To think kids don't care if their parents love one another?

[AnotherDayAnotherDoll]

I was reading a boook "Stay or Leave- which is a book that discusses the indecision about whether to leave a relationship

In the chapter about how to consider kids when leaving relationship - it argued that really all kids want to do is avoid conflict. So doesn't matter whatever the set up - if it's predictable & kind & v little conflict - it doesn't matter all that much whether you are together or not.

And if you're in loveless & sexless marriage but where people are perfectly civil - most kids don't truly care/are interested as long as long as it doesn't affect them.

What are people's views?

I hvae some sympathy with this view. I'm not sure I ever considered (when I was a child) whether my parents loved one another or whether they were just functioning housemates who parented together.

Do you want them growing up thinking a loveless marriage is normal or desirable, something they should aspire to in their own adult lives? Civil is surely a bare minimum. I haven’t read the book but I think what we model is extremely important. I knew my parents didn’t love each other in the latter years and consider my life much improved by their divorce.

My parents’ obvious love and respect for one another was a huge factor in my generally very happy childhood. So I definitely cared about that and would have noticed and felt something was lacking if they were just housemates.

But if their relationship had been unhappy or had broken down then I would far rather they had separated and formed two households.

It's about teaching kids what a healthy relationship dynamic is, though, not just about avoiding conflict. Children need role models of what it looks like to love and respect someone and that they are important enough to deserve that in their own relationships. Even if a couple are able to treat each other like civil housemates, that's not the same as demonstrating what it means to love and value someone.

My parents stayed together for us kids and I spent my childhood from 8+ in an awful household. I never once thought “God I wish my parents loved each other” I only thought “God I wish they would just separate already”

Young kids generally can't articulate their feelings on the subject so it is no surprise that you don't remember thinking about it. However, they are excellent at picking up on subtle cues which leads to them forming subconscious ideas of a relationship. So the victims of childhood abuse become abusers or continue experiencing abuse later in life, children of parents who struggle to communicate grow up being unable to share their feelings or resolve conflict in a positive way etc.
So yes, they don't care in the moment but the effect of living in a household where two adults have a "housemate" relationship is potentially profound.

Depends what you mean by 'kids' what age are we talking here? I doubt most kids bother about whether their parents marriage is 'sexless' or not and quite frankly I find the idea weird. Whilst I also agree kids want to avoid conflict & like stability & harmony in their environment, Kids are also acutely aware that they have a mum & and dad and no matter how happy they are, most always want their mum & dad together. This can create serious conflict in them because although they realise mum & dad together is bad, they will grieve the loss of their 'natural' home. So simply saying, 'it doesn't matter the setup' is widely inaccurate.

Honestly, civil parents who aren’t in love, and are more like flatmates but don’t have any bitterness or arguments are more than a lot of kids have.

much better than parents who are in love but have lots of drama.

or parents who have split but then try to enforce a blended family on the kids

I think it’s more about teaching your children about what a good, healthy, relationship looks like, modelling what a healthy partner looks like, so that as they get older they know not to settle. I grew up with parents who absolutely loved each other openly and showed it every day, my dad really worshipped the ground my mum walks on (and still does!), I now have what I consider a very similar relationship with my husband because I had that modelled for me, I wouldn’t have settled for less because I knew what that kind of true and lasting love looked like. On the other hand I have one friend in particular who really struggles to acknowledge what a healthy relationship, or an unhealthy relationship, looks like and she considers that this is because she grew up in a “parents stayed together for the kids but were just civil”. The first and main example of what love looks like comes from watching your parents, I think it’s important to make sure it’s a good one.

exactly! Kids don’t care less if you’re in love or not. Stability and kindness and respect is the main thing.

i remember a friend was talking about kissing her latest man in the kitchen and the kids were like “Urgh”. She was determined that she was positively modelling a loving relationship. Bollocks: they always had dramas and arguments and ended up splitting anyway

This is one of the most stupid things I have ever heard yet!
What an example!

Being stable, communicating well and being respectful is necessary whether you’re together or not.

If you’re together, I think it’s important that children see that you love each other both through treating each other with care and showing an appropriate level of affection in front of them. A peck on the lips, a hug. Having a good model of a healthy relationship in your parents is important.

I agree its probably not harmful.

But life is hard enough without setting the bar low for children and role modelling that it's good enough to survive and live a mediocre, not bad life.

We role model fun, happiness, genuine thoughtfulness, excitement, excitement of planning parties and birthdays and fun days out, we play, we chase, we kiss, we laugh, we live life passionately, we're tender.

We are so much more than simply not harmful.

We show that life can offer fun in the mundane. Life is happy.

Sexless is irrelevant as children shouldn't know about their parents sex life. But we role model relationships to our children. If they think the norm is a loveless marriage how high do you think their bar will be?

I'd also go further and say the opposite is true as well.kids dint care if their parents are together or not as long as they feel safe, loved secure and have regular positive contact.

