There are situations where the mom won’t relent and kicks dad out or takes the kids, either way, regardless of what dad wants. That happened in my case in 1971. Mom was a feminist and Dad was oppressing her (somehow).
Dad did everything he could to make sure he saw us. He got an apartment close to us and school. He gave us ride to activities to have more time with us. Eventually, as we got older, mom loosened her controlled hold over visitation time and we could spend as much time as we wanted with him.
So, whatever anyone tells you, it’s not the same as having a dad in the home. Like you, Rod, I would do ANYTHING to make sure my marriage works, for the kids sake, short of withstanding abuse.
The sad thing about all this is that for years I thought I was just one little girl, overly lonely for her dad, that there was something wrong with me for wanting to be with my dad more. Seems like every child of divorce that I met felt the same.

As Lord Karth noted on the other divorce thread, most often it’s the woman who initiates the divorce. Sometimes this is with good cause (no one should have to stay with a drunk, or an abuser) and sometimes not (bloom is off the rose and wife is just tired of having a man around she’s not madly in love with).
So really what’s needed is a plea for women (and by women) to stay with their husbands.

There are cases where I think divorce is probably the only option. In one family I knew of, the mother finally left, years too late, years after her alcoholic husband raped her and she conceived their last child, after her husband had allowed their 13-year-old daughter to drive him home from the bar and she got in an accident, after all three of their older children had witnessed years of physical and verbal abuse between their parents and had been victims of their parents’ abuse. None of the kids, including the little one who was raised largely away from her father, grew up unscarred. None of them had children of their own. That’s a family that would have been better off without Dad, a lot sooner than it was. If Mom or Dad is gay and miserable in the marriage, I also wonder how happy the kids are going to be if the parents stay together. There are some cases where divorce is probably the best option, even if the kids get hurt. But if parents are only mildly unhappy together and could possibly fix it, I’d agree they should do what they can to stay together. I’m glad my parents still love each other and are together.

My wife and I were having problems, and my wife announced to our daughters that we were separating. My 4-year-old said, “But we need a Daddy.”
We recently completed 20 years of marriage. Wise child, she was (and is).

Off topic: but not really: why do I have to click through an image of a couple having sex to view this?
Captcha: Rome world

But yeah, conservatives (crunchy & otherwise), keep telling people who are gay they can’t marry same sex people, so that they marry, conceive children with, and ultimately leave spouses like Joe Carter.

I’ve been watching a family self-destruct for the past year or so, and it’s been horribly painful and tragic. The dad did do his best, actually (and is doing so), but the mom forced it. The things she’s done have been so strange that a mental problem seems likely, but her idea is that she converted to a different church and if her husband didn’t go with her, she would do anything to get rid of him. If I ever meet her new pastor, who helped her lie and destroy her family, I will be very tempted to punch him in the head.
I think the kids are screwed up for life. They are such great kids and they’ve been put through hell for pretty much no reason–the whole thing is so tragically pointless I just can’t stand it.

my ex-wife worked for years building a barrier between my children and I while planning to divorce me. I have not heard from my children (now 23 and 19) for 3 years.
Yes staying together would have been my choice if the other side had been open and fair as to what was the problem. any attempt at trying to solve problems was turned back
She still block contacts
there comes a time when staying together is not the solution. and in this day and age the courts still side with the wife

Sometimes it works better for the children if their parents do NOT live together anymore. There’s less screaming, less of the daily drama that scars and scares, less living examples of what not to be as a partner. Many a child of divorce speaks of the relief (as well as the sadness) they experience when the parents finally make the split and are able more to focus more on helping the kids and less on dissing the spouse since he/she is no longer there 24/7. Much depends on the age of the children involved.

Many a child of divorce speaks of the relief (as well as the sadness) they experience when the parents finally make the split and are able more to focus more on helping the kids
I’ve talked with numerous divorced children and am one myself. I’ve never heard such a thing.

There are parents of both genders who are willing to be ‘martyrs if you killed them quick,’ but aren’t willing to assume a life of quiet, prolonged sacrifice.

