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Divorce Busting By Michele Weiner-Davis For the Sake of the Kids We are now beginning to see that it doesn't necessarily follow that what's best for parents is best for children. Frank Pittman, author of Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy, believes:Our experiment with abolishing marriage has not worked very well for either the adults or the children, but it's the adults who don't seem to realize it. I don't know anyone with divorced parents who don't see the divorce as the most central experience of their lives. Children who grow up seeing their parents run away from home have a different relationship with marriage than those who saw parents hang in there. Brutal marriages may be bad for children, but I'm not sure boring marriages are. (Quoted in Nord, 1989, p. 26.) This raises the popular question: "Should couples stay together for the sake of the kids?" Implicit in this question is the assumption that people stay together for any single reason. Even successful long-term marriages are rarely held together by one bond, including love. Couples stay together for a multitude of reasons: financial and emotional security, sex, dislike of the singles scene, stability, companionship, status, fear of loneliness, feelings of love and commitment, religious mores, the children. There is nothing unusual or unhealthy about kids being one of the many ties inextricably connecting couples. Another assumption implicit in the question "Should couples stay together for the sake of the kids?" is that these couples will always be miserable, that they must live in conflict for the rest of their lives. Couples should not remain in unhappy or lifeless marriages for the rest of their lives just for the sake of the kids. Research shows that whether their parents are married or divorced children suffer when there is conflict. Couples should do everything within their power to make their marriages work again so that their children's lives will not be adversely affected by conflict or divorce. In other words, couples should stay happy for the sake of the kids.
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