I think the key difference in this analogy that needs to be acknowleded is that in a house repair, the owner of the house needs to want the repairs, and agree to pay for them. You can decided to stay in a relationship and try and fix it but unless the other person is also willing to try and fix it too, you're not going to get anywhere.
While true, most often both have some want and just don't see how to fix things up. If you can figure out how to fix things up then that is the best thing to do.
While I'm a big believer in marriage for life, I do recognize that sometimes past you messed up and leaving is the best option. 75% (maybe more) of my message isn't about fixing up the current relationship, but carefully choosing who you get into one with in the first place.
If you're trying to fix it in good faith, then marriage counseling and the like is already going to be in the conversation. Still, you can lead a horse to water but can't make them drink. Maybe most couples can reach a compromise, but the blank-slate attitude in the article is for the birds. It's informed by religious conviction. The sanctity of marriage is what's at stake and one's own happiness is secondary.
You can and should keep being a parent after divorce. Staying in itself is not necessarily going to "make" a spouse happy, if it did splitting up would less often be a consideration, but notwithstanding they have their own responsibility to see to it and they can be happy after marriage.
Yes you should continue to be a parent after divorce. But the divorce will have a negative impact on the kids. The statistics show that children of divorced parents have more problems than children from intact marriages. People I know whose parents got divorced said it was devastating to them.
I took a vow to love and honor my wife all the days of my life and I'm going to keep that vow. Is it acceptable to break vows? Or are we talking about marriages that didn't involve vows involving "all the days or my life" or similar language?
> The statistics show that children of divorced parents have more problems than children from intact marriages.
Even if that were true, it does not necessitate that divorce in itself is the problem, but that divorce correlates with behaviors on the part of the parents that can be detrimental. Staying in a problematic relationship does not fix that.
If you misdiagnose the problem, your solution will not be effective.
The more significant statistic qua correlations is the impact of growing up with just one parent after divorce, and of instability of changing circumstances. I have seen no research papers that make a convincing case that divorce is significantly negative for kids.
> People I know whose parents got divorced said it was devastating to them.
My parents were divorced. Know what bothered me? The constant high tempered fighting. They were fucking uncivil assholes with each other, and remained so after the divorce. If anything divorce was a reprieve for myself and siblings.
So your anecdote means nothing to me. Those parents you refer to aren't everyone's parents.
> Is it acceptable to break vows?
The vows are already broken if one of the two parties aren't carrying their own weight. Notwithstanding, if it's a miserable situation that doesn't get better no matter what the parties try, then yes it's acceptable in my own view. But your values aren't my values.
>The more significant statistic qua correlations is the impact of growing up with just one parent after divorce, and of instability of changing circumstances
Doesn't divorce cause those two things? Either the kids live with just one parent, or are sent back and forth between them, which I think is a changing circumstance. And I think divorce itself is an instable changing circumstance. Also, if growing up with just one parent is detrimental, I would think spending less time with each parent would also be detrimental, just to a lesser degree (compared with 0 time), and I think divorce would cause that because the child can no longer spend time with both parents simultaneously.
This literature study[1] says
> The best scientific literature to date suggests that, with the exception of parents faced with unresolvable marital violence, children fare better when parents work at maintaining the marriage.
Although I'll admit I haven't had time to look through all its references to find the supporting data for that claim.
I'm very sorry about the experience you had growing up. I hope you're doing better now.
I agree that anecdotes can't show the whole picture. In this study[2]
>When children were asked if they wanted their parents were not divorced, most of them, 88.51 % answered they wished their parents were not divorced and the rest, 19.14 % agreed with their divorce.
It's a circumstance that changes once. That's not what instability is. Having a revolving door of partners, moving around a lot, and going long bouts without being present before re-entering a kids' life causes instability. If the child has the confidence that they're going to see their parents at regular intervals indefinitely and stay put, that's stable
> I would think spending less time with each parent would also be detrimental, just to a lesser degree (compared with 0 time),
I think even a single change (married->divorced) counts as a form of instability. Of course more changes are worse than 1 change.
>Instability is best described as the experience of abrupt, involuntary, and/or negative change in individual or family circumstances.
>Family Instability
>According to recent estimates, between birth and fourth grade, more than one-third of children see their parents marry, remarry, separate, or start or end a cohabiting union.
This paper[1] says spending more time with kids led to better outcomes for the kids. I think if there are 2 parents in the house the kid will be more likely to be spending time with at least one of them. Although there seem to be studies saying the opposite, or that there's no benefit. So I'm not sure. This paper[2] says the benefit only occurs when both parents spend time with the kid at the same time.
