Modern Marriage Risks Amplified by Children
Couples marry every day expecting to be together forever. But current U.S. Census data indicates that 49% of these marriages will end in divorce. And, according to Solangel Maldonado’s Beyond Economic Fatherhood: Encouraging Divorced Fathers to Parent, at least half of divorces pitch minor children into the fray, and thrust parents unsuspectingly into single parenthood.
Fifty percent is pretty significant in the casinos, and in life, but no one seems to be talking about the risks of becoming a single parent, and the grave economic and other challenges single mothers often face. With stats like this, it may be more appropriate to say “good luck with that” instead of congratulations when someone gets pregnant.
And, as 80% of children live with their mother following a divorce, perhaps women should seriously consider before starting a family whether they are equipped to parent alone one day if their marriage fails. Because single motherhood is clearly a very strong possibility.
Most people have been personally impacted by divorce in some way, and it became a reality for me when I was teenager, and witnessed my aunt and uncle’s ten-year marriage dissolve shortly after the birth of their first child. Even at that age, I realized parenthood was very different from the commercials perpetuating it, as I watched my mother and her peers endure seemingly endless stress, work, exhaustion, and boredom.
I wondered why my aunt and uncle, and so many other couples, were so eager to introduce children into their marriages. Most parents didn’t seem particularly happy to me, and I noticed that when my mother and I would fight, she would wish children on me, like they were a curse or a punishment.
As an adult in the professional world, I witnessed an even darker side of parenting in the divorced single mother. The vast number of 40-something women I met that were in this predicament, whose earning and career potentials were limited because of their lengthy absence from the workforce and childcare limitations, gave me pause. One of my coworkers, I remember vividly, was forced to move back home with her own parents due to financial and childcare needs.
Their experiences taught me that relationships don’t always last, that men can walk away from their parental responsibilities relatively easily, and women typically get stuck holding the bag. It was a disappointing but important realization that led me to be a very independent adult, and to critically consider whether I wanted to be a parent, with all of the attendant risks.
Recently, some of my suspicions about parenting were confirmed in Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. According to his book, mothers prefer eating, exercising, shopping, napping, and even television to childcare. And, perhaps even more telling, his studies also showed that married couples are happiest before their children are born, and after the children leave the nest. Revelations such as this make me wonder if children are not only part of the fallout in a divorce, but could inadvertently contribute to one.
While this may be bad news for parents, it gives props to the childfree, who won’t be introducing the drama of children into their homes. Luckily, today, with reliable and affordable birth control, the childfree life is an option.
Still, despite these optimistic findings, childfree marriages, as part of the general married population, have only half a chance of making it. However, while divorce is never easy, if a childfree marriage becomes untenable, both parties can escape relatively unscathed because they have only themselves to consider.
For example, nonparent couples don’t have to stick out a bad or abusive relationship for fear of supporting a household or raising children alone. Unlike parents, childfree couples don’t have to worry about how a divorce will impact children; instead, they can split their assets 50/50, move on, and even move away, without concerns about taking a child away from its school district or nonresidential parent.
For parents, things are much more complicated. Children are a living souvenir of a failed relationship, and constant reminders that may start to look more like the ex every day. Unlike tangible assets, kids can’t be divided, although many children of divorce will tell you that was how they felt when their parents parted ways.
The entanglements of parenthood run deep, and moving on and starting over isn’t that easy, as most divorced spouses, according to Shirley M. H. Hanson’s Single Parent Families, maintain a level of civility and “contact due to their parenting responsibilities.”
Division of household labor is also a major issue, for married and divorced mothers alike. Because, despite all of women’s progress, if a woman opts to have kids, she is typically relegated to a very traditional role, and rarely enjoys an equal partnership in the home. Working mothers, for example, in a two-parent household, according to Linda Hirshman’s Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, do 70% of the household chores.
“Women still end up with more of the responsibility for children,” said Florence B. Bonner, Ph.D., and have “less of an opportunity to advance their careers than do men, and a lot more stress” at home and the office “because they are trying to negotiate those two spaces.”
But things can get much worse if a relationship goes south, with the majority of women assuming residential custody, and, with that, the remainder of the household chores and responsibilities. And that doesn’t even account for the added financial burden divorced mothers often incur.