Someone with more knowledge correct me, but I think most divorces these days lead to *joint* custody, with the kids spending 3 or 4 nights in each of their father’s and mother’s households. So fathers should have the same opportunity to be as central to their children’s lives as the mothers.
Also, I’m not sure how a marriage can be expected to continue if one of the parties involved is gay.

“Do as I say, not as I do” arguments are always a little suspect. I realize that they’re a staple here, not necessarily insincere, not necessarily wrong, and often the best any of us can do, hard experience being the best teacher. But they’re suspect, and often not particularly well thought out.

Helen, not really a possible solution if one or both parents move out of state. Unless you alternate years entirely, which sounds more disruptive to me than Dad moving out and only getting weekends.

My childhood friend “K” is one example of a husband who did initiate a divorce. He and his wife (his high school girlfriend from our old neighborhood) were married 15 years. They had two daughters, eight years apart (not planned that way; the wife had troubles conceiving again after the first). Now every story has two sides, and I’ve really only heard his side– though I saw his sister and brother at my step-mom’s funeral last year and they confirmed some of it from family get-togethers, and the sister is decidedly not a fan of K and not one to take him uncritically at all. And I know myself that the guy is lazy as the day is long and his housekeeping (he was “Mr Mom” while his wife had a good job making $$$) is about equal to my cats’. But the wife was a [rhymes with "witch"] of the first order.
He spent years trying to keep it together with her. They did counselling through the Church (they are Catholic) and he called one separation off for the girls’ sake. But last year he called it quits. I don’t know what to say about it, really. I know I would not like to live under the same roof with his wife, who has always treated me with the chilly courtesy you show those you consider unworthy of your time and attention. And I wouldn’t ever want to live under one roof with K either. But what do you do after every attempt to fix what’s broken fails?

Points:
1) I’ve never understood the “joint custody” and the “visitation” stuff. If I were a kid, I think a single parent is better than that sort of baloney. If I were a divorced parent, I would simply agree for one of us to take them and then let the other fade. If I were a kid, I would howl with laughter at the visitation thing, and start plotting to get out of that “family” ASAP.
2) The article is pretty funny in this way: even though women initiate most divorces, men are ego-driven enough to think they can have much an effect on keeping families together, like Carter does. Always get a chuckle off this.
3) Helen, I’m not sure how a marriage can be expected to continue if one of the parties involved is gay.
I love this quote! It sums up all the cultural decay in a single sentence. To answer the way a more kid-friendly era would have: personal happiness does not trump personal responsibility – suck it up, should have thought about that before going into heat! And why does being gay get some sort of pass? A person could just as well fill the “if one of the parties involved ………..” with whatever one wants and finds important…I personally like the “when one of the parties needs the cute young thing down the street” but am not asinine enough to say it out loud! In summary, the obvious answer to how can one be expected to continue is, how about because you promised to!.
The bottom line: marriage doesn’t mean anything anymore except from a personal and religious point of view, period. When a person says the word “marriage” today, it could mean anything. Usually, however, it means nothing.

I find it amusing that social conservatives can’t see how large parts of their agenda are in conflict.
Carter’s problem is best addressed by universal acceptance and participation of gay people in society. So marriages like his will not happen at all. His child was born doomed,
Since women initiate most divorces it would seem logical to explore what is causing their unhappiness and see what can be done to ameliorate it.
A similar issue, the number of children society produces, would be best solved by finding ways to support women in ways that allow them to have children and a life.
But no social conservative will support any policies that address these issues in a practical way and violently oppose any one else doing so.

It helps to remember that there is more to being a parent than being present.
The relationship you have with your spouse will be your child’s model of what they expect from their relationships. The way that the parents interact with each other will be the calibration for a “normal” relationship in your child’s subconscious.
There’s more to abuse than hitting. If you can’t help yourself from acting passive aggressively toward your spouse, then you’re teaching your child to be passive aggressive by example. If all you can muster towards your partner is civility, then you’re teaching your children that civility is enough. If you stay “for your children’s sake”, you’re telling them that it’s ok for people to treat them the same way you’re getting treated.

Mont D. Law,
I can think of three social conservatives who have written public policy proposals that address needs for two earner families, etc… Ramesh Ponuru, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. Your assertion that “no social conservative will support any policies that address these issues in a practical way and violently oppose any one else doing so” is false.

