I am very happy that my parents are married to each other, and my alive grandparents too, and that they don't have issues like this (what my father "abuse" is coca-cola, he rarely drinks, and noone smokes).
And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling.
I am seeking a girlfriend that wants to be a mother, and I am not finding, most of them are self-centered, and come from divorced families, the only girl that ever became my girlfriend (and is still a good friend) was the only one that I found that still had married parents.
You must be quite young. To me, what defines a good relationship (in terms of having a partner) is not necessarily that what you have in common with the other is a strong desire for stability, family life & kids. I've seen people get married because of this desire, and the people I've observed doing that don't necessarily seem very happy. On the contrary, actually. After a while they just become jaded. Like people in a job that they don't enjoy but that they need to do to pay the mortgage. I think these situations are quite unhealthy, and ultimately unsatisfying.
What defines a good relationship, in my opinion, is two people that know what they want out of life, that chase their own goals and have their own dreams, and then decide to do that together. It's much harder though, because sometimes these goals clash, but I wouldn't want it any other way.
I am a Indian and have seen this line often repeated.
A relationship from my cultural perspective is also about committing to make it work. I am trying to bootstrap a startup with my best friend and there is lot in common between us but when going gets tough, it is important to be not an asshole.
I am married as well. My wife's and my own dreams are somewhat different, but if I decide somehow to let my dreams take precedence over hers, there will be trouble. It is same as a startup, when going gets tough - it is important to be responsible/respecting and more importantly not let outside world affect the relationship.
Coming from a culture when arranged marriages have been the norm for ages, I can't overemphasis simply willingness to stick. I don't know and it may sound strange - most people are essentially good (and well meaning in their own way) and as we Indians have come to terms with the fact that, Love can blossom in arranged marriage as well. Where you did not know your life partner beforehand.
Trying to find perfect partner with whom goals and ambitions match is unicorn and rainbows.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I wasn't contradicting you, because clearly we agree on certain points.
I am also very fond of the arranged marriage mindset if not the actual practice. I believe countless viable partners exist but a marriage to me me means not giving up or chasing a more perfect option. Especially since the later quickly turns to what I call kitten syndrome. Everyone loves a kitten and everyone lives a new relationship but eventually you gotta deal with the fact that a cat is a cat. Some people though rather drown a cat every spring.
Totally agree, my best friend is an Indian. His parents have been happily married for 30 years and still going strong. It was an arranged marraige, but there is a lot to learn from them.
Coming from a broken home impacts everyone differently, and particularly when you end up raising yourself (and your siblings). The idea that someone doesn't want to be a mother because they're self-centered is very far from the truth. They are more likely to be aware of their vulnerabilities and the fear that they will end up like their parents. Worse, they may have long-term damage (or mental health issues that plagued their parents as well) that they don't feel would make them strong parents. I consider that responsible, not self-centered.
It depends on the individual and her specific background, but for instance for girls of mothers that suffered from domestic violence there's a very high probability they'll end up with a violent husband, even though they keep telling themselves that they won't. Forgot how this syndrome was called, and this iPad is awful for doing Google searches.
Basically we are doomed to repeat many of same mistakes as our parents. You do have a certain control over your life, but eternal vigilance and self-awareness is required. I keep seeing this every day, as I'm now a father too. For example my father was a workaholic that didn't have much time for me. He was also very critical of other people's mistakes. I tend to repeat these same mistakes, even though I make an effort not to, but sometimes I just can't help myself.
It really depends on the individual though. I have at least one friend coming from a broken home and he's one of the most balanced individuals I know.
I think it's a nurture vs nature question. Maybe it makes you strong and hard person who makes it in life. Life is though if you have setbacks to deal with. If you are golden spooned maybe by the first setback you crumble...
Anyone can choose not to have kids for whatever reason they please (and it's never selfish to do so), I was just trying to explain why this may be the case for the segment of people he was referring to.
