Feminist Advice Friday: Should we stay together for the kids?
A reader wonders if divorce is worse for kids, even when it's better for the mom
Feminist Advice Friday: Should we stay together for the kids?
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A reader asks…
I wonder if you have any research and thoughts on some partnerships meant just for raising kids until young adults or teenagers, and then relationships end. I am finding myself in that exact situation. I loved my child-raising days and memories. I would do many things differently to protect myself, but overall it was what I dreamed of.
I see couples divorcing in their 40s or after kids are not super young. What do you think of this phenomenon?
My answer:
A relationship doesn’t have to last forever to be worthwhile. And the fact that a relationship ends doesn’t necessarily mean that it never should have happened in the first place. I think we have a weird cultural norm where a divorce is a “failed marriage,” rather than just an ended marriage. The implication here is that the marriage should never have happened in the first place, or that the love wasn’t real.
But maybe it was. Maybe they were your soulmate for a while. Or a soulmate. Or just a worthwhile partner. You don’t have to rewrite the entire history of a relationship to end it. And staying together for a specific purpose is just fine.
There is a fundamental difference between staying together in a happy relationship that turns unhappy, and lingering in an unhappy marriage for the kids.
I reject the notion that people should stay in unhealthy marriages for their children. Several false assumptions are wrapped up in the idea that women have an obligation to stay for the children, and each of these assumptions is harmful both to children and society:
Divorce is always bad for kids.
My parents had a high-conflict marriage. I knew my mom was unhappy, and I knew staying together was bad for both of them. Kids know more than adults want to acknowledge, no matter how hard you might try to conceal your unhappiness or your fights.
Divorce is bad for kids when it disrupts a happy childhood. But for most children of parents who aren’t getting along, childhood does not feel happy. In many cases, divorce means your child spends less time with an abusive or incompetent parent, witnesses fewer parental conflicts, and has parents who are less stressed and distracted.
An unhappy marriage is better for kids than a divorce.
The relationships we experience as children feel familiar, comfortable, and normal. That’s why we so often replicate them in adulthood.
What do you want your kids to perceive as normal?
What do you want their model of love to be?
If you’re in an unhappy marriage, you have two choices for what to teach your kids:
Love means tolerating unkind treatment from the other person, forever. Unkind treatment is love.
Love means loving yourself and your children to get the fuck out of a situation that is not good for either of you. Self-care is love. Prioritizing your kids’ emotional and physical safety is love.
Kids need and deserve to see good, functioning adult relationships. They need to see that it is possible to leave when things are bad. And perhaps most critically, they need to be taught that women are people, whose feelings matter. Boys who see this are less likely to believe that they are entitled to treat their partners however they want while still expecting their partners to stay. And girls learn that their needs matter, and that they do not owe cruel or unkind or abusive men endless loyalty.
When you leave, you give your kids the gift of a vision of a healthy relationship. You give them a clear message: This relationship is not what you want or deserve for your own romantic future.
Your happiness doesn’t matter.
You matter, too. You only get one life. None of us know how long we will be here. The ultimate myth of patriarchal motherhood is that women’s happiness doesn’t matter. We tell ourselves that our time matters less than men’s, and so we don’t demand equitable partnership. We believe that our happiness is less important than everyone else’s. And perhaps most tragically, we believe that we have to choose between our happiness and our children’s happiness.
Understandably, almost all of use choose our children.
Your well-being and your child’s well-being do not have to be in competition. This is not a zero sum game. We are all better mothers when we are happy. Consider how hard it is to be patient, loving, thoughtful, gentle when you’re stressed. Now consider how the chronic, unrelenting stress of a bad marriage affects you as a mother.
How much happier would you be if you got out of a bad marriage? And how could that happiness empower you to become the mother you want to be, the mother your kids deserve?
So many readers have told me that their lives improved when they left their husbands—even if it was hard, even if some of the abuse continued, even if they had a hard custody fight to get through. I have yet to hear from a single woman who believes her divorce was a mistake.
But I know many women my mother’s age who believe that they wasted decades of their lives on miserable marriages.
Our generation must kill the myth that staying together for the children is the right choice.
It is time to act as if women matter, as if mothers’ happiness counts, too.
Because it fucking does.
I publish #feministadvicefriday every Thursday here and every Friday on Facebook. You can submit your own question to zawn.villines@gmail.com, by messaging my Facebook page, or anonymously by using my site’s contact form. Please consider subscribing to support my work. Paid subscribers gain access to the private Liberating Motherhood support group and additional bonus content.