Mont D. Law, Carter’s problem is best addressed by universal acceptance and participation of gay people in society. So marriages like his will not happen at all.
Pah. Anyone who thinks being homosexual is some sort of a light switch – you either are or are not – doesn’t know many people with sexual disorders (I speak from a biological point of view, disorder being not conducive to passing on offspring). There will always be confused people sexually, no matter how “accepted” they are.
Since women initiate most divorces it would seem logical to explore what is causing their unhappiness and see what can be done to ameliorate it.
Another snort. Again, what women want is the moon. That is, they want the highest status male they know to be their own personal property, and the ability to jump ship if another even higher status male shows up. I know progressives believe anything can be done via higher spending and more debt, but I’m afraid this is just out of the reach of even an Obama-style New Deal! Either every woman shares the highest status male (harem), or they divide up into winners or losers (monogamy), or they take the middle road as we do now (serial monogamy). That’s the best we can do for them, I’m afraid. The kids? Aww, we just shaft them. Anything for woman’s rights .

“When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need.”
Quoted for truth.

He;s absolutely right about the harm that divorce and separation inflicts on children. It’s unfortunate that so many of his colleagues on the conservative religious right work so hard and so intentionally to inflict that harm on so many children. But hey, those kids’ parents are gay, so they deserve to suffer.
Weakening and breaking up gay families won’t make the parents straight or permit the kids to live with their biological parents. It will just mean that those kids suffer the same way kids from other broken homes suffer.
To borrow Dreher’s word from a recent post, “Disgusting.”

mdavid:
Your wife left because you were a cynical jerk, not because you weren’t rich enough.

As tough as it was to have my parents go through a divorce when I was in junior high and to have a visiting (or sometimes not) dad, the period when they were “staying together for the kids” was worse. I don’t think divorce should be undertaken lightly, and I don’t think it is by Gen xers like me and younger people who realize that marriage is something more than a casual lifestyle accessory. But staying together for the kids isn’t doing them any favors, unless you want to model a dysfunctional relationship for them.

The two most important things Carter says are these:
“When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. If you disagree, you can stop reading now.”
and
“Divorce doesn’t just end a marriage—it ends a family.”
I think people are (predictably) getting caught up in the whole gay issue, when it’s really pretty irrelevant here. It is no more acceptable for a woman to declare “This marriage (family) is over, because I wish to pursue sexual relationships with other women,” than it is for her to declare “This marriage (family) is over, because I wish to pursue sexual relationships with men other than my husband.” And given that study after study comes up with a figure of about 4% of the total population being gay (not quite the 10% figure usually cited) it’s overwhelmingly clear that most divorces are not taking place because gay men or gay women are marrying opposite-sex spouses and then regretting this.
If we, as a society, really thought about Carter’s two points–that parenthood makes life about what your children need instead of what you, individually, want, and that divorce ends a family–we’d have a pretty hard time justifying our country’s preposterously high divorce rate. But we’re in the midst of a continuing cultural shift which sees children and their needs as secondary, subordinate, and relatively unimportant compared to adult desires–and which considers childbearing and parenthood as unnecessary excrescences on adult relationships instead of a natural and desired result of these relationships. Consider this:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/11/i-don-t.html
and this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/25/AR2010062500188.html
The idea that neither marriage nor childbearing are particularly important to women is a novel one, though I think it’s the expected trajectory of radical feminism. Given this growing social reality, then, is it really realistic at all to expect men and women whose marriages have become difficult, burdensome, unpleasant, or in any way irritating to them to stay together “for the kids” or to work things out for the best good of the children and for the preservation of the family?
The answer is: no, not in our culture where selfish hedonism is the only virtue, and anything which stands in its way is called a vice. Why should any man or women put their desires for pleasure outside a marriage on hold for the sake of children–especially when having the children was the woman’s sole choice, and when she could have aborted them at any time before their births if she wanted to spare them the eventual pain of the all-but-inevitable dissolution of the family?
Outside of traditional religious groups, you won’t find too many people who agree with what Carter is saying in principle–and inside the religious groups, you still won’t find that many people who agree with what he is saying enough to practice it, through the good and bad times of a marriage. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” That poetic observation of Yeats’ is pretty much our cultural motto, after all. Stay together for the kids? But I’m not happy! cries the mob, and everyone nods with sagacious approval.