If you want to have kids and want a partner that is into that, that's fine. However, being self-centered and wanting to be a parent aren't mutually exclusive, as I have met adults whose parents were/are extremely self-centered and that factored in heavily into the abusive situations those adults lived in when they were children.
> And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling.
I'm not really sure what you are talking about, families have always had issues with abuse, divorce, etc., that is nothing new (even if people may have hidden those things more often in the past, but that really depends on when and where you grew up).
All this chart shows in an increase in the number of single mother households over time, particularly starting in the 1960s/1970s, in the United States. Whether or not you see that as sad depends on what you know of the living conditions women experienced in the time before that, conditions which gave rise the 2nd wave feminist movements. Suffice it to say the same underlying social and gender disparities existed prior to the increased occurrence of divorce and US society was not more stable or better off before that increase.
As far as I am aware, children living with both parents do much better in life in a variety of metrics (income, criminality, academics, child poverty, and etc.). While easier divorce may have led to an increase in equality for women, it has also had an immense negative impact on children.
Trade-offs exist, whether or not we choose to ignore them for ideological reasons. You are free to believe that the modern world is better off, despite the costs. But you should be aware of the costs.
> As far as I am aware, children living with both parents do much better in life in a variety of metrics (income, criminality, academics, child poverty, and etc.). While easier divorce may have led to an increase in equality for women, it has also had an immense negative impact on children.
This isn't the result of divorce being more accessible, this is the result of how difficult it is to be a single parent and how little support you have on a single income while providing all primary care for your kids. The fix for that is to address systemic issues regarding class, gender discrimination, reduced access to family planning, health care access. Even by the chart you provided, single father households have not grown dramatically since the 1960s/1970s since women end up being primary care given for children in a majority of cases, whether by desire or by cultural default.
I agree with you 100% about awareness of cost, but easier access to divorce and a lessening of the cultural expectation that women be married has simply made existing problems more apparent to society at large, which is a good thing in terms of identifying where we need to fix social inequalities.
My mother's father was alcoholic, my father was alcoholic. These issues had nothing to do with the availability of divorce. I highly doubt it would have assisted my mother or I if my grandmother and my mother were not allowed to divorce.
It is apples and oranges to compare today's society with the societies of past, and not so easy to arrive at solid conclusions regarding the impacts and costs of changes in social values.
I do not believe that was your point at all. Your post suggested quite the opposite. To me it read as though you think people are ignoring the impact easy divorce has on children because of ideological reasons.
The same could be said of people who think marriage means a happy and stable home life.
I'm speaking of averages. On average, a two parent home is much better for children. Of course there are exceptions. Pointing out exceptions to robust statistical data is the most common fallacious statistical argument.
Statistical data don't tell why. Divorce could be the effect of the real problem (alcoholism or mental disorder) and staying married could actually have made things worse.
The thing is, once you got to decide, statistics say nothing useful, it's your situation or, if you prefer, your exception, your anecdote, what really matters.
I see a chart that shows that single parents and their children aren't dying of poverty as much as they used to. I suppose you could say that this is a net negative for the children, since they might be unhappy rather than dead, but that's a value judgement of your choosing.
Your chart shows just that there are more single mothers. What the chart fails to indicate is that 40% of babies are born to unmarried couples these days, many of whom are a happy couple but just not married. It is a reflection of changing attitudes about marriage, and a failure of data collection. There has always been families of all sorts - single moms, blended families, happy and unhappy marriages, etc. (source: wife who is a sociology professor).
I am form Brazil, no-fault divorce was only allowed in the 70s (in comparison to US for example), and divorce rates rose very quickly.
Three years ago the divorce laws were made even more lax, and divorce rate tripled immediately (ie: one year after the law, the amount of divorce year-to-year was 3 times).
Most of my friends have divorced parents, I knew few people that actually have married parents, and frequently when people meet my family they say they are envious.
Also the marriage rates are plummeting too (and although the co-habitation rates are rising, it is not rising fast enough to compensate).
