To think divorce absolutely does affect children

[springtimevintagedream]

I realise it's sometimes the only option, but AIBU to think there's too much of a casual attitude towards the impact it has on children, possibly because it's so common?

I'm not talking about abusive relationships where it's definitely better for the abused not to stay. But in some cases do you think it can be quite selfish?

Aware it's a contentious issue.

Too many posters making assumptions about why and how children are affected by their parents' divorce. I'm sure you all have experience to back this up?

My parent's divorce was mostly amicable and I ended up being better off (two lots of holidays and presents, supported by 4 incomes instead of two) and it has still had a lasting impact on me. To suggest those are the 'only' circumstances in which a child can be affected is ridiculous and minimises the experiences of many children of divorced parents.

Anyone who thinks that a married couple with children takes divorce "casually" is clearly a judgemental idiot who has no personal experience and / or empathy

The only child I know who has been uprooted in GCSE year was the child of an army family with happily married parents.

Too many posters making assumptions about why and how children are affected by their parents' divorce. I'm sure you all have experience to back this up?

Apparently the only without experience is the OP:

I don't think children of divorced parents will automatically go from miserable creatures huddling at the top of the stairs like on Mrs Doubtfire to confident little things skipping between mum and dads houses.

Are you getting all of your 'information' from "Mrs Doubtfire"?

Why are you over-egging everything you say here?
'Miserable creatures'?
'Skipping between mum's and dad's houses'?

one person's 'oh they just think the grass is greener' is likely to be another's purgatory. People don't tend to divorce on a whim, especially when children are involved, and what might appear to be being a bit less than optimally unhappy to their friends may be abject misery to them (but they're not showing it publicly). How could you possibly know from outside the marriage what goes on within it?
[StepAwayFromTheThesaurus]
^^ This.

OP, you couldn't possibly know what 'intolerable' means to someone else. All you are doing here is indulging your own judgement.

Please tell us all where you are getting your impressions from. If you know of any literature or statistics then you need to post it, since it forms the backbone of your argument.

Otherwise I think it is fair to assume you are simply making things up and came here to goad.

Op starting a debate is one thing...but you've done and said nothing to back up your opinions. The opinions of others on other threads is not 'literature' and your opinion is only that...your opinion. And seems to have no basis even in experience, you've not said if you're a divorcee, child of divorce. Plus the only people who know the state of a marriage are the people in it! And even then that's disputed!

My battered and abused in every other way mother was believed by many to be in a good marriage! Many abusers are careful where they bruise so as its not obvious to others (or even the victim in some ways).

I agree and it can also affect adults too.
My parents met at 12, married at 18 and had the "perfect marriage" until 10 years ago and my dad left for another woman. Nobody saw it coming.
Has caused so much grief in the family, my mum hates him and all his family and I still have a relationship with them so this has impacted massively on our relationship.
Kids have to be quiet if they've spent time with grandad so they don't upset grandma etc. it's shit.
Divorce has massive implications and can really rip a family in two.

I never worried when lots of my friends parents got divorced when we were children, wouldn't happen to us. And it did. As a 30 yr old at the time I was devastated and it still majorly affects me, mainly due to the lying and secrecy it involves.
Just a different perspective..

It is possable to get divorced now for no other reason than to steal all the ex husband's assets and the children, and claim child support and wreck the children's lives, my sister in law did this.
She damaged the children by refusing to allow them to see there father even though she was told to by the family court. Lots of women see this as a life style choice now, screw there ex for all they can regardless of what the children want. Yes divorce does damage children, ask them.

It is possable to get divorced now for no other reason than to steal all the ex husband's assets

The assets are not the husband's, but assets of the marriage. As such they are usually split 50/50 or 60/40 between husband and wife.

Lots of women see this as a life style choice now, screw there ex for all they can regardless of what the children want.

Misogynistic claptrap.

I myself am in a sexless, affectionless marriage to an often bad tempered, sulky and critical person who is not able to communicate about "us" in any way at all and is emotionally distant as well as holding lots of opinions I disagree with, and would probably be much more financially independent were we to get divorced (though am sure h would be hiding assets and making any settlement very difficult).

Yet still I am here counting the 8.5 years until all my dc will have finished school.

The thought of divorce is utterly terrifying. Especially the part where I would only get to see the dc 50% of the time . Am also scared of how I would manage financially and where I would live etc...