According to The Future of Children article entitled “Financial Impact of Divorce on Children and Their Families,” 39% of all divorced mother households, and 55% of divorced mothers with children under the age of six, were “living below [the] poverty level” in 1991. Remarriage, the study explained, is a divorced mother’s best chance for improving her economic status.
But Hanson says a variety of factors can impact a divorced mothers dating and remarriage possibilities, such as her financial position, minimal free time, less exposure to adult peers, and an overall drop in social activity following a divorce. Slightly more than a third of divorced mothers “remain single for the remainder of their lives.”
In contrast, while most mothers are married to children and the home, Maldonado asserts that divorce often marks the “father’s gradual divorce” from his children.
Much as the law focuses solely on the economic responsibilities of nonresidential fathers, society has adopted a similar view, seeing fathers as little more than a checkbook for their children.
Additionally, since most fathers don’t have residential custody, they aren’t lacking for free time and money, like many divorced mothers. In fact, according to an article in The Future of Children, divorced fathers “are much less likely” than mothers to have decreased income, “and often experience an increase … especially if one considers income relative to basic needs based on family size.”
While the gulf is wide between the way a divorced mother and father experiences divorce, it may be greater still between divorced parents and nonparents. The childfree may accumulate their own baggage from a previous marriage, but it is much less concrete and life-altering because it doesn’t require constant supervision, schooling, clothing, food, attention, and it won’t live at home until it goes to college. The damages of the childfree divorce are self-contained and controlled.
Modern marriages are shaky enough without adding dependent children to the mix. And I can’t imagine wanting anything so badly that I would risk compromising everything else in my life for it, including my financial stability, dating options, and social participation.
It has occurred to me more than once that birth control is akin to damage control for the childfree adult. We can’t predict or account for all of life’s twists and turns, but the bumps are easier to take, the stakes aren’t as high, and it’s much easier to regain speed in life, when we aren’t carrying the added weight of children, and taking them along for the ride.
Copyright . Published 1 October 2008 in Features.
Reader comments
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Thank you for this insightful and thought-provoking article.
permalink — 1 October 2008, 19:22
People should know that divorce rates vary – if you are on your first marriage, your chances of divorcing are less than the average. If you’re on your second, it’s more than average. If you’re on your fifth say, it’s practially guaranteed you’ll divorce. Similary, if you are never married and married someone who is divorced, you’re giving yourself an increased risk of divorcing. Which is why, apart from my usual critera of a childfree nonsmoking woman, never married is a requirement.
permalink — 2 October 2008, 19:21
Coincidentally, just this morning I finished reading a book covering this exact topic called “The Feminine Mistake.” Not the best book ever written, but it makes strong points that opting out of the workforce sets women up for financial ruin later on if their husbands die, get disabled/lose their jobs, or want a divorce. The loss of financial independence also hurts her ability to negotiate with her husband to split household and childrearing tasks, leaving her with more than her share.
I would be very interested to see divorce rates for CF/CL couples vs childed couples. I would not be surprised if they are lower. As Nora Ephron said, a baby is a hand grenade tossed into a marriage.
And not that family and relationships aren’t important, but without financial security and stability you really don’t have anything. Love is great, but it doesn’t pay the bills.
permalink — 3 October 2008, 10:00
Excellent article. Great facts and insights.
I am in a wonderful marriage with two great children.
I see some of my friends working through divorce and the impact of divorce on their children and wonder if more couples should “opt out” of parenting.
permalink — 13 October 2008, 12:15
A wonderful article! Bringing a child into the world, and into a marriage is not always the right choice for everyone. If only more people would realize that having children is a choice not a requirement.
permalink — 13 October 2008, 14:40
Thank you for a concise article about the choice not offered to everyone — or the choice not wanted — and the price that children pay in divorces. Having a child is a choice, not a requirement, an option, not a necessity, and should not be done just because everyone else says it is part of the Life Script ™…
permalink — 15 October 2008, 09:52
Just wondering…but what makes you think that of the 50 percent who divorce, breeding and CF couples are equally represented?
In my experience over 30 years, my/our CF married friends (of all sexes) have the most strongly enduring marriages, whereas it seems like every breeder we meet has been divorced at least once.
Check those statistics. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that if you control for number of kids, the ratio of failed breeding marriages is closer to 66 percent, and of CF, to 33!
permalink — 20 October 2008, 02:27