Some relationships absolutely cause less destruction by ending. Some provide sufficiently despite great flaws.
My culture (and that of like 3/4 of the world’s population) says that’s a bad thing for kids and society as a whole. I used to think westerners were enlightened and had the right idea on allowing and encouraging individual freedom in this area, but now I think they’ve got it wrong. And it’s hard to really know without focusing on what’s been the aggregate effect.
But if they can't get along, I'm sure it's terrible. Just like if the parents stay together?
I find it hard to imagine a child growing up in a house with two parents who treat each other like shit is worse off than one with a single parent, but who knows?
Look, I’m not talking about abusive marriages. For people without a college degree, 60% of marriages will end before the kids are independent and in their own two feet. Most of those don’t involve involve abuse.
> but do people get into that much financial trouble from divorce usually?
Yes. For the average middle class family, having to split into two households is incredibly financially disruptive. Most middle class couples aren’t in a position where one person can take over the housing payment alone. That means moving, potentially changing schools, etc. And there’s a ton of other shared expenses that each parent now has to pay separately.
> What about child support?
For a non-college educated man making the median $36,000 a year, child support here in Maryland works out to $567 per month. That doesn’t come close to offsetting the support of the other householder.
Median household income in my county is $80,000/year. That’s a bit under $5,300 month take home for a married couple. Which is fine—you can buy a 4BR house here in a good school district for $1,450 per month in mortgage. But no way the couple can afford to keep the house if they get divorced. Rent alone in a studio will be $750/month. (Like most normal places, it’s much more expensive to rent here than buy.) Even if the spouse moving out lives like a pauper that’s realistically a $1,500/month hole in the budget few families can cover. So Dad moves into a studio, mom and the kids move into a cheap 2BR, and you’re paying like $1,750 month for housing (total) because you’ve given up the cost advantages of home ownership. And say there is another $750 in new non-shared expenses. So that’s $1,000/month that’s no longer there that was going towards savings/college/enrichment activities, etc. They’ve traded a 4BR house in a nice suburb for two households that are struggling to get by and have no margin. If they’re lucky, the kids got to stay in the same school district, but they’ve probably been taken away from their neighborhood friends. This happened my step siblings in law recently. It’s extremely shitty.
Do you have any evidence of this? As someone from a Muslim country, my family universally has stayed in bad marriages. My wife, an American, has a family rife with divorce. (Not just her parents, but the whole community. Many people don’t really realize this—among those with college degrees, almost 80% of marriages will last 20+ years. But among those with just a high school diploma, it’s just 40%. In lower middle class communities, kids with parents who are divorced are the norm.)
It’s not clear to me which one is better for the parents. But unhappy parents seems superior to divorced ones for the kids. The financial and structural disruption on kids from divorce is massive. It’s not just individual, it’s the whole community. In the lower middle class communities where my wife’s family is from, divorce is the norm. And I can see kids suffering from the disruption, and wanting stability, but having no role models and no guidance because most people around them are divorced.
This is obviously anecdotal. I’d be curious to see data—to my knowledge this hasn’t been studied rigorously. To me, the notion that “divorce is a fine outcome for marriage” is something that is counter intuitive enough to require some evidence.