I grew up with divorced parents, my mom was married for the third time by the time I was 10. It wasn't glorious. It was the furthest thing from glorious. They're all dead now and I'm old and I'm still pissed off about it.

If you can't commit to bringing up a kid together then don't have a kid.

I am so pissed off even writing this, I've just got to say it, fuck parents like you.

Please don't break the HN guidelines like this, even when you feel strongly for legitimate reasons.

You may not feel you owe divorced parents better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

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After careful consideration, I stand by my previous statement.

That's fine, but we need you not to post like that to this site. "Fuck parents like you" is egregiously against the HN guidelines, no matter how legitimate your experience has been. (I have no doubt that it is completely legitimate.)

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Glorious perhaps for the parents.

Reading some of the comments here, I'm reminded of a story I read about several couples renting a summer house, sending all the kids from all the families there for the summer and the parents taking turns spending their vacation there to supervise.

Some outsider was like "Oh, God, spending my two weeks of vacation tending to so many children sounds like a nightmare." And then someone pointed out that for the parents, the vacation was the other six weeks or whatever getting to live like a childless couple.

(Please don't aim your anger at me. I'm on your side here.)

I guess it depends on the age of the children, but beyond a certain age wouldn't it be fun to spend a few weeks with a bunch of other kids in a summer home?

The kids apparently had a blast. I don't recall the age ranges.

I think the only criticism was along the lines of "Well, that's great for the kids. But the poor parents! What in earth were they thinking?!" not realizing that the parents got a different kind of break in addition to doing something wonderful for the children who all got to spend like eight whole weeks at a lake house instead of just two and got to do it with lots of built-in friends to play with, rather than being lonely on an adult vacation away from their friends.

So I’m not sure what exactly are you finding bad about this? Or did I misinterpret your post (specifically about the “anger”, why should describing a positive experience all around elicit anger)?

I think you probably are misinterpreting something.

I'm not saying it's bad. Just that the part that was good for the kids was different from the parts that were good for the parents.

People here saying "That sounds glorious" about 50/50 custody arrangements strike me as thinking about it from the point of view of how the parents experience it and not how the children are likely to experience that.

Everything I've read suggests that shuffling the kids back and forth like that ends up being distinctly negative for the children in most cases.

Thanks for explaining! I guess I expected a more tight/direct analogy to the original divorce scenario (kids feeling neglected because their parents left them with other adults in the lake house?)

Parents also vary a lot in how they feel about having kids around. Spending a two-week vacation with my kids and their cousins/friends is something that I personally would find really fun! And I know many parents that wouldn't feel that way.

Right there with you, my mother entered marriage number four as I turned 10 (not a competition - at least not one I feel I won).

Hearing parents talk about how they went the extra mile to make things better for the kids after the divorce honestly strikes me about like John Wilkes Booth offering Lincoln some gauze for his head wound. Like, it's a nice gesture, but he'd probably have been better off if you hadn't shot him in the first place.

Staying together "for the sake of the kids" isn't generally considered helpful (to the kids). Teenagers know exactly what's going on with their parents. Trying to make out that everything's fine is a hopeless mission.

Incidentally: both of my kids were quite pleased that we divorced; most of their friends were from "blended" families of one kind or another, and once we divorced, they felt that they fitted-in better.

Do you think growing up with parents that would rather not live together would have given you a better experience? Not asking cynically, genuinely curious. Nobody marries expecting to divorce.

Oh absolutely! The psychological safety benefits of having a stable home, the ability to "be a kid" with emotional support from parents instead of having to grow up way too soon and serve as their emotional support, the luxury of not always feeling like you're waiting for "the other shoe to drop" when things are going well, having fond memories of holidays instead of anxiety-inducing split days where you feel guilty for not spending them evenly between households. Not to mention all of the logistical nightmares (never time to spend with friends because you're in transit or the parent wants to have "their" time with the kids, different rules in different households, schoolwork getting mixed up/dropped between cracks, clothing, etc.).

Even for married parents that have struggles and disagreements, the fact that they stay together serves as a rock-solid signal to a child that the family as a whole is important and that ultimately the parents care about the child even more than they care about themselves.