Is this really a bad thing? Is it better that people stay in marriages they do not want to be a part of rather than be free to separate? Staying in a failed marriage is not necessarily better for kids and may in fact be worse than getting a divorce.
Marriage rates are falling in some countries and places, but that really depends more on the specifics of where you are. In the US, there are a variety of reasons why people are getting married at slower rates these days, but it doesn't really matter how often people get married anyway.
> Also the marriage rates are plummeting too (and although the co-habitation rates are rising, it is not rising fast enough to compensate).
If you have kids, the commitments you've made are not just to your spouse/SO/whatever, but also to your kids. Those commitments are long-term and failing to keep those commitments is very damaging to kids. I think if more people took those commitments seriously, they would find ways to solve problems. As it is, why bother trying when it's easier to just say "screw it" and separate.
There are some marriages that should end. There are men and women both who have no business being attached to another human being. But I think more marriages end than need to, and it's a net-negative to everybody involved (which means all of society). Learning how to live happily with another person (and it is difficult, no questions; I'm going on 20 years and it stays just as hard every year) is one of the most satisfying things you can do and teaches you many important lessons that positively impact one's life in areas outside of the home.
Yes, often people are too quick to give up on their marriage if there are not legal complications on the way but, when that happens, it is more of a social or should I say cultural problem. IMO it's always wrong to apply pressure through law for those sort of problems.
Even if by using increased legal restrictions there appeared to be a net-positive in that specific context, I feel that there would be a net-negative in a larger scale, as it would violate individual freedom.
Of course, law should provide for things like both parents having to contribute to kids expenses, or both parents being able to spend some time with their kids, but not go beyond that and try to make it hard for them go separate ways when they want to -that's overstepping.
Besides that, I would much rather grow up in a family in which my parents decided to go different ways rather than in a family where my parents would be together but not seem happy with each other.
When you make a commitment to another person, you may get rough patches but eventually if you work through them then your relationship will mostly only get stronger.
Of course, this doesn't count when it comes to abusive relationships.
I know lots of self-centered people that are parents.
What I mean is that it is hard to find women that actually WANT to live a life of sacrifice, living for the family, instead of living to themselves.
I've met some women that when I ask if they want to be mother they say:
"Oh, sure!"
And then I ask:
"So, when you have your 4 months old kid, you will stay at home to take care of it if your husband is rich enough for that?"
And then most of them reply:
"Hell no, the kid can stay in the creche, or watching TV with the babysitter, I must work."
Funnily, I have a friend that insists that she will even have a kid using sperm bank, and she will take care of that kid alone, yet she hates her mother because she feels her mother did not gave attention enough to her (her mother is a divorced lawyer, and the girl was cared by the house cleaning lady that lived in the house, when she has problems she still talk to that lady instead of her mother).
Will you stay home with your 4 month old if your wife is rich enough?
By your definition, if you answer no, then you are "self-centered", to the point where you wouldn't consider yourself a good partner to have children with.
On the other hand if you answer yes, then you have solved your problem. Doesn't matter how "self-centered" your spouse is, you will take care of the kids either way.
So, assuming a rich wife (or rather a wife with high income) is easier to find than one that's willing to give up her career, if you want the greatest chance that your children will have a full time caregiver that's one of their parents, you should look for a rich "self-centered" woman, not a selfless one :)
My wife won't watch the kid or work (productively). She does online tutoring "work" for effectively ~$3/hour about 5 hours a day while daycare costs ~$7/hour.
I can think of very few choices more important in life than who you marry and bear offspring with. Sadly in my case, none of her habits became visible until well after we had married and had a child.
I'd echo the other people's suggestions here to go for family therapy. If the resentment is not yet too strong between the two of you, you can reach an agreement.
Not only that but if you get divorced, you are fucked alimony and child support wise. Or if you had a prenup, at least child support wise.
So it is in your best interest emotionally and financially to not let this sit for too much longer. Go to the family therapist yourself first to get a few ideas on where to go from there.
