BBC news using the phrase "broken home"

[IsitaHatOrACat]

Really? Really? Whilst I'm not overly interested to know about this man's drug fuelled years, the description of him coming from a "broken home" has infuriated me.
As a single parent to a 15 year old, I can confirm that there us nothing whatsoever "broken" about our home or small family.
I really thought we had moved on from this type of shaming of single parent families
Seriously BBC, do better.

BBC News - Heavy hangs the crown - sadness at Wiggins' troubles
www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/articles/c23mv42m2lmo

Waiting for the smug "there are always signs", as if women ruin their own lives by having children with men who abuse them for a laugh.

I often think that people who protest stuff like this strongly are the real vulnerable ones. Like, you have your position- everyone whose relationship has broken up is a "ninny" who has made terrible choices. So, if you discovered tomorrow that your DH has been cheating on you for years/ has been abusive to your DC or similar, what would you do? You couldn't leave, because that would mean you were a stupid ninny who couldn't pick a good man. So you stay, plaster on a smile, ignore your and your DC's distress...

It's not a mindset that you see very much any more- most of us have thankfully moved on- but I think we can all point to examples in previous generations where appalling abuse and mistreatment has been endured for decades because of the importance of maintaining the facade of a happy two parent family.

It refers to the original family unit being broken. That's undeniable.

In some cases, the family unit was never together so that's not a broken home/unit.

It's as negative as saying "failed marriage", but that's unlikely to change.

I don't think it will prevent people leaving a bad relationship. What prevents them leaving can be, lack of self esteem, financial reasons, fear of not seeing their kids everyday, fear of change and other reasons.

People stay in bad relationships, even without kids, so the fear of a broken home isn't what kept them there.

I think "separated family" would be a better term, but I don't see broken home becoming obsolete to describe kids from divorced or separated parents any time soon.

This isn’t about YOU though. Plenty of us single parents do not behave like your parents!

Smug superiority tends to end very badly in my experience, battered by their own self imposed judgment these pp usually struggle the most when their ‘perfect’ well chosen dh turns out to be a lazy cheat!!

Nice to know that as a widow, people are referring to my child’s circumstances as a “broken home” ffs

It sounds like you are being overly sensitive, has it touched a nerve?
Many homes are broken and don't give the children therein the best start in life.

Oh, she did. This poster has a lot of form 🙄.

I find the debate around this interesting I've seen a lot of these "manosphere" influencers talking about single mothers raising criminals etc etc. And they have the statistics. And talk as if a father being there would 100% prevent a child becoming a future criminal. Lol.

Correlation doesn't always mean causation though and one parent is going to have a much harder time financially than two parents and more likely to live in a cheaper neighborhood where there's more bad influences on the kid. Peer pressure has a big effect. That's just one example though I could probably think of others but my point is I don't believe the reason for the statistics is necessarily just because the kid has one parent.
I mean think about when there's a war and the men go away for years at a time, ive never seen anyone claim that that caused all the kids to become criminals

I’ve seen some of the most vile vitriol towards us single parents on Mumsnet. The worst ones were:

”Single parents have made their bed, they need to lie in it…” (Said by a poster who just the previous evening had been joining in with the encouragement of a mother to leave her abusive DH, reassuring her she could manage on her own, etc).

”Single parents all have social workers for a reason” Since when do we all have social workers? This is utter, utter BS! I’ve been a widowed mother for years & years. Never had any contact with any social worker in any capacity.

“They’re a drain on society. Most of them have tricked a poor bloke into getting pregnant so they can get benefits”

Utterly deplorable behaviour from grown women.

Oh the last one always makes me laugh as if the small amount of benefits and child maintenance he refuses to pay makes up for not being able to work a full-time job because your stuck doing all the childcare after he's fucked off or decided to only have the children when convenient for him (random times) even a minimum wage job would pay infinitely more than most of these dead beats "maintenance" 😂

Men with nothing paranoid about gold diggers. Many such cases haha

It’s incredibly depressing. I became a single parent 47 years ago when this kind of attitude was prevalent, I did hope we might have moved on by now.

Just yesterday one of my teenager's friends saw fit to take the piss out of him because he's from a single parent family. These attitudes don't happen in a vacuum.

A marriage that ended in divorce is a failed marriage. That doesn't mean the decision to end it was a bad decision. In many cases, it's the best decision.

It's simply not comparable to moving to a new job or a new house.

You don't take a vow to stay with your employer or stay in your first home till death parts you. When you get married, it's "finding the one" so for it to come to an end is sad. It wasn't meant to end.