Except in cases of physical violence, I believe it's always better for the children if the parents stay together. And it's not close.

Also, while I'm certainly jealous of people raised in married households, I don't blame them in the slightest for not having much of a sense of how the other half lives. The only way to know is to live through it, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

This may be a grass is greener situation, but my personal experience basically differs from yours completely. My parents should have been divorced long before they actually did. They stuck together because Chinese parents were expected to do so for their children. They got along ok as long as if they treated each other as regular acquaintances, but I never got a hint that they liked each other at all and they often fought when they had to cooperate. I always felt a sense of unease on vacation unless if I was traveling with other friends and could just ignore my parents. I treat people I'm close to worse than they deserve, and I think part of that reason is because my parents were so cold to each other.

> Except in cases of physical violence

This reminds me that my mom blames my dad for making her angry, and taking it out on me. Part of it was her being a Tiger Mom and I think she genuinely has some anger management issues, but I think there was some truth in this. If she had another partner, they probably have an easier time controlling her emotions.

To be fair, my situation was unique because they had barely known each other before they had gotten married, and I think they were simply fundamentally incompatible with each other, like oil and water. I'm completely baffled about why they decided to get married in the first place, but thinking about this more, it might have been a shotgun marriage.

Honestly I have a very similar experience, but the opposite conclusion. Two parents from an Asian country who don't really get along and are very different. I'm glad they stayed together. First of all I know my mother wouldn't have fared very well alone, with outdated skills in a country foreign to her. I also don't think my father would have really done so great either given how different he is from the greater culture-- Asian culture is just so far from western culture that after a certain age you have an impossibly hard time trying to fit in. They may be like oil and water, but I'm glad they have each other. Despite the arguments they both have their needs met and provide a stable home for their kids(and are rewarded for it with regular visits from grandkids during which all their distance seems to evaporate).

I also think their marriage can seem strange, but given where they come from I just don't think marriages based on love were common. Heck it's basically a modern convention. It's nice that we have the(some of us anyways), but it's by no means the norm for humanity. Even today many people get married to people they don't know well. For a lot of people staying single and just feelings things out isn't doable.

Also, while I'm certainly jealous of people raised in ~~married~~ divorced households, I don't blame them in the slightest for not having much of a sense of how the other half lives. The only way to know is to live through it, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

As someone who spent their childhood wishing their parents would get a divorce already, I felt like I was in an upside down world reading your comment.

- I have never in my life gone to my parents for emotional support. They would come to me to tell me how horrible the other parent or my siblings were. And I was constantly tending to my siblings after they had been upset by my parents. Plus the normal things I heard them argue about, mostly my father stressed about losing his job and my mother spending too much money.

- I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop via 1) one of them directly blows up at me 2) blow up at each other and then take it out on me 3) blow up at my siblings, who would then take it out on me.

- We didn't take holidays, but even them driving together to the dentist was extremely stressful as they were guaranteed to start fighting over nothing (see above point).

- There were no logistical nightmares because we all lived in the same house. No argument there.

- I assumed they stayed together not because they cared about us, but for the same reason they treated us like burdens to kick when they were down: their culture taught them that a certain hierarchy and structure in life was more important than stupid American values like happiness, especially the happiness of children. Also my mother couldn't financially support herself without my father's income.

And, yes, there was almost no physical aspect to this unhappiness for me. My older sibling, who did suffer physical abuse, said that, both growing up and to this day, they preferred it to all the emotional injuries.

Much as you may idealise married households, perhaps I'm idealising divorced ones. If my parents had divorced, maybe I would have written your comment.

I remember reading a paper which argued that the impact of divorce on children is determined by pre-divorce family functioning level. Children in low-functioning families often experience parental divorce as a relief, it removes them from conflict/violence/abuse/harm, and it can have a positive impact on their lives; by contrast, in high-functioning families, the parents do a good job of hiding their marital issues from their children, and the children often experience divorce as an unexpected, even traumatic, event, which disrupts the stability of their world, and can produce lasting (even lifelong) psychological harm. I think using that model is a good way of integrating the kinds of contrary experiences expressed in this thread.

