... that your throwing out your husband for not making enough money was a heroic act of motherhood on your part?

How noble you are, Ms. Williams. Almost a saint, really.

Duh, right?

If "stay together for the kids" means "be nasty, spiteful, resentful and unpleasant until the instant Jr turns 18" then, of course the kids will suffer.

If "stay together for the kids" means "put up with drunkenness/drug abuse/violence/blatant adultery/serious certifiable disfunction" then of course the kids will suffer.

If "stay together for the kids" means "this may not be a fairy tale, and I wouldn't choose this person for a spouse if I could do it over, but we can make the best of a sub-par situation, create a safe and nurturing home, and and be as pleasant and respectful as we can" then the kids are likely to thrive.

It's not so much everyone's street address that matters, but how parents treat each other, and their kids. Whether they're single, divorced, or married.

It strikes me that people with high conflict relationships tend to carry that high conflict with them even after their marriage ends.

So what is the outcome for children of high conflict individuals who no longer live together but continue their conflict, back biting, blaming, and sabotage using the children as go beweens?

Perhaps the issue is, as always that some people shouldn't have gotten married in the first place because they lacked the emotional maturity to handle a marriage contract, and the kids produced by such people tend to fair worse because of their parental immaturity?

Likely what you are going to find is that people with adequate emotional maturity raise better kids than people who lack that level of emotional maturity. Since adequately mature parents are likely to stay married, they skew the results up for married couples, and immature people who are more likely to get divorced skew the results down for divorced couples.

Obviously apples to apples will show less of a stark differnce in outcomes, though one can imagine two emotionally mature parents aiding eachother in child rearing being better than a lone mature individual, or two seperate mature individuals sharing custody nonlocaly.

For once I agree with Juliebird.

Those who rationalize breaking up the family by concluding that a strife-free single parent household is better than an unhappy two parent household are deluding themselves in order to satisfy their own selfish desire to be free of the marriage without the guilt associated with depriving their child of the life the child deserves.

There are outliers that are exceptions - if one parent is physically abusive, for example. But in most situations, this line of thought is simply a selfish rationalization to get what you want while avoiding the guilt that should come with abandoning your responsibility to the one fault-free person in the relationship - the kid.

people know this, in theory, but they don't usually fully appreciate it. The parents lives shouldn't be over when they have kids either, and giving up everything "for the children" doesn't even help the children. It certainly doesn't set an example for how to have a life.

Everything that spews from Salon is all about the same demographic. Late 20's Early 30's married couples, 2 kids under the age of 10. It's boring frankly. Would you stay together for the children if they were 16, not in a private school, not the special unique super snowflakes you'd hoped they'd be?

in other words "I will continue to pleasantly provide financial, child care, and housework assistance to the woman who no longer has, if she ever did, any sexual or romantic interest int me" it's the least you can do "for the children", and you are also setting a good example for your sons of how to successfully resist the temptation to become a patriarchal oppressor.

Or "I will continue to raise children, conduct financial transactions, and keep a house with someone who is less than perfect." (I was imagining a woman saying it. You chose a male - snarky! - voice. Obviously both spouses need to be on board).

I, for one, have thanked my parents for divorcing. Theirs was not a yelling or abusive marriage but a loveless one. We, the kids, could tell. They always can. Parents who are 'staying together for the kids' are often simply deluding themselves and are in fact just avoiding unpleasant conversations.

Both parents are now remarried, and much happier. Their second marriages have lasted longer than the first one did, but that first one produced three great kids IMO. Divorce isn't as bad as everyone assumes it to be.

The best gift you can give your children is that of self-determination. Showing them how to live a lie isn't really the best way to raise them. Just my two cents.

"Well, duh!"

If the relationships in the family suck, it's bad for everyone including the kids. Keeping the "marriage" continuing in name only by avoiding a legal breakup isn't going to change anything.

How is this a surprise?

"The best gift you can give your children is that of self-determination. Showing them how to live a lie isn't really the best way to raise them."

Showing them discipline, commitment, and helping them develop the ability to defer gratification is also important, wouldn't you say?

A lot of people get divorced because they're emotional children themselves. They make a bad choice, hit a rough patch, and when their lives aren't the perfect bliss they though they were signing up for, they project that infantile fantasy onto everyone else around them, like they'd be in paradise if they were married to someone else. But hey, here's some news: "someone else" has flaws, too. Staying unmarried has drawbacks, too, something else the kids might just notice.

Anyway, then man's viewpoint is always going to be different. Everybody knows that no matter whether it's the man or woman who initiates the divorce, she gets to keep the kids, no matter how horrible a mother she might be. That changes the equation an awful lot.