Vicky1990
Based on that the father has applied for residency for the children, right?

Posts like this could almost have been written by my exH's relatives because he told them a very edited version of the story.
When his mother came to testify as a character witness at his dv trial, she had no idea of what was on it.

Just saying that the version some men tell to seem like the wronged party is very different from reality.

In my case, even if the court had allowed unsupervised access to ds, I wouldn't have.

spiralling

Your post is very honest and reflects what is much more often said in RL than on here where - by the very nature of it being an anonymous internet site - splitting up is made to sound like the only viable option that will have a positive outcome.

However, from the little you have said, your marriage sounds very very unhappy. Not only will your kids very likely be adversely affected by living in this environment with your 'emotionally distant', critical h and you clearly very sad, but you do deserve a life better than this. I would see a counsellor and a solicitor now and at least start talking through the possibilities.

MissRabbit Absolutley. The ripples are huge. This is what drives me crazy on here, this very aggressive stance of it's always better to split. It's very short sighted. As has been said many times on this thread, sometimes it is better, sometimes it's not!

And as we've seen on this thread people turn extremely aggressive and wildly defensive if their choices on divorce are even questioned. Just because this is a proudly liberal, feminist (ish) site doesn't mean that other people can't hold the perfectly valid view - born out of real life experience - that divorce is overwhelmingly negative for kids (again - if abuse or deep unhappiness is not a factor. And yes 'deep unhappiness' is woolly. But I think we all know when we are too unhappy to carry on in a situation and when there are still roads available to us).

See now Vicky, I'vegone on my own experience of divorce on here (my parents, lots of friends and families) and I have never, ever known of any woman to divorce to get her hands on her husband's money or as a 'lifestyle' choice - ever! Very Daily Mail.

Pleasant marriages threads where they've lost the spark? I've seen loads of them. At least 15 in the last year to 2 years, for sure. Was it Cory, who was asking?

In cases where the spark is lost there are always suggestions of how to get it back. Usually the OP is asking how to do it. More rarely the OP simply wants out, and in those cases it's because they have tried but the other partner isn't making any effor .

My parents should have divorced twenty years before they did. My mum had this idealised notion of marriage being better for us.... overlooking the fact my father was a violent, nasty , bullying thief who has wrecked my nerves and made me scared of my own shadow (and I am the least affected of the four of us). He left in the end for another woman- my mum didn't even kick him out when he hospitalised us or set the house on fire and went to work.
I agree with those who say it depends why and how you chose to conduct yourself after divorce. My children can see their father whenever they want and we get on OK. It's taken a while to get there though.

When I married dh I was a widow with 2 teens and he was divorced with 3 ( he had custody). The five dc had a conversation about whether it was harder to have a parent die or parents divorced. I have never forgotten hearing dss say,"At least your dad didn't choose to leave you."
As the conversation went on however my dsc agreed that the time before the divorce had been worst of all and that everyone was happier now.

This is all so odd. What's the answer anyway? Where are we going with this? Compulsory counseling before divorce is 'allowed'? People who are deemed 'likely to get bored' being banned from having kids?

There is no answer. This is a weird discussion.

We have poster after poster coming on to say how much better their lives were after their parents divorced, which while being heartening to hear, is not what the OP wishes to discuss. She's specifically referring to examples of people (mostly men apparently) who are in perfectly good relationships but wake up bored one morning and 'get divorced'. We are not to include situations in this discussion where anyone was actually unhappy it seems

We're here frowning and twisting in knots trying to discus this set of people who, according to the Opinion of People Outside The Marriage (who know best of course ), have walked away from ok marriages on a whim and damaging their children without a thought.

OP are you trying to discus male midlife crisis damaging children? All these hints at it through the thread point to that to me.

From my description of my divorce I'd probably be someone you feel got divorced for not good enough reasons. There was no fighting or abuse exh loved me and was a hands on dad. I was very unhappy. Exh is also a bit of a man child and struggled to have a thought for himself. As much as he was and is a lovely man I felt like his parents not his wife. It's not even as if life was that dull. We both had our own sets of friends and good social lives. Just not together partly due to lack of childcare.
Life together was dull. I was a mother not a wife and we had started drifting in different directions.
There is obviously some deeper personal stuff that I don't want to discuss but on the surface the reasons we divorced may seem spurious. I did this think long and hard and try to stay and even content with settling. But I couldn't. It wouldn't have been fairly on exh or me or ultimately the children because we would have eventually ended up hating each other and things would have become bitter because he would know I didn't love him and I would resent being there miserable.
I'm sure the dc have been affected in some way. At least one dc in a way I can mention but it is something that with live and reassurance he has come through.

