No

by Rose Calder

Created on: November 10, 2009

When I was five years old, my parents made the decision to divorce. My sisters and I were informed of this decision one afternoon in late summer, telling us that it had nothing to do with us, that they both still loved us very much, that this was what they felt was best for our family, and did we understand? At the time, we didn't really comprehend it, but we said we did and ran off to play. It wasn't until our mother moved out of the house that the truth hit us as to what a divorce really meant, and it was definitely a difficult transition to make.

But even so, looking back on it 24 years later, I have to agree that my parents were right. Getting divorced was the best thing they could have done for my sisters and me, and the notion that they should have stuck it out for our supposed benefit would have been far more damaging to everyone concerned.

You see, marriage is supposed to be about love as well as family. When there is no love between two adults, it shows; no matter how much they try to hide it or pretend otherwise. It shows in the way they don't even talk to one another, in how they purposely avoid being in one another's presence, how cold they are to each other. Believe it or not, kids can pick up on these subtleties, and instead of their childhood home being a place of warmth and love, it is instead a place of coldness and tension. How is that good for a child?

Also, there is the matter of arguments, whether played out quietly after you think the children have gone to sleep or out loud in front of them. As Dorothy Parker once said, "scratch a lover and find a foe"; there is no worse enemy to happiness and tranquility than an unhappy former love, and living with said ex love is a situation rife with explosive possibilities. After all, no one knows how to get under your skin quite like an intimate, and when that intimacy is no longer in existence, the kid gloves come off rather quickly. So how is it beneficial for a child to see the two adults they love most in the world bickering with one another over every little thing that comes down the pike?

Then there's the martyrdom argument: that an unhappily married couple should sacrifice their happiness for their children and find comfort and strength in that. Because, you know, nothing sets a good example like suffering needlessly for some archaic belief. Again, children are not as oblivious as you might think. They know that things are not right at home, and they have the mental acuity to gather that their parents are not happy with one another, so who do you think you're fooling? Certainly not them, and if your kids can see it, everyone else can, too. So again, what is the purpose of playing a charade no one is falling for?

Last but not least, the chief role parents play in the upbringing of their children is to set a good example for them. When it comes to role models, parents are the alpha and omega; it doesn't matter what athlete, singer or movie star comes along later, in the end, parents have the most influential role on their children. By staying together for their children's sake, parents are showing their children that family is not about warmth, love or happiness; they are showing their children that family is an obligation to be suffered, that it supposed to be tense and unpleasant and not a source of joy and comfort. If this is the model they have of what a family is supposed to be like, what is going to stop them from recreating the same situation as adults with their own families?

The practice of staying together for the children is an overly simplistic approach to a complicated situation that denies the toxicity of such an arrangement, and has more potential for long-lasting harm than anything else. By going their separate ways, my parents helped show my sisters and me what a family and a marriage isn't supposed to be, and that has served us in a better stead than staying together ever could.

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