Another snort.
Don’t you think you’ve had enough?
Pah. Anyone who thinks being homosexual is some sort of a light switch – you either are or are not – doesn’t know many people with sexual disorders (I speak from a biological point of view, disorder being not conducive to passing on offspring).
You speak creatively, with an unusual definition of a term, so that you may use that term to insult people.
There will always be confused people sexually, no matter how “accepted” they are.
You’re probably right about this little bit. It applies to a very small percentage of people who self-identify as heterosexual and an even smaller percentage of those who self-identify as homosexuals and virtually none of those who identify as bisexual. These people need to be upfront with anyone they marry. Full disclosure.
But on to Joe Carter’s plea. I’m struck by what appears to be a lot of denial on his part. He may have felt like he was doing a lot to stay close to his kids, but given his description of his career choices (and, yes, I recognize that he may have been required to fulfill a time obligation when he signed up) and how things turned out, it’s odd that he would defend his role in parenting to Blankenhorn.
Divorce is difficult. It should be much more difficult to obtain, in my opinion. He’s right that parents should to whatever they can to avoid it. They should also do whatever they can to accommodate the needs of their children if a divorce is inevitable.

I think people are (predictably) getting caught up in the whole gay issue, when it’s really pretty irrelevant here.
Truer words were never spoken.
Now, try convincing the “pro-family” organizations and a certain political party that shall not be named.

I think people are (predictably) getting caught up in the whole gay issue, when it’s really pretty irrelevant here.
Do you not see how much the Religious Right undermines its “pro-family” credibility when it mobilizes en masse to pass laws to weaken and break apart the only families many children know?
But we’re in the midst of a continuing cultural shift which sees children and their needs as secondary, subordinate, and relatively unimportant compared to adult desires–and which considers childbearing and parenthood as unnecessary excrescences on adult relationships instead of a natural and desired result of these relationships.
We finally agree! The Religious Right considers the needs of children as “secondary, subordinate, and relatively unimportant compared to [its] desire[]” to express its disapproval of the parents of those kids.
Outside of traditional religious groups, you won’t find too many people who agree with what Carter is saying in principle
Not true. Many gay parents seek marriage for pretty much precisely the reasons Carter gives. It’s hard to take an organization’s claim of being pro-children when that organization works hard to make sure the kids of gay parents never get the protections of marriage.

“The answer is: no, not in our culture where selfish hedonism is the only virtue, and anything which stands in its way is called a vice.”
Wildly overstated, for effect I presume. Most of the people I know with kids who divorce do not do it easily. There is often an abusive, usually verbally, spouse. There are often financial difficulties. Lots of times they just married too soon or because they got pregnant. They are often alone and have no family support. It certainly doesnt look like hedonism most of the time, but maybe I have a select population here. Most people seem to be making an effort to live nearby and stay involved even when things cannot be resolved.
That said, I think Carter mostly correct. Other than abuse, and maybe serial infidelity, you should suck it up. Divorce should be relatively uncommon. Split once the kids go off to college. Maybe churches could actually help here. SSpend time talking about what marriage is really like instead of some idealized fantasy. Less time bashing gay marriage and more time on real life prep.
Steve

brian, mdavid: Your wife left because you were a cynical jerk, not because you weren’t rich enough.
Yeah, I understand that. But riddle me this: why did my new boyfriend leave me? Sniff…he was a cynical jerk like myself!

I went to a cousin’s graduation from ND when it was still an all male school – I was about 12 at the time yet I still remember something Theodore Hesburg said to the all male graduating class – “the best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother”. Wise man.
Kida aren’t stupid – they recognise hypocrisy when they see it – you can’t tell a kid “I love you so much” while you fail to do whatever it might take to make a marriage work and walk away from the home (granted there are some cases where one should divorce) and expect that kid to believe you do love them.

