I've lived this: When my husband and I would fight, I would have a hard time managing the powerful negative emotions that surfaced-anger, disappointment, hurt-while trying to keep Fiona and Molly's routines on track effectively. They suffer the consequences of both the "heated or frosty emotional tone of their parents' relationship" and the frequent result of co-parent conflict-" harsh or ineffective patterns of caring and discipline." "Some children get a double whammy," write the Cowans. "Studies of two-parent families have consistently found that when a couple's relationship is characterized by unresolved conflict and unhappiness, their children tend to have more acting out aggressive behavior problems, more shy withdrawn behavior, and fewer social and academic skills," write UC Berkeley researchers Phil and Carolyn Cowan.įurthermore, when couples aren't getting along, their irritation or anger with each other often spills over into their relationships with their children. Parental conflict isn't good for children's happiness, whether or not you are married. Here is what I've gleaned from the many good studies I've read on the subject: It is the quality of parents' relationships with each other, rather than whether they are married or single, that matters most for kids' well-being. Her study doesn't meet accepted standards of scientific research, and its findings shouldn't be generalized to families that aren't struggling with the same things for which Wallerstein's tiny sample was being treated (usually histories of mental illness, clinical depression, and suicidal tendencies). The study, by the way, while embraced by the press and published as a New York Times-bestselling book, has been rejected whole-heartedly by social scientists because Wallerstein didn't use a random sample of families that had divorced or stayed married instead, she looked at a group of divorced people with mental health problems. Thinking that an unhappy marriage is better than no marriage-whether the belief comes from our family or religion or a study like Wallerstein's-has kept a lot of unhappily married Americans in their marriages. Wallerstein argued that unless domestic violence is a part of the picture, kids are worse off when parents divorce. A mediocre marriage is better for kids than no marriage, right? We might believe this at least partly because of a hugely flawed-but very influential and well-publicized-study by Judith Wallerstein that "showed" that kids don't notice that their parents are unhappy in a marriage.
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I know it's tempting to answer the question of whether or not we should stay together for the kids with a simple "yes." As a society we tend to think that kids will do better if parents stay together that's what our grandparents' generation did, or tried to do. In the coming weeks, I'll be blogging about how I've answered this question for myself.
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And if you've ever seriously asked it, you know it can be an agonizing one. From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.īut here she was struggling with the same question I've wrestled with for years: is it better for our kids if we stay in less-than-happy marriages?