But in many countries extended families can help sort this out. Children grow up perfectly fine making bonds with non-parents, actually. They may do it even if their parents exist but were not fit for the role.
It is only a bigger problem if you have a single parent + no extended family support. I imagine social services (is that what they're called) play the extended family role in countries like US. In many places (like a lot of Russia) there is neither
https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-succ...
It sucks, but having only one parent is a huge disadvantage.
Teachers are part of large state institutions, paid workers. They're not going to finance someone's surgery, rent, or groceries. Offloading this kind of stuff onto the state doesn't work well because the situations aren't legible and the type of support required necessitates a great deal of intimacy on the part of the benefactor and a great deal of vulnerability on the part of recipient not to mention a legitimate impetus from both parties to make things right.
I'm restrained in my ability to extrapolate, but from my personal intimate, experiences extended families don't exist in the US. We've built ourselves out of that. And even a couple hours of driving becomes a huge barrier when seeking child care. Let alone half a dozen, and that's in the cases where parents/children aren't estranged which is an increasingly common phenomena. Between that and economy, and economics... Families may well span the whole continent and it's simply infeasible to support one another.
Children with both parents also very often do not grow up fine if they are in certain socioeconomic divisions. That needs to be eliminated from the equation before any such generalizations.
people unfit for parenting are most likely mentally ill or they are put in an impossible situation with unreasonable demands and no outside support.
But I can't even imagine trying to gather statistics for that with surveys.
western couples are less likely to do that which means that kids there will suffer more especially if their parents are openly fighting, and divorce helps them settle because happier parents makes for happier kids.
What evidence do you have that “Asian” parents (whomever that refers to) show more devotion to their children? Or that “western” couples show less care?
Extended family situations, kids living with grandparents or aunts and uncles, seems more common in poorer places (mentioned in the article), so it’s likely lots of kids grow up with relatives but not with married parents.
the difference is noticeable.
chinese will sacrifice everything for their children. until recently they had to because there was no pension system, and the only way to get by when you are to old to work was to have your children care for you.
I live in SE Asia now. I see lots of devoted parents making sacrifices, just like most parents everywhere.
I’ve seen selfish and negligent parents in the US, and in SE Asia. Those parents occur everywhere.
Some Asian cultures emphasize the extended family, and children taking care of their parents later in life, perhaps more than Americans or westerners emphasize that.
America doesn’t have much of a pension system either, and lots of adult children care for their aging parents.
I come from South Asia. It’s my observation that Americans are far less willing to sacrifice their personal happiness and well being for their kids.
You know what you don’t see in America? Children working in factories. Baby girls left at orphanages or sold. You do see parents going into debt to pay for school, sports and other activities, deferring retirement, buying phones and cars for their kids.
Generalizations that include vast numbers of people from different places and cultures don’t make any sense to begin with. Cambodia and Japan, both Asian, have very different outcomes for children. America likewise doesn’t describe a single culture or set of traditions. Some countries and cultures make divorce difficult or impossible, the USA does not.
Anecdotally, as an American parent, I have seen far more parents centering their lives around children and making sacrifices than I have seen selfish and neglectful parents — even after divorce. In rural Thailand you see many children raised by grandparents or other relatives because the parents dropped them off to do their own thing. And you see devoted parents caring for their children too.
I can’t generalize anything about Thai parents from those observations. I suspect that opinions about how much parents care for children, anecdotal and generalized, derive mainly from misinterpreting cultural differences.
most likely caused by extreme poverty.
children in factories happens in the US too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35137873
also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_selling#United_States
selling babies is a form of adoption that was common in the US too before adoption became acceptable. people in the US still give up children for adoption.
treatment of girls is a specific asian problem, driven by their culture and the dependency to have a son to care for them in old age, but it is changing.
In rural Thailand you see many children raised by grandparents
that is simply asian culture. it happens in china too. the motivation here is that the parents are not just off to do their own thing, but are off to work their ass off so their kids can have a future. that's not selfish or neglectful but in their eyes, the ultimate sacrifice.
Are children being taught how to parent? Are girls playing with baby dolls and cook sets and dollhouses? Are they babysitting as teenagers? Are boys taught the roles and responsibilities of husbands and fathers? Do they have younger siblings to supervise for a while, when the parents aren't around? Do they know what it's like to change a diaper, feed an infant, do household chores?
I mean, we expend a lot of energy shoving kids into STEM and soccer and ballet dancing, and they deserve space to play and be children, but what are they going to be when they grow up? Not everyone makes a conscious choice to become a parent.
The problem is "bad relationship" is a broad and fuzzy concept, often conveniently left undefined or defined selectively to bolster a particular position.
There are definitely situations where divorce is probably good for the kids (e.g. the more extreme ones, like physical abuse). However there are other perhaps more common situations where divorce is on the whole harmful to the kids (e.g. mom and dad just don't have "that spark" for each other anymore).
If it's large then maybe divorce should be mentioned. If it's small then maybe there's little reason to mention divorce.