to think the mental impact of divorce on children is severely underestimated?

[InsanityandBeyond]

Contentious topic .

DC often get an absolutely shit deal when marriages break up and often have to accept their separated parents embarking on new relationships and having to be part of a 'blended' family with DCs from the stepmother/father added into the mix.

Some step/parents that complain about finding these DC hard work and their behaviour difficult to deal with. Not exactly rocket science that DC will be disturbed by having to share living space, and time with their parents, with people they are not related to and not having the security of living with, and focused attention of, both parents which is their birthright.

A lot of marriages break up way too easily these days as the parents want to be 'happy' or have 'fallen out of love', 'want a newer model' etc, etc with the DC dragged along for the ride with no choice in the matter.

In terms of abusive relationships, it could be argued that you should know your partner and their background well before bringing children into the equation which seems to be a very controversial view .

Is it really impossible for adults to put their 'happiness' and new relationships, which would have an impact on their DC, on hold until their children are grown up?

The damage is often played out when they become adults as children will accept almost anything from their parents as a survival mechanism until they are old enough to question it. It is thought that DC are resilient and will get over it but I think that is a fallacy self absorbed parents tell themselves to make themselves feel better.

My 17 year old DD is the only person on her college course whose parents are still together. I find that shocking and really sad.

AIBU in thinking that this is a ticking time bomb in an explosion of mental health issues in the next generation and the implications of divorce/separation on children's mental health should be much more ingrained in the morality of society?

@LineRunner

Rowan thanks. The post from mumandboys us definitely worth preserving!

It sure is!

'Should you be working in your situation?' from a senior manager...(that's working full time as sm to DD 9 ) any opportunity to discuss the wonderful things that their DHs do to spoil them..while faux sympathetic looks to me...

I know the OP has gone, but...
I loved my DH very much and turned a blind eye to some horrible behaviour in the interests of 'trying to make it work' - not only for my dd's sake, but also because I really believed that all marriages have ups and downs.
When I finally asked him to leave, it was because MY mental health was suffering. I was unable to be the mother I wanted to be and I certainly was not a good wife - he told me so regularly.

Now we are separated, dd has a better relationship with him as he actually spends time with her. I am happier, which impacts hugely on dd. And, very importantly I think, I am showing my child that relationships should not be damaging, abusive or lonely. That noone deserves to have to stay in a relationship where they are taken for granted and that no man/woman is worth losing your self esteem and confidence for. That is not a relationship.

If my dd grows up knowing she is worth more than a miserable marriage, that is good. I agree people should not divorce lightly; I don't know anyone who has. It is a hideous thing, to have a marriage fall apart. But when it does, it is kinder to EVERYONE to end it if it is not salvageable. It is not the 1930s anymore. I did not have to suffer, so I am not. I am not a martyr.

My cousins mum died when she was very little and her father remarried a year or two later. Of course there was some 'you are not my mum' moments (don't all kids hit you were it hurts at times?) but my (I don't call her step) aunt is a lovely person who is a fantastic mother, and my cousins life was enriched by her siblings and wider family (I remember being jealous that she had three sets of grandparents when I only had two). More recently my uncle died and my aunt has subsequently remarried to a lovely man who clearly makes her happy and supports her children. Of course it doesn't always work but step parents can be great and new families can bring a lot of additional love to a childs life.

It takes a real piece of shit to victim blame but hey ho, OP has been suspended anyway.

I have been a single parent for 10 years , since both my children were under 2. I do a damn good job, I re-trained ,have a masters degree and have supported us single-handedly all this time . I work as a teacher for children with autism.

My children have a relationship with their father , which I promoted and monitored, he has MH issues and really struggles . I have bloody battled every step off the way doing the job of 2 people to make a great life for my children, which includes their dad.

My family is not wrong ,it is different to yours. I often wonder what people thinks happens in lone parent families , my family is like many others except I am the only adult, that's it .

OP even if you see me as being at fault, I have certainly paid for it , haven't I ? You really have no idea , none ,life doesn't always go according to plan.

I've been through two marriage breakups. The first was not my doing, he upped and walked out leaving me with two kids. The divorce was acrimonious and so was the following decade. My oler kids were probably quite damaged by it. But how much more would they have been damaged by those same ten years being spent in a really terrible, shouty house? Rock and hard place.
A few years later I met and married my second husband, though he had no children (is it still a blended family if there's only one set of children involved?). We had two children together and were together ten years. It was not a bad marriage but we did fall out of love and split a couple of years ago. This time the split was easier. Not a cross word since. We still co-parent the children we had together, and he is still in contact with his stepchildren (now adults, so contact isn't an issue). I think my older children benefited from my second marriage, much more than they would have benefited from me either staying married to the first or never marrying again.
It took a lot for me to end my second marriage. There was no DV, no abuse. To some people it may have looked a lot like I ended it because he went out to watch football and didn't take the bins out. They didn't see me agonising for months over this decision, would I rather be miserable with this (good) man when we'd grown so far apart, or split the family up and give us both a shot at being happier?

So as it stands now, my older children have two dads, who are both in contact and love them, and the younger two have their dad and see my first ex-husband as a relative, but not a father figure. We've managed to get to a point where all the parental people are civil to each other and we're all pretty happy and settled. Had I stuck either of those marriages out, I can't imagine it being better than we have it now.