I'm remarried to a wonderful man. Exh and I still have a working relationship and he sees the dc every second weekend. He comes here every second Christmas and stays at our house some weekends as we live far apart. Had we stayed together longer we would have fought and been far more bitter. Which I believe would have been far worse for the children than what we have now. We have been grown ups about it and always been on the same side as parents and worked together to make it as pain free for them as is humanly possible.
Why wait until things are bitter why not realise being together is a mistake and quit while you can still work together.

Obs - Pleasant marriages threads where they've lost the spark? I've seen loads of them. At least 15 in the last year to 2 years, for sure.

Lweji - In cases where the spark is lost there are always suggestions of how to get it back. Usually the OP is asking how to do it. More rarely the OP simply wants out, and in those cases it's because they have tried but the other partner isn't making any effort.

I agree with both of these. How many of the lost the spark threads started on MN actually end up in divorce i wonder though? And of those i seriously doubt it was down to the advice given out on their MN thread.

Someone upthread said they're unhappy about posters saying LTB too easily.

IMO part of good advice has to be ''look at all your choices''. One choice is to leave. It's the truth. It shouldn't be the only suggestion, obviously, and on 'lost spark' threads it never is. I know if one of my grown up daughters came to me for advice about their relationship hitting a genuine rocky patch part of my advice would certainly to allow themselves the freedom to consider leaving; and then work back/forward from that.

We have poster after poster coming on to say how much better their lives were after their parents divorced, which while being heartening to hear, is not what the OP wishes to discuss.

Selective reading. There have been as many posters saying the opposite (on this thread and similar threads over the years).

I separated from my husband in May 2014. We did so because we were more like friends than a married couple. Sure, we could have gone down the relate route, or the working at it route.

We however took the option to end things BEFORE we were arguing etc.

My DD has never batted an eyelied. Her parents are both happy. Ex and I still see each other socially, chat etc. I also see ex's new partner. We have made damn sure that our daughter isn't affected at all by the situation.

My point was yeahsure is that the vast majority of responses here from posters who are children of divorced parents describe their parents marriage as pretty miserable or with one member being unfaithful. Both 'grounds' which the OP herself has deemed acceptable and aren't what she's discussing.

I still haven't seen any posts about marriages which genuinely ended on a the OP might call a whim.

on what the OP might call a whim.

I have to say... I really like all these stories of women (and men) who got divorced and then married a great man and were happy ever after.

How many women are getting divorced and never remarry or never have a LT relationship again? How many end up in a crap relationship?
All this stuff about children will be happier is true of said woman is ending up happier, happier relationship, less financial struggle etc...

If I was to divorce, I would be on (disability) benefits. Some days, I would struggle to look after them (as in cooking, cleaning the house). And the dcs would have had probably a dad that wouldn't be that hands on/present.
Would the stress of finances, not support, probably no LT relationship, dad not keen on seeing them .... really be less for the dcs than living in a relationship that isn't quite perfect? (I'm thinking stonewalling, grumpy, etc etc from DH).

That was the situation for me 10 years ago. And tbh, even though on paper I should have left because DH was really an arse at the time, I am also pretty sure that the dcs would have suffered a lot from it.
I just don't think it would have been the right decision for them (and, as the future did prove, not for me or for DH either).

Just going onto the 'Lone parent' thread and you will see how hard the life of a divorced parent can be. Yes on this thread, a lot of the people are descriving crap relationship before hand. And SOME of them are saying they have been better for it. SOME people have also decsribed how affected they have been by it, sometimes even as an adult. And OTHERS have also said that they have seen exactely what the OP describes, ie a relationship that could have been mended but where people decided to give up 'because I deserve to be happy and if I am happy, then the dcs will be happy too'.

All of those exist. And that means that for SOME children, they wouold be much better off if their parents were putting a bit more effort (understanding/support) into mending their relationship.

I posted on this thread earlier as my parents' divorce did affect me badly despite having contact, maintenance and understanding the reasons behind it. But if you spoke to my mother she would tell you I wasn't affected badly at all. She genuinely believes this or tells herself this despite all evidence to the contrary.