If divorce laws were written to put the welfare of children first, they’d make divorce easy for the first kind of family and difficult for the second. However, I don’t think children’s welfare is really a priority for most contemporary divorce laws.

My heart breaks for you and your siblings, I'm so terribly sorry. I wonder if a better delineation might be "broken" households (divorced or not) versus functional/happy ones.

One thing I didn't mention is that as kids growing up in broken households, we often have no frame of reference so our lives feel "normal", and it's only later in life that we piece together the damage our narcissistic parents have wrought. It sounds like this may not have been the case for you and your siblings though - extremely curious as to how you see it and how your perspective has changed over time (if at all).

As someone who grew up with two parents who shouldn't be together and stayed together to provide stability for their kids, it's not better. It actually just trains you to deal with your SO in a disrespectful, passive aggressive way and bury things to make the situation bearable. It's destructive in an insidious way.

It seems more stable, but only from the outside.

For some more anecdata, an ex of mine grew up with parents who had a terrible relationship but stayed together anyway. She once told me she wishes they had just gotten divorced. She can’t know for sure what that particular hell would’ve been like, but the fact that she said that means parents staying together isn’t obviously always better.

My parents would scream their lungs out at each other and I had the same thought a few times growing up. Interestingly once my father passed away my mother started insisting he was the love of her life & a great husband, and that she will never again find such a man.

I think the worst thing for the child is that they aren't settled anywhere. It's one week, then you move and... do you have all your toiletries, what clothes do you have at this parent's, what different schedule and rules, how do I see my friends here, what's around this neighborhood.

Although, sometimes situations like that make you perversely stronger/more flexible/more mature. Adversity is a forge, in the right doses.

Isn't the point of the article that things are getting better compared to how it used to be?

Divorce is always going to suck for kids though even if it gets better.

If the relationship is genial, what is the real problem with being a child if divorce? I have no doubt about your experience, I'm asking from a place of "I don't know and can't really imagine it." I was very, very lucky with the family lottery, so this is pretty foreign to me.

I understand where you're coming from, but the alternative to getting a divorce might be even worse, two adults constantly abusing each other within the household and the child in close proximity to it with no escape.

We don't really know the situation and everyone's is different.

I'm sorry if this drudges up unpleasant memories, but can you elaborate about what was terrible about it? Was it about having to change homes every week?

Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how you feel about or perceive someone else's comment.

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Edit: you have a long history of posting flamewar comments here and otherwise breaking the site guidelines. You've been continuing to do it a lot, unfortunately. If you don't stop this, we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review the site guidelines and stick to them from now on (that means all the time, in every post), we'd really appreciate it.

The point isn't about not divorcing, it's about committing to the kid whether you do or not.

>it's about committing to the kid whether you do or not

The point gp was making was very much about divorcing, or at least co-habitating. Otherwise the anger makes no sense.

This sounds wonderful. But one argument used against 50/50 and in favor of asymmetric time is "kids need continuity". This inevitably favors the mother. "60/40" means the father gets every other weekend and one night a week. Numerically this works out to 80/20 and even young children are quite aware of who their real parent is. It is horrible but it is also SOP for most jurisdictions in the US, and I am not being hyperbolic when I say it's a real, first-world humanitarian crisis. Children do not fair well without fathers, and yet our system degrades the very notion of fatherhood every chance it gets. Furthermore, the bad actors that populate family courts - judges, lawyers, police, therapists, mediators, visitation center workers - they all know the score and as a father you are truly a second-class citizen. You see the children at the whim of your wife, and literally no-one gives a single shit. Why the system is not 50/50 is beyond me, because the argument for continuity is absolutely ridiculous on its face. The real reason it continues is that in family court mothers have far more rights than fathers. Full stop. It's sexist, it's harmful to the children, and yes, I'll even say it's harmful for the father (although you're not supposed to say that, and if you do the system assumes you're lying to be manipulative).

This 60/40 aka 80/20 situation is the good outcome for most fathers. It really only gets worse from there. If you give the judge attitude, they will have no problem putting you on supervised visitation indefinitely.

