It’s simply not true to say carte blanche that marriage is good for children and divorce is bad. – Robert Milardo
The current issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family has an interesting research study out. An article in today’s Mpls Star Tribune about it is titled, Divorce bad for the children? It depends.
It started me thinking about my own parents’ marriage, basically a high-conflict marriage for 55+ years. The study’s author says that children of “high-conflict” parents were in trouble if the marriage stayed together, because “long conflict is just not good for kids at all, and part of the reason is they’re often drawn into the disagreements.”
It was primarily my sister drawn into my parents disagreements, as she was “the bad” child. I was too, but to a lesser extent as “the good” child. I’m not sure about my brother. I think they just neglected him. At any rate, my sister’s had the roughest time and reading about this report makes me more sympathetic towards her struggle.
What’s most interesting about the study is that children of “low-conflict” parents were also in trouble if the couple divorced. It makes me shudder a bit to think that this would’ve been true for our kids if Robbie and I had gotten into serious marital troubles and divorced.