If you haven't already, seek couples counseling/therapy asap, as resent about parenting or living situations are big issues that hard to tackle without some outside perspective.
There are boatloads of research that shows that children younger than 1 year really need contact with the mother ( even if adoptive ), breastfeeding, and simple body contact ( among other things ) are part of various processes, mostly related to hormones.
It is great selfishness to hurt a child by not allowing it intense and almost constant contact with the mother ( not the father )
Working is not fun, I don't work for power, fun, or greed, but because I need to, I have to feed the family while the mother is busy being mother.
We have no technology yet that allows for women to not be mothers.
Body contact is indeed important, but you are mistaken that it must always be with the mother. Parents can share every childraising activity except breastfeeding -- and it's not necessary that children be strictly breastfed.
It seems you have grown up believing that family is about sacrifice. I think this is sad. Having a family takes work, certainly, but it should be a joy, not a burden.
I cry foul. Massive numbers of mothers can't breast feed. And frankly, if its hard, don't bother. Give the child formula, be a happier person and the child will be better off for that alone. The pressure to breast feed is huge and considering that there are far bigger problems - why bother?
My wife couldn't breast feed for long and felt terrible for it and was under pressure from almost all corners to carry on. But once she stopped the child, her and me were happier. Do what suits without fear.
> What I mean is that it is hard to find women that actually WANT to live a life of sacrifice, living for the family, instead of living to themselves.
Well, in most of the western world women had no choice in the past but to take on those roles, regardless if they wanted to or not. That we see women rejecting this kind of role because they have more choices is a good thing. I'm sure there's plenty of folks out there that still want that lifestyle, but there should be no default assumption of that being the suitable gender role for women.
> "Hell no, the kid can stay in the creche, or watching TV with the babysitter, I must work."
If someone wants to do this and has the means to do so, is there a problem? Sure it might not match what you want with your life, but that just means that person isn't the parental partner for you.
In terms of working while raising children, if you have the financial resources to make up for having one or both parents working then there is not much of an issue. A lot of folks don't have such resources, of course, and work out of necessity.
As for why folks have kids, the reasons are varied, but a significant percentage of those are not planned, they are either unwanted or mistimed. Jessica Valenti had a great piece in the Atlantic about this that was posted here a few weeks back - http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/not-wantin...
There are a lot of women out there who greatly desire to be a stay at home mom and in this way, help raise a family. They are out there, you just have to look :) I waited and found a lady who greatly desired this kind of lifestyle and it is working out fabulously for us.
Try to appreciate your family for as long as you can, since you'll never know when they're gone.
In 2004, when I was 23 years old, I lost both my parents and a sister in a car accident. We had a really nice family and great parents, never expected this to happen. It caused me a depression that lasted almost 7 years.
Personally I wouldn't want a girlfriend that wants to become a mother, the pain of losing someone very dear to you is intense and I wouldn't want another depression that lasts as long as my previous one.
You have to balance the risk of pain with the possibility of joy. It is certainly possible to live a life cut of from others where you never have to worry about losing anybody, but you lose the joy that comes from those same connections. While it's true that the closer the connection, the greater the chance of pain, it is also true that they are also greater sources of joy.
Having gone through more than one multi-year depression, I can appreciate you wanting to avoid that. Just don't avoid living and loving to do so.
While I'm sad that you cannot find this ideal girlfriend (which I am also looking for) it's not a bad thing that you are at least finding out that they are self-centered. You want to find someone like yourself who looks forward to having a stable family.
Can you imagine marrying someone who's self-centered and you finally have kids? That could be disasterous. There could be lots of regret that you can't undo and you end up going down the path of divorce or worse.
I would be interested in knowing whether or not one's likelihood to divorce is correlated with whether or not one's parents were divorced. Do you know what the data say?
edit: I found some data. It looks like a couple is twice as likely to divorce if one of them comes from a divorced family, and three times as likely if both do: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/26714.php
Considering that life expectancy, quality of life and opportunities for better life are all somewhat better than historically, I for one like the current way of the world. I say this comparing it to what was, not to what it could be. Far too many people (a majority?) have far too little.
