All my sisters are single mums

[LadyOutOfLuck]

Name changed for this.

Just that really. All my sisters (3 of us all together and I'm in the middle) are single mums.

I was with DC dad for 10 years before divorce.

Older sister was with DC dad for 8 - 10 years before her LO was born and they separated during pregnancy.

Youngest was with DC dad for less than 3 years before they had my nephew and they spilt up immediately after also.

Our parents were together for most of our childhood until I was 15. Mum remarried, dad didn't.

I don't know what I'm asking, but I do feel a sense of shame. All the dads are absolute shit. I don't know how we all made the same mistakes with partners.

I have a new partner now who is wonderful but I struggle with that part of insecurity, thinking that maybe he will be shit and I've chosen badly again. Or we:ll have kids and I'll end up a single mum again with more kids. It's really affected my sense of worth.

There is shame attached, but not on the mums, on the men who've walked off.

But do we know the “why”?

Yep people always refer to divorce as a “failure” which is odd to me. It’s just the end of a marriage.

People strangely view permanence as the only marker of success.

Yes. Definitely this. But also, why would you have any shame for being the one who stayed and looked after their children? Who works twice as hard to be both mum and dad? It doesn't make sense.

Your ex and your sisters partners should be fucking ashamed of themselves.

I never understood why there was any shame at all historically for single mothers.
Two people made a child, one is doing twice the work while one saunters off and the woman gets the fucking shame.

@NotEnoughRoom

the therapist told me that children learn about relationships from a much earlier age than we realise, so even though my parents divorced when I was around 3, and mum went on to have a wonderful marriage to my step dad (still happily married 40yrs later) I’d already been exposed to that unhealthy dynamic and ended up repeating it.

Interesting point. My parents split when I was young and it was a pretty shitty relationship.

My siblings who remember them together all either had shitty relationships or remained single.
The ones with no recollection of their shitty relationship all have healthy marriages.

Exactly. I have to say I feel much more accomplished and brave after leaving my marriage than I did when I was staying in it. It's so far from a failure, it's a change, just like changing jobs is.

No. That talks about likelihood of divorce. I was asking about the causal factors that you claimed.

I don’t think you read that link did you? It directly contradicts your claim:

The results show a slightly elevated risk of divorce. However, the studies caution that the likelihood of divorce is complex and influenced by various factors, such as socioeconomic status, marital quality, parental conflict, age at marriage, education, and income.
Therefore, because so many other factors influence marital relationships, we cannot say that your divorce is a determining factor, or will cause your children’s divorces. After all, correlation does not imply causation.
Remember, many children of divorced parents have healthy, stable marriages, and many people from intact families also experience divorce.

Sounds like you come from a long line of determined women who don't take shit from men to me, just to put a different spin on it.

Thank you and I agree. The women in my family are hyper independent. I just wish we didn't have to do it all alone all the time.

Aha so one of two dominant theories not not a guaranteed causal factor. You were presenting it quite differently to how the link presents it.

But watching parents argue is insufficient to explain divorce trends. In their 2001 study, Amato and Deboer found that children whose parents fought a lot but never divorced were not at increased risk of divorce themselves. Amato stated that “parents’ marital discord, in the absence of parental divorce, was not linked with marital dissolution among offspring.” He goes on to say that children who grew up in acrimonious households were more likely to contemplate divorce in their own relationships, but without a model of divorce to emulate, they typically did not follow through and divorce their spouses (Amato & Deboer, 2001, p. 1049).
To be clear, this finding does not negate the importance of relationship skills. Divorcingcouples tend to listen less attentively, communicate less clearly, speak critically of their partner, and avoid and withdraw from arguments. These are patterns that can be picked up in childhood and increase the likelihood of divorce. But it is the divorce itself, not the fighting, which accounts for the increased risk in their children’s divorce

And as the two very different links show there us no one definitive causal factor. It appears there are multiple theories.