If you’re getting pushback or having doubts about staying in a marriage for your children, consider this: You can replace a spouse, but you can’t replace your children’s hearts.
It amazes me that we’ve gotten to the point in American culture where it isn’t okay to stay married “just for the children.” How did we get this idea that self-sacrifice is a bad thing – or that anyone who wants to stay for that reason should be considered a sell-out? According to Dr. Anita Gadhia-Smith, an author and psychotherapist who consults for the United States Congress, we need to reconsider. As she said, “In today’s climate, people divorce easily because we live in a disposable society. There is very little tolerance for the normal discomforts of life and relationships, and people want everything to be easy.”
So we don’t stay for the children, but we’ll leave for a variety of reasons deemed more important, such as money, the pursuit of freedom from responsibility, or the “grass is greener” illusion?
Soul Custody: Sparing Children From Divorce
Dr. Gadhia-Smith spoke at the virtual launch party for my book, Soul Custody: Sparing Children from Divorce. Hers is a refreshing perspective, and I agree. I wrote my book as a wakeup call, alarmed by a sad contradiction. We don’t stay in a marriage for the children. But we’ll leave for a variety of reasons deemed more important. How are those reasons more important than sparing our kids from having their hearts broken, or setting up a damaging legacy?
Studies show that children of divorce have far less tolerance and resilience in their own relationships. When the going gets tough in their own marriages, they are more likely to resort to divorce. I’ll admit I’m a poster child for this dynamic. I didn’t just inherit a legacy of divorce when my own parents split up, I furthered it with my own divorce. In my case, even though I worked extremely hard in therapy and 12-step recovery rooms to avoid passing on that legacy, I found that I simply didn’t have the ability to overcome every hurdle I faced. So I gave up on my marriage — too soon.
In fact, it was Dr. Gadhia-Smith who offered some consolation. As she said, “You probably were so stressed out and consumed by your own marital struggles that you weren’t able to think about the impact on your children until the divorce was over.” She was right.
So, explain this irony: We don’t put the children first while married, but suddenly when divorced, it’s all the warring parents care about. “The best interests of the children” is the line out of every petitioner and respondent’s mouth as they work out custody schedules. If couples could back up and think about the best interests of the children to begin with, fewer would divorce in the first place.
Staying For The Children
Check in with yourself to see if you’re really putting the children’s best interests front and center. Ask yourself these four questions to find out if you have children foremost in your parenting mind:
- Am I concerned with how my children feel about marital separation?
- Have I considered what the fallout from divorce might be on their ages and stages of life?
- Have I exhausted every resource available to me to get help for my marriage?
- Am I blaming my spouse for not wanting to work on things with me, as a reason to leave?
When “staying for the children” is the goal, then divorce can be taken off the table as an option, and the games can begin on how to make things work, rather than should they work out or not.
Judith Wallerstein, in her 25-year study of the lifelong impact of divorce on children, came to the conclusion that an unhappy marriage is better for children than a divorced one. We’ve had her wisdom with us for decades. As she told Newsday in 1994, “What in many instances may be the best thing for the parents may by no means be the best thing for the children. It is a real moral problem. If parents could swallow their misery, they should stay together with their kids.”
Wallerstein and her co-authors of The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce demonstrated that the impact of divorce on children is cumulative. It doesn’t fade. It increases with time, and “rises to a crescendo in adulthood.” They found that it’s in adulthood that children of divorce suffer the most.
What would happen if parents could shift the focus from the marriage to the act – and quality – of parenting; if they could shift their priorities to providing a solid, stable, nurturing home for their children, and put their own expectations and desires second? As Wallerstein and her co-authors found, “Children are not as negatively affected by conflict in the marriage relationship as they are by divorce.” I’ve seen that in my own family – and in countless others as well. I’ve also seen what happens when parents make that shift – to actually putting the children first by staying in the marriage, and working it out.
Author Bio
Pamela Henry has worked in the field of supervised visitation for non-custodial parents, written newspaper columns on family matters, and offered classes in shared custody parenting, including “Parenting with a Pen” and “Pandora’s Box: Managing a Private Journal Collection.” She has a degree in telecommunications from San Diego State and earned a certificate in Early Childhood Education from UC Riverside.
She’s also the owner of Soul Custody Press, which publishes memoirs with a message. She lives in Redlands, California with her three daughters. Her new book is Soul Custody: Sparing Children from Divorce. Learn more at Soul Custody Press – Memoirs with a Message. To learn more about Club 30 meetings, email the author at [email protected].