My parents got divorced when I was a child, and I had a pretty miserable childhood. However, that was mainly due to my parents’ poor choices of subsequent parrtners, rather than the divorce per se. i don’t think a miserable couple really offers children a better picture of the world than a non-couple.
Also, suppose parents stay together for the children’s sake. OK, then when the kids turn 18, they can get divorced? The parents of a friend of mine did that, and it shattered him emotionally – he thought that he had grown up in this roses-round-the-cottage-door family, and the day after his 18th birthday they said they’d been living a lie. He ended up a heroin addict for several years.
I tend to agree with mdavid that most people are not clearly homo- or heterosexual, and many “gays” could probably make their heterosexual marriages work even if the sex is less than ideal. However, I question whether most marriage breakups are really about wanting different sexual partners. Most of these discussions seem to assume that everyone is 17. I am unhappily married, and staying together for the sake of the children, pretty much like Rod advises. However, the unhappiness, which may or may not eventually lead to divorce, has little to do with either of us finding new lust-objects, of either sex, and everything to do with massive personal incompatibility. For the sake of my children, I would perfecly cheerfully swear never to have sex again, if for some reason that were important, but whether I can continue in the current situation is a different matter entirely. I am sometimes stagggered by the sex-obsessiveness of both sides in these sorts of debates.

Rombald, I tend to agree with mdavid that most people are not clearly homo- or heterosexual
Just to be clear: I didn’t say that, nor believe that. Most people are hetro. It’s only the outliers on he bell curve I was talking about; people with abnormal sexual appetites of a type that could effect a marriage partner (this includes a lot more than homosexual leanings, btw) are rarely 100% any one direction. Hence “acceptance” of them by society would not prevent people marrying and then changing later, making that a moot argument.

“1) I’ve never understood the “joint custody” and the “visitation” stuff. If I were a kid, I think a single parent is better than that sort of baloney. If I were a divorced parent, I would simply agree for one of us to take them and then let the other fade,”
mdavid, you’d really let your – what is it now, 7 or 8 children just disappear from your life? Or disappear from theirs, no matter how sad it made them? Is this heartlessness for real?
I’ve known so many sad children whose fathers thought they could simply fade away. I was one, and I was 18 when my parents split. It’s worse than having dad die because the kids keep thinking they are to blame, that they are not lovable. It takes many years for them to get angry at the missing parent, if they ever do. Depression, loss of faith and the ability to trust, fear of intimacy and marriage, a willingness to abandon their own kids. Don’t even joke about it.

For what is worth, I am one of those childs whose life was hell until my mother was finally able to kick my father out of the house (when I was 16) after being miserable for the previous 4 or 5 years, of fights, screams, humiliation, etc.
i am not sure i’ve fully recovered from those days, but my happiness went through the roof after that, best day of my life, Dec 23, 1978

Joe says that divorcing fathers should be as good fathers as they can be, and that men whose wives say they want to leave should do everything within their power to change the situation.
I have a better idea–why doesn’t he propose that men be as present in their kids’ lives as they can be before the point of the threat of leaving? Even better, make sure you do everything possible to choose a spouse you are compatible with long-term; don’t select the woman with the biggest b****s or the man with the flashiest car. (It sounds like his life in the military wouldn’t have been conducive to being very present in his daughter’s life even without divorce.)
Make sure you marry someone you can deal with money with well, and someone you can deal with conflict well. Acting like a grownup on those two issues would lead to a lot fewer divorces.

Well the whole gay issue may be pretty irrelevant here, but that’s exactly my situation: I found out my husband was gay two years ago, when I had three children under 10. He didn’t tell me, either. We are all still living together, for a variety of reasons, including financial ones (I am a SAHM), and he is meanwhile pursuing another life. He is, though, still a good father, and the children are happy to have him here. It’s a miserable situation, I’m finding it pretty close to intolerable, and I suspect I may not be setting any kind of good example for my kids by putting up with it. But I also see no happy solution of any kind to this…so we go on.

