by Larry Lynn

Created on: July 01, 2010

Should Parents With Irreconcilable Differences Remain Together for the Sake of the Children?

More than ten years ago I left the residence I shared with the mother of my children.  It was not a difficult decision then, but I often think about what might have happened if I had not left.  For ten years I have wondered about the wisdom of that fragile moment. I still wonder even now how different my life and theirs might have been.  Should parents in a dysfunctional relationship stay together for the perceived welfare of the children? Let’s look at the possibilities without advocating for one over the other.

A dysfunctional relationship is one in which the means to an end involves attempting to cram a square peg into a round hole. Even with all the pounding, the friction and the shape of things to come will not allow the desirable end result, a happy environment, to have even the remotest chance of success. The friction is the gamut of disagreements, and the different shapes are the personality characteristics that oppose one another. It is not like the resolvable religious or political differences. It is the irreconcilable nature of the beast that pits two people so different in attitude and perspective that it is a wonder that they ever crossed paths much less got close enough to produce offspring.  It is this kind of irreconcilable difference, the lack of respect for the partner as an individual, as a parenting entity, as a human being, that promulgates the question: Should parents with irreconcilable differences remain together for the sake of their children?

The only important questions address what is best for the children. Unequivocally, what is best for all children is to have two sane, responsible, and affective as well as effective parents who can communicate intelligently with each other about the concerns regarding the offspring.  But if these parents were two sane, responsible, intelligent communicators, they would have no problems staying together because there would be no irreconcilable differences to drive them apart.

The issues to be considered are physical, emotional, and social. It is in these three areas that the most serious thought, planning, and action must be implemented.

The physical presence of two parents guiding the children provides for a combined front of reinforcement of philosophies and attitudes as well as an alternative resource enabling the children to seek an appeal when the decision of one seems

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