BBC news using the phrase "broken home"

I disagree. People change when they are facing parenthood. Some are triggered by childhood trauma, others find the responsibility too much. Maybe there is disability or other challenges. Most relationships start out from a place of equality, contentment and love. Sadly you can’t plan life/reactions/uncertainty.

Do you really imagine women choose violent thugs for life companions? Or do you think over time the mask drops, and things change. Or circumstances change and therefore the dynamics.

Ninnies who would keep their kids in an abusive situation because of someone else’s turn of phrase aren’t fit parents to begin with. Regardless of how journalists express themselves.

I agree with you Op, it's a horrible phrase.

I left my ExH when the kids were 11 & 9. I had been the perfect wife for 20 years, but it came to light that he had cheated on me for our entire relationship with 10+ women. He had also had sex with my best friend. He was also low level violent (pushing, kicking).

I tried to give my kids the best life I could. I luckily had enough equity to buy a smaller, but still lovely home. I married a good guy. I supported my kids through Uni and they both have degrees and professional careers.

But according to many, they come from a "broken home". It doesn't feel like a label I deserve, as I didn't do anything wrong. In fact when I hear it, it makes me wonder whether I should have just stayed and put up with everything. So I agree, the stigma must make some women stay put, even when they should really leave.

If people would be more discriminating in their choice of mate, the kids wouldn’t be relieved when Daddy moves out. That’s failure on an epic level. Broken homes aren’t inevitable, they are the result of very poor choices.

No, that’s not the finding of more recent studies.

I use this term, it describes my childhood, nothing wrong with the term it describes a fact🤔

Do you really have such limited life experience that you don’t know that many children are relieved and sometimes very happy when their fathers leave?

That for many children a loving one parent household represents nothing but safety, comfort and peace?

Are you so fortunate to be totally oblivious to the fact not every family has a loving mummy and Daddy? And many have violent fathers that only bring misery, and their children grow to despise them, and would be delighted if they left.

You seem to have a very rose tinted idea of family from the 1940s that bears no resemblance to reality.

Careful, you'll be labelled "woke" by the hard of thinking! 😅

I can understand your thinking about this phrase. Since the person in question grew up with an absent alcoholic father, the reporter could have used different words like a difficult childhood.

Years ago when I was collecting my son at nursery a grandmother who was collecting her grandchildren told me they came from a dysfunctional family. It has jarred with me ever since that her daughter who was separated was referenced by her own parent in that way.

Language evolves and broken homes are not the same as separated or single parent families. As you say sometimes the broken home is best for the children and spouse.

@TheHerboristeif you take poverty out of it, children in single parent households fare pretty much the same as those with two parents, there’s a chapter on this in Freakenomics.

@LikeWhoUsesTypewritersAnywaylike an actual child protection social worker said upthread.
It is not about us being offended.
It is about women (usually) staying in abusive relationships to avoid their children being from a ‘broken home’. And using those exact words.

You’re a bit clueless if you don’t recognise how loaded the term is and the impact it has on how women view their children’s future should they leave abusive relationships.
We want women to feel empowered to leave and ‘broken home’ does the opposite. It tells people that you leave, even for your own child’s safety and well-being, your home is broken and you have failed. Your child is now broken too.

I would take the term broken home to mean a dysfunctional home. It doens't necessarily say anything about how many parents make up the home.

But it IS accurate. Their parents broke up and the kids are raised having to deal with the fallout of the breakup.

People kid themselves that kids are resilient and all that bullshit, to justify the parents’ poor choices. The fact is that human beings statistically do far better when raised in two parent homes.

If people don’t want to be referred to as broken, they should be a LOT more careful, prudent and thoughtful in their choices of partners and their reproductive choices.

This in spades. They wouldn't write anything (or say anything) at all, ever, if they were worried about offending every Tom, Dick, and Shirley!

As pps have said, this person did come from a broken home - a childhood that was broken and fractured and tumultuous.

YABU @IsitaHatOrACat but as someone who has been married once - over 30 years ago - and still married to the same man, with 2 DC by the same man, I have to say I don't see a single parent family (and there a few in my village) and think 'oooh broken home!' I just see a single parent (usually single mum) family and walk on by....

Tell you the truth I don't think anything. Nothing enters my head. Single parent households, and couples with stepchildren (as well as their own biological ones,) and really common. More common than my type (nuclear family.)

So I think you're getting your panties in a bunch, and getting angry for very little OP, and sound easily offended and overly sensitive. Very few people think of you - and people like you (single mums with children in a stable environment) as being a 'broken home.' Have people been mean to you in real life, and said unpleasant things about you being a single mum? Is that why you find this so triggering?

.

But we can’t separate language and power. It’s those with power who decide what those without power are called and known as. Take ‘minority groups’ and the push to change the term to ‘minoritised groups’. No one thinks of themselves as a minority, it is a term which is ‘done to’ a certain group of people. The term ‘minority group’ diminishes and stigmatises those who belong to the group. It is the same with the term ‘broken home’- broken according to who? Who is doing the naming? Who is being consulted about this? What demographic are they from? Boris Johnson’s older children come from a broken home, but you would never hear them being referred to as such. Yet penniless addict Bradley Wiggins is from a broken home.

YABU @IsitaHatOrACat

But it’s not offensive to all. Many of us do view situations where the child isn’t raised by two stable parents as indeed “broken.”

There are myriad scholarly and scientific studies documenting that outcomes are poorer on many levels for people not raised in two-parent homes.

Denying reality by attempting to censor language is futile.

Then inaccurate language should be the complaint.

I think you may be misinterpreting ‘broken home’ as ‘single parent household’, when it’s referencing the fact that: his bio dad abandoned him at 2, his mother moved country, lived at home with her parents briefly before finding more stable accommodation, had another relationship where a half brother was born, only for that surrogate father to also leave when he was a teen, oh and moved homes again several times during that period.

I would say his ‘dysfunctional’ household and the lack of stability in both parental relationships and living arrangements is what was being referenced - and yes, I think ‘broken home’ seems appropriate here.

If you want to normalise the abnormal, then by all means, let us play around with the language - but know it is a dangerous game, because it will apply not only to broken homes - blink and vile scum that are paedos will become 'minor attracted individuals'.

It is not the words we need to change, it is our attitudes that need changing - an invalid will not be cured of invalidity (my dad) if we stop calling him an invalid. Shall we also rename 'Les Invalides'? And wonderful books for social workers 'The mentally retarded child at home', 'Communicating with normal and retarded children', 'The education and training of the mentally retarded' are all available on sale for practitioners of psychology and education.

Absolutely, a child of divorced parents lives in a broken home too. Nothing to do with being a single parent ab initio - incomplete family is a broken family.

I've seen a lot of women on MN over the years who have been reluctant to leave a clearly abusive DP because they "don't want their kids to come from a broken home." It's a highly stigmatising phrase that does real harm, IMO.

Completely agree . See also ‘barren’ , ‘spinster’ etc all are loaded words which have stigma and judgment attached to them

its a very poor turn of phrase . It has stigma attached to it however you look at it.
‘Difficult upbringing’ would have covered it .