I appreciate the people who share the stories, some difficult, of their own lives. That’s the real value to these threads. We certainly can’t come to agreement on some of the issues, including divorce as an option, in and of itself. Still, just by looking at the different personality types here and the way people engage — the candid stories about one’s life, the people exchanging joshing comments, and the finger waggers, the ones you can’t reach, you get a reminder of how divorces can come about. People really can be wide apart in how they look at and discuss issues and we sure see that here. Not because they’re holding their hands over their ears and going lalalala while others speak but because their frames of reference and goals differ so much. I think the critical factor in many divorces is lack of intimacy (whole package, emotional as well as physical). Without emotional intimacy, trust of your partner and the ability to speak honestly with him or her knowing that both sides want to work things out, you don’t have a safe zone at home even if there is a physical relationship. Without a safe zone, you’re unlikely to work out the problems.
As to the writer’s larger point, it only addresses fathers who are married to the mothers of their children. Many fatherless children are fatherless because the men never married the women. And of course some children lose their fathers to death, especially during time of war.
Interestingly, if the argument is that a father should stay with the mother of his child, the married man who has a one night stand and the woman bears his child as a result would have to decide whether to leave his wife and to build a relationship with the child and the other woman. Doesn’t happen that often, but such a scenario can occur and does raise the question as to the obligations of the man, especially if his marriage is childless and his only child is being brought up outside his marriage. If his first obligation is to the child, then he really faces some difficult choices. I’m happy not to face such a scenario or to know anyone in my circle who does but point to it only to say that peoples’ relationships can be very complicated and far from “story book.”

Also, suppose parents stay together for the children’s sake. OK, then when the kids turn 18, they can get divorced?
There’s the old joke:
Old Married Couple Gets Divorced
An aged couple showed up in their lawyer’s office bright and early one morning and announced that they wanted a divorce.
“Gee,” said the lawyer, “and at your age and after fifty years of married life. What brought about this decision now?”
“Well you see,” explained the couple, “we wanted to wait until the children were dead.”
http://jokes.hotplugins.com/cgi-bin/645/jokepage1.cgi?jid=2111
Interestingly, if the argument is that a father should stay with the mother of his child, the married man who has a one night stand and the woman bears his child as a result would have to decide whether to leave his wife and to build a relationship with the child and the other woman.
Could do like Ben Franklin did:
Franklin had one illegitimate child named William who was the last loyalist governor of New Jersey. The mother of his child was never established. William lived with and was raised by his father and Deborah Read. He also had two children with Deborah: Francis Folger who died when he was four and Sarah.
Franklin’s marriage to his wife Deborah was also somewhat irregular:
Wife: Deborah Read. She had actually been married to a man named John Rodgers who fled without giving her a divorce. Therefore, she was unable to marry Franklin. They lived together and had a common law marriage in 1730.
http://americanhistory.about.com/od/colonialamerica/p/bio_franklin.htm

Elizabeth, mdavid, you’d really let your – what is it now, 7 or 8 children just disappear from your life?
If I couldn’t stay married, yes. The family as a whole comes before my own personal relationships within said family. And yes, I know that’s a shocking concept for our individualistic culture.
But didn’t you read the news flash above? My wife has already left because I am a cynical jerk. But hey, I did my best; I even went out right away and got a boyfriend (for the kid’s sake, natch, it’s always for the children!) since I read somewhere on CC that same-sex partners are so, so much better for the little tykes. But then even he dumped me because we couldn’t legally marry due to the evil conservative bigots that dominate my state. So cut me some slack, eh? I do what I can.

Rombald writes: “I am unhappily married, and staying together for the sake of the children, pretty much like Rod advises. However, the unhappiness, which may or may not eventually lead to divorce, has little to do with either of us finding new lust-objects, of either sex, and everything to do with massive personal incompatibility.”
Rombald, I’m sure the situation you describe is very unhappy. But to some extent, all human beings are incompatible with all other ones–such is the nature of the self.
Rod has shared a lot about his sister’s struggle with cancer, and like most of us I’ve thought about what I would do in response to a diagnosis of such a serious disease; I think most of us would, like Ruthie, put up a fight, and would do whatever we had to do medically, physically, emotionally, spiritually etc. for such a fight.
Marital unhappiness is like a cancer, leading to the death of the family (as Carter put it). Are there no ways to fight this kind of cancer? Is there no hope but a dreary struggle for daily survival followed by divorce when the hopelessness becomes too great? For actual cancer we do rather drastic things: we try to poison the cancer or radiate it out of existence or cut it out surgically. For the cancer of marital unhappiness, are there no such tools?