> This 60/40 aka 80/20 situation is the good outcome for most fathers. It really only gets worse from there. If you give the judge attitude, they will have no problem putting you on supervised visitation indefinitely.

This is incredibly sad.

Edit:

I was curious and I shouldn't have been: https://www.custodyxchange.com/topics/research/dads-custody-...

> The research was conducted over a four month period by talking to legal professionals in every state to find out what the most commonly awarded schedule is for their state.

So, they didn't study actual custody awards, but lawyers opinions about what was “most common”.

So, it's not really a study of what the reality of custody time is, but a study of expert opinion is of what that actual study of the ground truth would find if someone bothered to do it.

> if someone bothered to do it

I didn't notice that bit, so good find. I was bummed to see that most studies don't actually try to ascertain who usually wins when both parents want custody and there are no extenuating circumstances. That seems like an obvious metric to track the health of custody laws.

This is the only government data I found: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

> I was bummed to see that most studies don't actually try to ascertain who usually wins when both parents want custody and there are no extenuating circumstances

The problem is that if there is a custody dispute, then probably at least one, and usually both, sides will be pleading circumstances which pull one way or the other. And any court is likely to issue fact findings that lean the same direction as the custody order. So, if you are going to find what bias exists in the court system you can't look at just custody orders and legally determined facts, you've got to separately readjudicate the fact disputes with an unbiased process. Which is...problematic.

I agree that re-adjudicating cases would be costly and would not be perceived as fair even if it were righting a wrong.

That said, instead of changing individual decisions you can punish the state for outcomes whether they be intended or unintended. Disparate impact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact) is one such tool the courts are already familiar with. There's more nuance to that which can't be ignored - a person can sue an entity for disparate impact but disparate impact is also calculated regularly with respect to lending. The same could be done for custody.

> I agree that re-adjudicating cases would be costly and would not be perceived as fair even if it were righting a wrong.

No, I mean the study would have to readjudicate the cases (not change the legal outcome, but redivining the actual facts from the trial record) to identify differing treatment in different factual circumstances between states.

What do you propose doing then?

I've heard people say a couple things about this that I don't know are true. One is that fathers don't get custody because they don't ask for it. The other is that most custody arrangements are worked out before anyone ever steps into a courtroom.

Does anybody know if these things are fact or fiction? If either or both of those are true, it seems like you can't really blame "the system" for these results.

If you read some of the synopsis at the bottom it explains it. It's a mix of laws and societal attitudes.

This data is also further simplified:

> The percentages in the study reflect cases in which both parents want custody and no complicating circumstances exist ― such as criminal convictions or long-distance separation. It demonstrates the most commonly awarded visitation schedules given to a noncustodial parent by state.

There's a lot of outright misinformation out there - one of the commoner misleading claims is that 50% of fathers who seek custody get it, usually used to trick people into thinking that actually both parents are treated equally and all the complaints are just from men thinking "equality" should mean they get better treatment. The thing is, that 50% figure includes joint custody which can be as little as one weekend a fortnight with the kids in some juristictions, and I think also cases in which the kids' mother isn't actually seeking custody. So a better framing of the same stat is that amongst a self-selected sample of those fathers who think they stand the best chance of obtaining custody, half fail to even get joint custody (which could well mean never seeing their kids again, especially in juristictions where visitation isn't well enforced). That's probably a good explaination for why few fight for it.

Anecdotally, the system was 50/50 for my sister when she got divorced.

There was definitely no court bias for the mother, which was a surprise given that this is the popular culture stereotype. And child support was purely formula based.

The most annoying thing was domiciliary parent designation, even with 50/50 joint custody, as the domiciliary parent had more decision power which allowed for unnecessary drama.

One thing to note is that all of this is state (and country) specific and states might vary significantly.

50/50 usually means no child support, if you’re looking for reasons why it’s uncommon.

Do you mean the mothers fight for more custody so they can nab an income?

Or they don't trust the father to put in his fair share of doctor's visits, buying clothes, etc. The upside of paying child support is that the other party is assumedly taking point on all of those expenses.

In the Netherlands you can still pay child support with 50/50 if there is difference in income, just less of it.