Rowansnetmum As a site administrator , you are selling out and bowing to popular demand.Like it or not the outcome statistics for a child's emotional,educational ,behavioural and even health outcomes are significantly worse for children where their parents marriage has broken down, and this is further compounded where the children live in blended families.This is not speculation or opinion.It is well documented, well researched fact.
All this has serious implications for a society which has to pick up the pieces.
This is a debating forum the subject matter of the debate was quite clear from its title and suspending the Op was IMO a reluctance on your part to engage with this fact.

Apologies -haven't read whole thread but felt compelled to reply to the op.

I am divorced -happened when my kids were young. Worry constantly about how it's affected the kids - especially when I was dragged through the courts despite trying to shield them from it. But it would have done them more damage if we'd stayed together. I can't pretend it hasn't affected them but I do often get told what well-behaved balanced kids they are.

We now live with my new partner as part of a blended family. Kids have always been put first and love having their step dad and step brother around. I also hope i'm giving my dc a better model of what relationships should be like.

A friend was recently telling me about how one of her son's friends wouldn't leave home because he felt responsible for his divorced mum who hadn't found anyone else.

Kudos to HQ.

Nice pom poms there Rowan!

In a sense I agree. Not that we should stay in abusive situations, but that children are very deeply affected and their coping with the situation is mistaken for being ok. Children are very resilient, but I don't think we should yest that.

My parents divorced and we had a couple of partners each to meet and get used to and not see again. Not ideal. We coped and are fine now (although I still deal with some effects) but I will not do it to my dc except in the very worst situations.

Thinking about it, it was not the divorce that was bad but the introduction of new partners / their children etc. I goin that very difficult.

I found that

I agree with OP regarding marriages breaking up too easily with an assumption that kids will be fine. However, I would never want to judge an individual situation, who knows how much misery both parents AND children endured before the divorce took place?
Also, in regards to abusive relationships, I don't think it is as straightforward as knowing your partner well enough to know they are not an abusive person. Different situations bring out different elements of people.

@coco44

Rowansnetmum As a site administrator , you are selling out and bowing to popular demand.Like it or not the outcome statistics for a child's emotional,educational ,behavioural and even health outcomes are significantly worse for children where their parents marriage has broken down, and this is further compounded where the children live in blended families.This is not speculation or opinion.It is well documented, well researched fact. All this has serious implications for a society which has to pick up the pieces. This is a debating forum the subject matter of the debate was quite clear from its title and suspending the Op was IMO a reluctance on your part to engage with this fact.

We don't have a problem with people discussing the outcomes for children whose parents have separated. We do, though, have a problem with posters who have form for being inflammatory, and who post about sensitive topics like this in a way that seems pretty much designed to wind people up.

Show us your studies Coco.

Yes coco I would love for you to link to where you get these figure

I don't necessarily agree with the OP but I'm absolutely horrified that you've suspended her but let the discussion run. It's no more deliberately inflammatory than lots of threads on here but as far as I can see, because it's not an acceptable viewpoint to have, it's been censored. The OP wasn't breaching any laws, it wasn't racist, it wasn't sexist, it wasn't disablist, there were no personal insults. Just not an acceptable point of view to have apparently

I work with adults with mental health issues and the over riding factors contributing to mental health issues are violence, parental bullying, negative parenting, abuse and substance abuse.
Divorce doesn't really come into it. These things can happen divorced or not. If anything, if a divorce protects children from these things then it is a positive. But even then, children may be already damaged.

I don't often post but have to say to mumandboys, what a great post!

I thought what she wrote was an absolute load of crap and told her so, but not sure why she's been banned. How do we know it was inflammatory? Is a person not allowed to go against the grain now?

isn't it poverty that is the biggest negative single indicator of life outcome? Which will, of course, affect more single parents than together parents by default because there can only ever be one working parent in a single parent household (and don't get me started on how easy it is to duck out of paying child maintenance), but it's not actually having grown up in a single parent household that has the negative effects?

I too would like to see the studies which show they are 'significant' differences in outcome.

'Or the mum who turns up on my doorstep for a playdate and says 'I presume we're paying for you to live here, aren't we?'. No, you're not. I own my house, outright, and yes, it's big and yes, it's in a nice area. Unfortunately, there are people out there who believe we don't deserve that because....shhssh....I'm a 'single mum'.'

Oh I've had that one, too - several times - well similar. 'This is the best street in town, you shouldn't be allowed to live here' said by one school dad at my son's party.

And the other school dad who offered to let us rent his ex council house on a really grotty street, for £1,300 a month - and was visibly mortified when we explained that it was double our rent on the 'best street in town' - that's why we are living here - because the guy who owns the property is so minted that he doesn't mind if the rent is low, as long as we look after it (and we do).

He hasn't spoken to me since. I must have destroyed his illusions.

What if your stuck in a loveless marriage though or an abusive relationship? It really is a blanket statement. Why is marriage so important anyway?
As for money there is plenty of financial abuse going on with high earning dads controlling the purse strings and dishing to minimal amounts. I know that this doesn't happen to everyone but sometimes when I hear about coupled up middle class friends asking their husbands for money to go out I'm like