Hmmmm. As someone who has been in a similar situation as Rombald’s, I can say that there are lots of things to try. I suspect most people who realize their marriages are in that degree of trouble have tried all kinds of things, especially when they have children to consider: that’s how they know the marriage is in deep trouble.
Sure, there are ways to fight, or at least attempt to fight, marital unhappiness. But it takes two to turn things around. One person can try mightily; but marriage takes two people trying.
And of course there are ways to fight cancer, too.
And sometimes the cancer still wins.

Connie Connie @ 6:12 PM writes:
“I have a better idea–why doesn’t he propose that men be as present in their kids’ lives as they can be before the point of the threat of leaving? Even better, make sure you do everything possible to choose a spouse you are compatible with long-term; don’t select the woman with the biggest b****s or the man with the flashiest car. (It sounds like his life in the military wouldn’t have been conducive to being very present in his daughter’s life even without divorce.)”
As one Dr. L. Schlesinger used to put it, “Love is not enough.”
The main problem I see with what you propose, good lady, is that trying to encourage that would run counter to virtually every standard being pushed by the opinion-makers and -movers in this society. From the White Palace to the Madison Avenue offices of the corporate Lords, long-term thinking is the LAST thing they want to encourage.
That would actually lead to people spending less of their income, saving more of it and not running up debt that can’t/won’t ever be repaid. Bad for the Corporate balance sheet; can’t have that.
It might also lead to more families having independent resources of their own, which in turn would lead to less dependence on State programs.
Who knows ? It might, ultimately, even lead to people doing REALLY outrageous things like: turning off the television/radio; actually reading books, and even doing things with and for their OWN families, rather than what some TV celebrity or politican wants. Maybe even (gasp !) taking charge of their OWN lives !
My God in heaven, Connie, what are you ? Some kind of subversive ??
You radical, you !
Your servant,
Lord Karth

Just wanted to clarify my post from yesterday.
First, I agree that once your first child is born your life becomes about what the child needs and not what you want. Though I would argue that what you want first takes a back seat when you get married. What’s best for the family — which is initially, before kids come, just the couple — takes precedence. (I think, though, that both of these views are pretty new.)
Second, to me marriage is a sexual relationship. Obviously the importance of sex in the relationship waxes and wanes (I have small kids — believe me, I know sex is not always all that important in a marriage! ) But still, marriage is where sex belongs, right? So I don’t understand how a marriage between a hetrosexual and a homosexual could be expected to endure. Isn’t the homosexuality of one party grounds for annulment of a Catholic marriage? (Perhaps I am wrong about that.)
But that raises the broader issue of whether adults should just suck it up and deal, whether one party to the marriage is gay, or the marriage was not a good match, or whatever. Here I have several thoughts. I am not sure maintaing a marriage involving a gay parent and a straight parent is what those two people’s children need. In my view, the marriage never should have happened, and if the gay partner is 40 or younger, shame on him or her for not being honest going in. If the gay partner is older, I have more compassion — acceptance of homosexuality is very, very new, and I can imagine the terror of being different, the desperate desire to just get married and “be normal.” For a gay person to marry a straight person would still be a wrong decision, in my view, but more understandable. But what of the kids in this situation? To say that a gay and straight person should stay married is to say that marriage can mean very little (it’s not a sexual relationship, at that point, you’re really just roommates or, we hope, friends) and it doesn’t matter — the kids will still be better off than if the parents are divorced. I guess I’d want to hear from the children of gay/straight marriages before I determine that’s true.
For me, it’s similar to the dilemma posed by two people who are not emotionally compatible — it’s tragic and difficult. “Just stay together” is glib, and too easy an answer. Sometimes splitting *will* be the best thing — for the kids! The idea that splitting is *always* the wrong thing for the children’s needs can only be espoused by people who grew up in families with happy marriages. I am the child of a profoundly unhappy marriage of two ill-matched people. My husband is the child of a father who was an unrepentant adulterer. My mother-in-law put up with it until my husband was 18, and then divorced my father-in-law.
The divorce was very difficult and hard on everyone. But so, so the right thing! My husband’s family was so much more peaceful than mine, once the dust around the divorce settled (which, in fairness, took a number of years). My husband is convinced he would have lived a much *better* childhood had his parents divorced much earlier.
Looking at my parents, I suppose it was better for us kids that they stayed together. But given my many unhappy childhood memories, I can’t say that for certain.
For those of us who are well-matched to our spouses, who are in strong marriages, it’s so hard to imagine what it’s like to have your choice of mate turn out to have been a grave error. I count myself among those in a happy, stable marriage — in a lot of ways, the disasters that were our parents’ marriages are the best negative example, the things to avoid, the people my husband and I don’t ever want to be. We have created much, much better for our children.
The last point I wanted to make was about the idea of the weekend father. From Mr. Carter’s article, it sounds like, given his job, he was going to be a weekend dad whether he remained married to his child’s mother or not. I do understand how little control some people have over their jobs, I really do. But in no universe is the job he had compatible with fatherhood, married or not. I hope he was constantly looking for opportunities to change his work situation so he could spend substantially more time with his child — and not focusing on what interested him, what job would make him happy. This has nothing to do with divorce, and everything to do with prioritizing your children over yourself.