Most people don't go around saying "failed marriage", but we all know what it means. It shouldn't be taken personally.

This doesn't mean one has a negative view of life IMO.

I'm 55, and I have seen a lot of marriage break ups in my time. I can categorically state that every single time, it was the husband at fault.

Reasons for the marriages failing were predominantly :

Cheating
Gambling
Going AWOL on drink/drug binges
Not pulling their weight at home
Not contributing financially
Violence

ALL perpetrated by the men who just couldn't get their shit together. Meanwhile, the women were single handedly raising the children, earning a wage, keeping the house running, doing all of the mental load, and unsurprisingly, didn't even have the time to think about cheating, gambling etc.

These women are heroes to me.

And yet, we have posters on here, who have never experienced being with a fuck-wit, who like to pontificate from their Ivory tower, about how all of these women must have somehow brought this on themselves, for making poor choices. So, even in the scenarios above, the women are to blame, not the men.

I hope these posters aren't raising sons, and I hope that if their DH does someday fall short, that they reflect on the bullshit they spouted on here at innocent women, who are just trying to do their best by their children, when faced with unthinkable circumstances.

None of us walked down the ailse thinking that our groom was going to monumentally fail us. But many of them did. It's what we do about that that makes us. I am proud that I left my cheating and violent husband. I deserved more. We all do.

I'm 55, and I have seen a lot of marriage break ups in my time. I can categorically state that every single time, it was the husband at fault.

The break up of my marriage, if we’re going to apportion blame, was my fault. In my view it’s never 100% one person’s fault.

It doesn't apply to a home where one parent has passed away. It's where they decided to separate.

A "broken home" is NOT the same as a single parent family.

Who picked the men? Women who choose cheaters and losers, and saddle new humans with such as fathers, aren’t heroes.

@blondiebeachbabe I can only quote the one closest to me and can categorically say that it was not my father's fault. Yes, eventually he had an affair but he was driven to it after mother's repeated affairs and the fact that she treated him badly and he would not enable her narcissistic tendencies.

They were ill suited and she got pregnant and they got married in 1960. Ideally they should not have or should have separated when I was a toddler. If my father had been a loser, had not brought home the bacon (In his case more like a whole pig) or had been unkind, mother would have left him much sooner but she rather liked the big house and it's trappings. He was quiet, she was (is) vivacious and liked to party - hard.

I hear what you're saying, but, many women DO make poor choices for partners and husbands.

The man isn't a good boyfriend, yet they proceed to have a child or marry him. He isn't going to become the best husband or dad, when he was a crap boyfriend.

I think much of the problem, is the high amount of good women and the low amount of good men globally, not just in the UK - So women lower their standards and accept poor behaviour, which they know deep down is unacceptable, yet they accept it...whether out of desperation... or poor self esteem... or a feeling, that good men are in short supply.

It's like when stepmothers complain about their challenges and dealing with stepkids/ the ex wife. They speak of hating being work a man who had kids, logically, the answer would be, if you don't want the headache of stepkids and a difficult Ex, you go for a man without kids - but they say, such men are hard to find, so they put up with and stay in relationships that are stressful, because, especially at a certain age, you don't have a lot of choice.

What if the man you marry, has never put a foot wrong, but ten years in, he has a mid life crisis, and starts shagging a lot of other women? What then? Are you saying it's the woman's fault, because she should have read the future? Is there a reason you feel unable to assign guilt to anyone owning a penis?

I really do feel for women who spout nonsense like this, because when their perfect husband turns out to be not- that perfect, where are they going to turn? Sit tight and deny it's happening, is often my guess. It's the children I feel for in this scenario.

Incidentally TheHerboriste, I notice you haven't provided any evidence for your claims about "the latest studies" on poor outcomes for single parent families? 🤔

I agree with you.

Sandy Y2K
The man isn't a good boyfriend, yet they proceed to have a child or marry him. He isn't going to become the best husband or dad, when he was a crap boyfriend

Of course there will be some cases like this, but I would argue, that in the main, women go into marriage in good faith, and many get blindsided a few years in. There's no way to predict that, and other women should seek to understand how painful that must be, not take the opportunity to put the boot in, not least when they have never been in that unfortunate position themselves.

My husband was the perfect man when we married. 16 years later, despite me being a perfect wife, I found out that he had been doing all sorts behind my back. I actually was so blindsided I had a breakdown. I thought we were soulmates. But according to some posters, I should have seen it all coming, so the marriage break up is my fault, not my husbands. Come on now!

Is there a reason why you feel unable to assign guilt to anyone owning a vagina? Both views are palpably ridiculous.