I was a child of divorced parents. It seems logical that which is 'better' depends on just how irreconcilable the differences are, relative to the parents in question. I mean, it seems staying together could only work if the parents had small changes to make, simply because people mostly don't make big changes to themselves, at all.

My mother sat my 2 sibs and I down before and asked for our thoughts/feelings, and we all said "Do it" without hesitation or doubt. In my case, we were all clearly worse off materially after. I think we kids were a little better off mentally and emotionally, but a large component of that is that my mother would have continued attempting suicide otherwise, and it's possible she might have succeeded.

It's useless to speculate about whether they could have stayed together if they'd had the capacity to put others above themselves, because they didn't have it, and no amount of counseling could have endowed them with it.

> Divorce is rarely the answer and does terrible things to children.

My mother was shocked that I supported my parents' divorce. She couldn't imagine how I wasn't devastated. They screamed at each other frequently. They'd stayed together "for the kids," and that was a nightmare.

Right. I don’t think it’s divorce that does terrible things to children but bad relationships. Whether that relationship ends in divorce or not, growing up in a household full of toxicity and people fighting and hating each other and full of animosity is what is terrible. And yes, that often leads to divorce. But it’s the toxicity that is terrible, not the act itself.

(My parents are not divorced and have had a quite good, tho imperfect, marriage so I can’t speak for either scenario. But this is what I gather knowing and observing people who grew up with parents who divorced or remained married while miserable and hating each other.)

Divorced dad, anecdote. My kids, my ex, and I are much better off now. Having the kids around 50% time is a huge sanity boost and allows me to be there for them more than before. I’m lucky to have remarried to a very engaged stepmom, but even without her we’d probably still be better off.

I also saw my parents become much happier after they split up (when I was an adult.)

I'll add a +1 to this as the kid of parents who divorced (when I was about 11). Home went from being an unpleasant place to be to being a nice place again. It is horrible to feel stuck between two people who don't want to be there.

It was one of the best things that happened for me. And my parents.

100% of the problems this article is bemoaning are because of lack of financial support. The top needs to stop hoarding all the money.

I meant the fact of a divorce involving children sucks (for the kids especially).

I wasn't arguing that parents with children shouldn't divorce at all. Each couple will need to consider the pros and cons as best they can.

I myself was a product of a home that tried both 'stay together for the kids' and 'extremely messy 6 years long divorce' in that order. That relationship was doomed from the start, it would have been better if they'd never met. My dad is/was a high-functioning drug addict (among other thing), divorce was always the best answer for them.

My parents no longer being married did nothing to me. Zero.

My parents trying to get me to hate the other parent caused severe damage and was entirely ineffective at its goal.

Not being able to spend much time with one of my parents, especially the one with the most life survival skills was bad. I had a relative that could have stood in, but they declined to really be there regularly.

An amicable divorce with some mitigation of the parenting structure would have turned out just fine. And, maybe part of that would have been achieved with an earlier divorce.

>> Also, divorce sucks[1] when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that.

> Tons of people dispute this.

Divorce with children clearly does suck, statistically and practically. Those who dispute it are simply wrong, for whatever reason they wish to assert. That's obvious, with the data we have today.

[1] "sucks" is a fairly broad word, but graciously, it can be considered "not good".

"don't want to stay married" is worth exploring. Why don't they want to?

Maybe a part of that is attitude and culture and values, and not so much unreconcilable problems. If they felt strongly about providing for their children together, and that was highly respected by society, maybe the problems they have would look trivial.

I was the opposite. My parents "stayed together" in that they lived in the same house but had separate bedrooms and lives. Most of the time when they were interacting it was some kind of power struggle. By age 13 my sibling became an addict and is to this day unable to sustain a job. I attribute it to the instability in the household growing up.

We're always going to see this through the lens of the experiences we grew up with.

Whatever works for you, but be aware your experience might not generalise to the whole population. I'm not going to say "everyone's situation is different", there are more than seven billion of us, I suspect our experiences fall in to approximately a few broad categories,

My parents stayed together much longer the should have. One day, much later, my mother cried and apologised that she hadn't left my father 13 years earlier.

My father was a massive piece of shit, the lung cancer couldn't have taken him soon.

We wouldn't have been floating between two houses, rather we would have had one stable home.

I don't believe the people arguing for divorce in some situations are saying "divorce doesn't suck", but there's at least some chance it might be better than the alternative.

I appreciate the candor but at the same time wonder about the lack of counterfactual experience. What if your parents had stayed together and you grew up in a household of constant fighting? Would that have been better?

I don’t know how many people actually dispute that divorce sucks tho, even if they think that it is the preferable or better or even good outcome for a relationship.

Like, I don’t know anyone who argues that divorce is easy and fun and causes absolutely no issues for kids who are involved. What I do see people argue is that divorce can be a better outcome than staying together and being miserable.