I've just waved off my grandparents at the airport. My grandfather is the last living of his 14 siblings. 7 made it out of a childhood of abuse, poverty and neglect. Edinburgh in the 1940s sounds like a hell if you were poor.
Edit: autocorrect error.
Your response was incomprehensible to me until it was explained later down that the point is that sometimes the offending statement isn't true. However, his response was about the unnecessary generalization concerning divorced women and in that context the statement 'having a kid is easy' can be assumed to be true, without changing the point.
You can't insist on people considering all outliers when making a generic point. We'd have to hedge virtually every statement out of fear to offend someone. Therefore I think the severity of your response is uncalled for and suggests you haven't come to terms with the fact that you, or someone near you, is an outlier. It's perfectly fine to educate people about tacit assumptions when those are the relevant point of a discussion, but in the unconstructive way you phrased it, you are not likely to convince anyone.
Tl;dr: I'm not ignorant or insensitive for not considering outliers to a generic statement whose 'mostly true'-ness is the only thing that matters, given ghe context in which it was used.
I think he's correct. Being pregnant and giving birth is tremendously challenging (and rewarding, to many), but is a drop in the bucket compared to the entire rest of your life being about Not You. Not only do you face the constant lack of sleep, but you now have to worry about financial planning, raising the kid to be a good human, etc.
Having a kid is easy. Raising a kid (well) is hard.
Sorry, but you too are showing breath-taking ignorance and considerable lack of sensitivity and tact, even with the clues staring you in the face.
Let me be just a little more blunt - it's not only the case that for some people having children is not easy, but in addition, it's a big deal that they CAN'T HAVE CHILDREN.
It sounded to me like Colin was talking about something that has affected him or someone he cares about personally. In such cases, a technical or pedantic reply is at best beside the point, and at worst pours salt on a wound.
My sister- and brother-in-law tried for years to have a child. Finally they adopted an infant, only to have her die a couple of months after she was born. A person facing something like that does not care about "impoverishing the English language".
I wrote a long piece in reply, but I certainly don't write as well as Notch, and it's pretty clear it won't make my point as well as it should be made.
I'm going away for a while now. I'll be back, just not sure when. Need some time on my own.
Now I'm angry. You're not the least bit sorry for his personal difficulties (as telegraphed by your telltale use of the word "but"). If you were, you wouldn't respond to them with pointless pedestrian claptrap. All you've done is show your own incapacity for empathy.
Colin, please accept my apology on this guy's behalf.
My wife develops kidney stones when she is pregnant. During the second pregnancy, she had to pass them without pain medicine. There are many other conditions that women can develop when pregnant, but that go away after giving birth.
Pregnancies are anything but easy, even though they last a relatively short amount of time. Raising children is hard, but at least some portion of parenting skills come naturally. I don't think the same can be said for enduring months of intense pain/illness.
We looked after my partner's sister's 2 month old (and her 2 year old) last night. From all the stories people have told me I was actually expecting it to be worse than it was. We still got woken up a few times (a couple of times from him 'gurgling' from his cold - hearing a baby gurgle like that, then stop breathing for 10 seconds, is a bit nerve wracking!), and sure I'm tired today, but I think I could manage this :)
(For months on end, hmm, well, only one way to find out!)
Parental Anecdote: The first three months with a newborn are rather horrid. At age six months, get start to become cute and they begin to interact, so it becomes more rewarding. By the first year, they sleep through the night and they're a lot of fun.
After age two, kids are no longer a liability. They are tremendous asset to a family - they're fun-loving, curious, joyful, and keep you on your toes.
And I am very sad to see that all other families are crumbling.
I am seeking a girlfriend that wants to be a mother, and I am not finding, most of them are self-centered, and come from divorced families, the only girl that ever became my girlfriend (and is still a good friend) was the only one that I found that still had married parents.