Surely most children just want their parents to stay together

I agree with the statement, I can think of countless people who love each other but are in high conflict relationships, they would call it passion.

a child needs to feel loved and secure, they don’t need to know if their parents love each other.

My DC have said that what made a massive difference to them as young DC was how parents made them feel - as in what the child-parent interaction was like. They can tell if you aren't in their words 'all there'. They also have said they felt it acutely when I, their mother, was struggling. Their Dad was violent towards me and I thought I shielded them from that but I didn't because of the way I was presenting to them - they said they could tell I was scared and that I was upset a lot and this made them feel really unsafe. They didn't directly witness violent incidents but they felt them just as keenly as i did really because of the effect it had on their Mum.

So I guess how parents feel towards each other impacts on DC because if two adults are indifferent or don't love each other that will come out in how the adults behave. They might think the DC won't pick up on the ambivalent vibes but they will and it will have an impact. How else can you model what a healthy family looks like, if there isn't any love and reciprocal respect?

Neither DH nor I have ever had a bad partner or been in a bad relationship - and we both thank our parents for that, for modelling what a healthy, happy, loving relationship looks like and how couples should treat each other. We’ve always known what isn’t desirable and avoided people who demonstrate those behaviours. Too many people repeat the dysfunction modelled to them by their own parents in their own adulthoods and dish out or put up with lack of respect, silent treatment, poor conflict resolution, weaponising of affection or physical demonstration of care because that’s what they saw as “normal.”

If you don’t love each other then the best you can do for your children is separate and demonstrate adults being able to coparent well whilst also finding happiness apart, rather than show them poor relationship behaviours.

Little kids LOVE their family having fun together, mum and dad being silly, mum and dad organising the family holiday, mum and dad going on a bushwalk with them. This loving environment makes kids secure in their parents love and the stability of their home, plus the life lessons and self worth kids gain from seeing mum and dad work together on house work, getting dinner on, with a friendly cheerful camaraderie, is immeasurable. You don’t get that without love or at least an enormous amount of goodwill and recognition of mutual goals.

but if you have a hostile environment with the two parents around, or abuse, I think the faster they separate the better.

I think most kids prefer that their parents marriages are sexless- especially if they are old enough to know what sex is.

Civil is pretty cold and not something that you want your kids to aspire to for a lifetime. I think that adults who think that their kids don’t know that they don’t get along are kidding themselves. Nobody can keep up the pretence 24/7.

The parents don’t have to be passionately in love but there needs to be respect and affection.

Couples who stay together for the sake of the children are kidding themselves that it’s easier to break up when they kids are older. Anecdotally I think that adults find it harder because they start questioning their happy memories and feel guilty that they are the reason why their parents were stuck in a crappy situation. Couples like this are more likely to have their head turned and start an affair imo. They are better off as amicable co-parents before the resentment kicks in.

There was a time when my parents had a terrible argument. If my dad had left as a result, I would have been left my mum, which would have been ghastly. So no, I would have preferred that they stayed together. Which they did.

My parents didn't love each other and I definitely cared. It had a really negative impact on me tbh.

Surely this depends...as another poster mentioned, kids shouldn't know about the sex end of things so whatever is happening in the bedroom shouldn't impact them.
What do you mean by "loveless"? Romantic love, platonic love. I can see a situation where 2 people who perhaps have fallen out of romantic love but are still good friends and respect/love each other may chose to stay together until the kids are older rather than only seeing their kids 50% of the time and raising their kids between 2 households. I see nothing wrong with that an do feel that it would be best for the kids.
If the couple dislike each other, dont respect each other and are creating an environment which is upsetting for the child then of course they would be better off apart.

As a very young child I wanted my parents to stop arguing all the time, although I did get used to it (and learned the hard way, at school, that screaming "shut the fuck up you piece of shit" was not an acceptable way to handle conflict. It was very normal to me and my parents seemed to love each other and find it acceptable, so it actually didn't occur to me that it could hurt someone. I was so used to it that it hardly bothered me.).

As a teenager I hated it and I didn't care that they loved each other, which they did. I didn't want to live with it and of course my father then started on me. But they were never going to split up. They weren't the kind to divorce and anyway they lurved each other.

I don't think kids care about their parents loving each other as much as they care about keeping kids safe and giving them a healthy environment to grow up in. I was definitely determined that I'd rather stay single and childless than live with a man like my father, though.

Of course i've skin in the game - otherwise wouldn't have been reading the book - I'm in a loveless but low-conflict marriage, we do have fun with the kids, we do go out on day trips, we are silly together - but I don't respect him and I 100% don't fancy him.

I know if if leave - it will become high-conflict unpredictable & much poorer - which seems so horrible to inflict on kids who are enjoying a peaceful, secure, stable home right now. They don't know I switch off when he talks, or that we don't kiss or cuddle.

I'm just not persuaded my kids would ever thank me for pulling the rug from under their feet because I don't feel the love anymore.

But I do get that point about high expectations in relationships. I certainly have low expectations and always hvae done.