Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

Katy brought up an interesting topic in the Sunrise thread. Along the lines of 'staying together for the kids sake.'

I think there's a tradeoff. I'm not so sure kids in that situation really learn what love is in an older relationship(or how it works) since their first example is flawed. Even though they still get the traditional father/mother roles. What they see everyday(emotion-wise or lack thereof) could condition negatively them for later on.

But then I've also seen kids where both parents divorce and go on to better healthier relationships and they turn out ok. They learn from watching happy parents what happiness is.

Personally, I think the key is if one is able to attain happiness and thereby share it with their kids, that would be more beneficial.

b

Re: Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

There is no shortage of messed up kids from intact marriages, and I've seen kids who were raised very well by parents who separated but kept actively involved in the life of their kids and didn't use kids as pawns in games of revenge against each other. So it seems clear it can go either way for the kid.

I also think that although your kid is a huge priority and you owe him a lot, you don't owe him a perfect world. And if you aren't good with your partner anymore, you can't provide one anyway. It will wind up telling on the kid one way or the next -- if only by setting up poor role models for the kid, as you note, bernie. What you owe your kid doesn't include sacrificing your own chances for happiness in an adult relationship in this life. You don't owe him coming back to an unhappy house for the rest of your days, much less 10 or 20 years. You don't owe him never having any respite for your spirit or never fulfilling the normal adult need for the love and companionship of a partner. There are a lot of sacrifices you do owe your children, but when you sacrifice love, you've denied the whole point to life, and that's too much. You will have a lot less love to give your child if nobody loves you and you can't even try to make it better.

If anything, you might come to resent the child himself, and find the atmosphere of the home spiritually poisonous regardless of your love for the child. What kind of home is it if you inwardly recoil from it? What benefit can a happy father provide as compared to a loveless one trapped in his loneliness, seeing his life's energy trickling away wasted every year? I'd guess that the longer a man stays in a loveless marriage, there is a real danger that it's the less likely he is to want to come anywhere near the kid when the marriage finally breaks up, or maybe be a part of his kid's life when he grows up. He has spent too long trying to smother his emotions, and after breathing free at last, he may remember the feeling of years of smothering and at least unconsciously, instinctively dread his family, even if he feels consciously far different toward his child. If the feeling of family comes to be internalized as one we dread, we've stayed around too long and nobody has been done any favor.

Re: Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

It's a really difficult question, isn't it? I've mentioned several times on the forum that I'm the product of divorce. I used to think parents should never split up if they had kids. It was a mean thing to do to kids. Part of me still feels that way.

When my parents told us that they were going to divorce, I remember us all crying. An hour later my oldest sister talked to us in private and confided that she was, frankly, relieved. She was sick of their fighting and sick of the two of them. It made us laugh and we felt better. My sister has never changed her mind about this. She thinks it was the correct thing for my parents to do.

I'm still not sure what I think about the whole thing. I think my dad was a bit of a jerk to do it, to be honest. Even when I disassociate myself, I can't understand how my dad could walk away from my older sisters. There was so much he could have taught us. What a crappy thing for him to do. Now that I'm older, and after watching Before Sunset, I can sort of understand that everyone has a right to his own happiness...yeah, even at the expense of others.

Re: Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

I think if the parents are still respectful and actually still like one another, I think it benefits the kids. (The parents are another matter!) But if there is acrimony and disrespect then, no.

Re: Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

I've had friends talk to me about their marriages, contemplating divorce. I always feel bad for the kids. I take the kids side in it. If there's any way to stick it out and learn to accommodate the mate, learn to be less selfish, then I think people owe it to the kids to try. Too many parents today are just stubborn and selfish.

If, in the end, parents are really horrible and mean to each other then they should go their own ways. But both should remain in the children's lives. Neither should move away, imo.

Re: Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

It sounds like your issue with your dad hinges substantially on abandonment, not divorce. Divorce doesn't have to be abandonment at all. Why do you feel your dad walked away from your sisters, rather than simply got a divorce?

And of course, it takes two to tango. It's wrong to blame only one party for a break-up unless the other person really was blameless. As to that, whereas sometimes it will be obvious, a great many other times it will be impossible for anybody, much less a kid, to know what goes on between two people. How and why their incompatibilities became manifest, and how seriously, is probably out of a kid's range of knowledge and maybe even emotional depth more times than not.

Dads are probably even harder to understand in this regard, because men are still raised to be pretty much emotional stick figures in our society, and keep whatever they have inside at all costs.

Re: Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

A little background on myself: my parents were in a "loveless marriage" for several years while I was growing up. Probably from the time I was 8-12 years old. My parents actually still loved one another on some level, never fought physically nor really got into extremely heated arguments. My dad was an alcoholic - he quit cold turkey while my sister and I were small children, but started again as we grew up. My mom slept in a different room and my Dad kept almost exclusively to himself and to my sister and I. Eh, I don't want to give my life story or anything, just a gist, as all family situations are different dynamically.

Anyhow, I frequently describe myself as "avoiding commitment," and while I like to view that as a good thing sometimes, it's also kind of a lonely existence. I'm not quite as much of a recluse as my father was, but I'm not exactly a social butterfly either. My take is that I would have been better off if my parents split, and each tried to fulfill their lives as much as possible. I went through too much of my mom struggling while my dad sat around, lonely and inhibited; blah.

I spend lots of time pondering my life, behavior, and why I am the way I am. It's difficult work trying to "un-condition" yourself or whatever. I don't want to drastically change or anything, but I think I'd be happier without the "loveless marriage." I have friends with truly happy families, and it's always a shock for me to see them function so well.

I could probably have expressed myself better, but Blarg's post pretty much sums it up.

Re: Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

The main problems don't come from the parents being married or divorced. They come from the parents putting their own desires ahead of their kids. Good parents strive to be selfless, as opposed to selfish, when it comes to their children.

Re: Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

The primary cause of damage to kids from divorced homes is the economic impact and the common corresponding change in a child's peer group.

Stability is a great commodity in a child's life. Divorce typically adversely affects that stability. Children usually go with the mother and the mother's economic well being is likely to suffer as a result of the divorce.

This thread assumes that the parents are the primary vehicle of influence in the life a a child and while that's a commonly held notion, it just isn't true. A child's peer group is of far greater importance. The extent to which a divorce winds up damaging or changing a child's relationship with his or her peers has the greatest impact on the child.

A loveless marriage of convenience for the purposes of providing kids with a stable household figures to be beneficial to the child(ren). Even if the quality of parenting were to diminish that's a trivial sacrifice compared to the benefits kids get from a stable, economically viable domestic situation.

Re: Do kids benefit from a loveless marriage?
 

I think we could have an interesting debate about whether parents or peers are more influential on a child's life. I'm unconvinced that peers are more important.