It used to be women being stuck in bad marriages because otherwise they would lose their source of income. Increasingly, it's men stuck in bad marriages because otherwise they will lose access to their children.

Or worse: men who don't realize how dangerous divorce is to their relationship with their children, and believe that the system is basically fair. It is not.

My buddy used to do 80/20 but on alternating months. So he’s go to his dad’s on weekends on one month and then the next month he’d do weeks at his dad’s. Worked reasonably well IMHO. Guess I should ask him how he felt.

That’s what I do with my ex but I can’t escape the hurt, depression, and uncertainty during the weeks when they are with my ex.

I think most parents fully expect to be parents 100% of the time once they have kids.

I don’t want, don’t need, don’t enjoy the “me/adult” time at all. I just want to make dinner for my kids, help with homework, watch a show together, take them to practice, play games, watch them grow, have conversations, hear their voices.

I coach everything just so I can see them on my off weeks. I am president of the pta so I can see them more often too.

It’s awful in every way for me. I can’t stand it when they are gone.

EDIT: Add in my ex bringing boyfriends around which makes me physically ill. I don’t sleep or eat. I feel miserable. I just hope my kids are getting through this okay, but it’s so hard to tell. I don’t want to ask if they feel bad because then they might think they are supposed to be feeling bad. So I just do what I can to make them feel happy and loved.

If you're not already getting help from a qualified therapist, please do so ASAP! They can really help you get through this dark period. I have no doubt the love you feel for your kids is 100% genuine, but the dynamic you describe tells me that you're also using them as an emotional crutch after the divorce. In the long run this will not be good for either them or you. Another reply suggested that you date again, which would be a good step eventually. But it does not sound like you'd be able to get into a healthy relationship yet. You don't have to commit to a therapist right away. Just look up a few near you, set up an initial appointment with each and treat it like interviews where you're the hiring manager. Go talk to them, and then maybe go back to the one you're most comfortable with. Things will get better for you, but you need a hand to pull you out of the ditch right now. Do it for yourself and your kids. They need you to show them what resilience looks like.

please date again and find someone that cares about you and makes you happy agai

My younger siblings had this and I had it for one summer before I left home. It really sucked. Maybe it would be better if the parent and living conditions were equal, but that was not the case. So one week you have a nice bed and your own room in a house you know, and the next you are in a bed with bad sheets, in a shared room with siblings in a house you hate. Friends have a whole summer together, but you are only around every other week. You have to readjust to a new routine every other week. One parent made significantly more than the other so one week would be middle class and the next week would be poor. I guess that is better than always, but it was really jarring.

Speaking as a child that grew up moving back and forth between two households at my parent’s convenience: it really sucks.

Nothing about divorce is pleasant, per se. There's only bad and worse.

Given the parents are separated, how could that be made to suck less?

Are there particular ages where it's especially disruptive (eg teen years where being physically distant from friends houses is more of a problem)?

It's incredibly expensive but it's possible to have three homes and have the parents move around. Each parent gets their own home that they live in during their non-custodial time, and they move into the third home during their custodial time.

Glorious for self-absorbed narcissistic parents, if they're wealthy enough for the divorce not to be ruinous.

Not so glorious for kids who are constantly having to pack their bags and move between houses, never able to feel at home.

You could have kids stuff in both homes so they don't have to pack anything.

That's not really how kids stuff works, especially with school in the mix.

I highly recommend this book called "if you're in my office it's too late" by a divorce attorney. One of the things he recommends is parenting a bit like you're separated, trading off long stretches of time looking after the kid just like a divorced couple might do, but without the separate houses and finances.

Sounds terrible for the kids

I wonder if some married parents operate like that. Where they time share childcare. One spends a week in family home while the other lives some distance apart in a studio and they swap after a week.

This way children get stable home while parents get rest and adult space for themselves and have a chance of missing their kids.

And your kids are more likely to grow up to have successful acting careers!

Great for parents, devastating for kids often (some cope with a lot of therapy).

The kids lose a family unit and now float between two where their place isn’t even certain.

I’ve met many adult fucked up by that experience as a kid.