1 was in Year 4. Better than never but still later than it should have been.

Less stigma, strain of the baby/small child years, having had children too early in the relationship. I think that people often set themselves ‘deadlines’ in their children’s lives, too. I used to be head of first year in a university department, and significant numbers of first years’ split, especially if they were the youngest in the family.

Because people are too quick to divorce instead of trying to work through problems.

Yes I certainly plunged myself into poverty through separation from an insuppressible desire to get on hinge

It’s not a stigma to be separated these days. You shouldn’t put up with a bad/toxic relationship because you have kids as it teaches them to stay in detrimental relationships.

People aren’t as religious so aren’t frightened of what ‘god’ may do. They won’t be looked down upon by society al these days and instead will be championed on to leave the relationship if it’s not working

Children pick up on parents arguments even passive aggressive and staging in a toxic household isn’t doing the child any favours

Yep, me too. Leaving a marriage is not a light decision. If it is becoming more common, it is because the issues in the marriage are glaring. For example, there is more awareness of what abusive behaviour is actually like and more acceptable to leave on the basis of it, whilst in the past I can imagine women being blamed if they chose to leave a marriage.

The ease of dating apps 😂😂 said by someone who has never tried to date as a single parent.

In my case and in many other cases I have noticed, women get sick of having to do the majority of the parenting and housework, but yet unlike in the “old days” they are now expected to bring in 50% (or more) of the household income and the men are just expected to bring in 50% of the income (or even less) and think that they are hard done by because they sometimes have to parent alone for 2 hours a week. On top of that men usually expect twice weekly sex and women are exhausted and touched out by all of the expectations put on them.

So they split, and because the woman is now used to doing 90% of everything anyway, it’s not a huge hardship to suddenly have to do 100%. She might even, if her ex is such a “great hands on dad” like her friends say, get even more than 2 hours a week to herself. And no more having to have sex with and share a bed with a snoring, smelly man.

In my circle of friends - we're old-time friends, dating back to school years, we see each other all the time, camp together every year - only one couple has split, the remaining 10ish couples have stayed together and had kids. Almost without exception all our parents are separated. They were London hippy-types, socialists/feminists, had babies in the 70s. So this rule doesn't always apply. I often marvel at how by contrast we've all stayed together. A reaction against our own parenting? Having each other helps us to manage our relationships? More conscious about having that stability?

Y3 seemed to be prime divorce year in DS’s class, by the end of that year I think a third of the children had separated parents

I think we value ourselves over the family unit.

Id say our parents generation valued the family unit more that themselves - which would mean mainly women, and a portion of me , would put up with awful behaviour to keep the family together because they needed to put on a front or just wanted to stay together for the children.

I do think it’s a shame, I also think our values have changed. I think in a relationship you really have to compromise and I think less people are willing to do that.

Seven year itch?

In my daughter’s primary class of 29 children, 3 had divorced parents and 1 lived with their grandparents.

No, this isn't because of dating apps.

Fewer people getting married before having children to begin with
Far less stigma around divorce and single mothers
A dramatic shift in women with college degrees and strong earnings potential over the last few generations
More families have two working parents but learned expectations about gender roles within families haven't kept up - those early years see a spike of issues around inequitable division of labor
Laws against financial institutions, employers and landlords discriminating against women, especially unmarried ones
Changes in divorce and family-law
A general shift away from the idea that it's better for children if their parents stay in an unhappy, toxic marriage than divorce

These all build on each other and over generations. People absolutely aren't divorcing at higher rates now than they were when we were kids, but there have been some shifts towards a higher portion of divorces happening in the first 10 years of marriages, and it's become more common to have children without marrying first (this is particularly more common in the middle class now than it was when we were kids).

But one of the biggest shifts is that not having a mum and dad who live together is something that is openly accepted now and we tend to actively discourage assumptions that that's what every child's family looks like. So a big part of our perception of how much more common children with parents who aren't together are now just comes down to it simply being talked about in a far more open, matter-of-fact way as one of the many ways a "normal family" can look.

I think the stats are that divorce rates are down - it was way more common to get divorced in the 90s.

I'm also mid 30s and none of my friends have got divorced. When I was growing up about 50% of my friends had divorced parents and it felt like the norm

I think women are more financially independent these days and far less likely to put up with any shite behaviour from their partners. Which is not a bad thing.

I think it’s quite a big combination of things:

1. Women, quite rightly, not feeling like they have to put up with any man’s shit anymore.
2. Social media making people think normal life is not good enough.
3. The early years of child rearing puts quite a lot of strain on a relationship and many people think that it won’t get better so they break up instead of working on it or waiting and seeing.

It’s way easier to separate now.

I know most people of my mums age and older, waited until their kids had left secondary school or even became adults before leaving.

Most of the people I know even now wait until the kids are in secondary school.

I think it’s fantastic people are able to leave even earlier nowadays.

Mothers do get the rough end of the stick but it’s not as bad as it used to be.

Women didn’t work or worked PT, single mothers were judged, men didn’t share parental responsibility etc so leaving was often harder than staying.

That's interesting I'm late 30s a few of my friends parents had split up in junior school, both of my mums siblings had divorced too it wasn't that rare. Probably nowadays its more common because most people aren't religious and don't believe so much in marriage being so important and secondly women don't just put up with shit that they might have in the past.

When my children first started school, most mothers ( sometimes fathers) were SAHP until their children were about 7.
Now usually both parents work. It is very stressful for them working, looking after the children and running a home. If one of the parents doesn’t pull their weight it matters more.