Helen @ 2:57 PM writes:
“For me, it’s similar to the dilemma posed by two people who are not emotionally compatible — it’s tragic and difficult. “Just stay together” is glib, and too easy an answer. Sometimes splitting *will* be the best thing — for the kids! The idea that splitting is *always* the wrong thing for the children’s needs can only be espoused by people who grew up in families with happy marriages. I am the child of a profoundly unhappy marriage of two ill-matched people. My husband is the child of a father who was an unrepentant adulterer. My mother-in-law put up with it until my husband was 18, and then divorced my father-in-law.”
First things first: marriage is, among other things, a promise made before one’s family, one’s spouse’s family, one’s community, and one’s God. It should take a He!l of a lot to dissolve that promise.
As to your situation, Helen, the law, even before no-fault divorce, recognized adultery as grounds for a divorce. Your mother-in-law certainly had grounds for divorce based on adultery, and if they were Catholic, probably for an annulment based on fraud as well.
As to the “profoundly unhappy marriage”: was it physically abusive ? Was there drinking, drugs or other things that would have threatened the safety of children in that household ? If that was the case, then there would have been legitimate reasons for a physical separation, if not for a divorce. I am assuming that the vows in question included terms of “love, honor and obey/respect” or something similar. The bottom line remains the same, from where I sit:
You make a promise, you keep it. A man (or woman) has to be as good as their word.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
captcha poetry: “circumstances clinched”.
Creepy.

This is an interesting thread for me. My parents were miserably unhappy together for 23 years. They stayed together for the benefit of the children. I spent my teens wishing they’d get divorced. But I was shocked at the disintegration of my family when they did (very 70′s – I expected a good divorce!). Perhaps my sisters would see things differently, but I am glad they stayed together for our sakes. They set no good example, but we were able to grow up in a suburban environment with many stable, good examples around us, if not at home. And that never would have happened if they had split up earlier. We certainly had many issues to deal with because of our upbringing; but there would have been even more if we had had to deal with divorce sooner. And I felt like a space alien because I thought of the divorce as a disaster – until I discovered Judith Wallerstein’s work. My parents are still very self-centered and self-justifying; but at least we had both of them while we grew up.

Scotch Meg, I agree. My parents had a horrid marriage and there was physical abuse. They separated several times. As a teen I wanted them divorced. More accurately I wanted Dad gone. Once we kids were adults our parents divorced. It was messy in the fact they never really did split the property properly.
Looking back, them staying married was the best option on a list of crap-tastic options. In the ideal world my mom would meet and remarry a wonderful and kind man. Of the men my mother has dated and been ‘girl’friend to it looks as if she would have jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. The thing that made Dad leagues better than the men who followed, he had a vested interest in the welfare of the kids, whereas those worthless men Mom dated, did not.
There are some wonderful step-fathers out there, but there are also creeps and jerks, and a single mom longing for love and low on self-esteem may have trouble separating the wheat from the chaff.