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> divorce, which is definitely, statically speaking, really bad for kids. The alternative, seeing parents who clearly don't like each other, is worse. I ofte

> divorce, which is definitely, statically speaking, really bad for kids. The alternative, seeing parents who clearly don't like each other, is worse. I often think that studies on the effect of divorce on kids are missing the forest for the trees: They're studying divorce, not broken parental relationships that lead to divorce. Anecdata here, but I dated a girl who had parents that had certainly fallen out of love ages ago, and it was clear that she had a sad idea of what a relationship was supposed to look like. She didn't have a language of love [0] that she would ever express, and was unresponsive to my attempts at using any of the languages. She claimed to love me and cried when we broke up, but I couldn't be in a relationship that felt loveless. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages

notch656a 5y ago
Could be worse, could not. Maintaining two households is costly and could lead to imprisonment of one parent if they can't keep up with paying child support an imputed income a judge assigns to them. Were I to fall out of love with my wife I would be very much tempted not to divorce and instead maintain an amiable platonic relationship until my child is gone. I'm not sure which is worse, two parents who don't love each other, or two parent who don't love each other and are in separate households with one under constant stress of possible imprisonment if they lose their job.
brimble 5y ago
The trouble is that divorce, and even relationships turning bad, isn't something that necessarily happens in a vacuum. Very few marriages would really survive all changing circumstances, no matter what the vows say. A relationship that might have worked out OK can turn bad and end in divorce in part because money gets very tight, for too long a time. I do agree that a more nuanced analysis would need to find some way of determining whether, or at what rate, the particular cases that are pushed over the edge by financial hardship were already in some way toxic or creating a poor environment for the kids, and were likely to stay that way even if circumstance improved somewhat.
- notch656a 5y ago
  Poverty rate has remained fairly flate since ~1970 while divorce rates have come up. If poverty were the dominating reason for divorce, then divorce should have been much more common in pre-1980s and particularly pre-1960s America when poverty was significantly more common. It's entirely possible the new era of welfare benefits and no-fault divorce open up the door of divorce for many people. If fewer divorces is your goal then recreating social policy and values of conservative earlier America is a pursuit you may be looking into.
  - brimble 5y ago
    I'm not sure that kind of multi-decade analysis gets at what you're trying to. Too many confounding factors. Meanwhile, money trouble is often reported as a major factor in marital/relationship struggles. Better might be to find a cohorts of broadly similar SES, then look at them over just a few years, and divide them into "household earnings went up" and "household earnings went down", then compare divorce rates. Still not perfect, but much closer to being useful. > It's entirely possible the new era of welfare benefits and no-fault divorce open up the door of divorce for many people. Yes, it probably did! Especially the latter. > If fewer divorces is your goal then recreating social policy and values of conservative earlier America is a pursuit you may be looking into. I'd prefer to try to fight it by improving benefits so being poor doesn't cause as much stress. Ideally, also by lowering the poverty rate.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      I'm confused, America had a system where divorce rates where much lower (even in the face of poverty!) , which is ostensibly your goal. You've simply brushed aside a tested system. Of course you could test your novel experiments in parallel, assuming you can find willing parties to fund this experiment.
      - brimble 5y ago
        "I'm just so confused that you don't want to go back to 1950s mores around marriage and divorce, it's tested and it works" Are you really confused, though? [EDIT] To be clear, I'm not uncertain about that, and know you aren't. That was rhetorical.

notch656a 5y ago

Could be worse, could not. Maintaining two households is costly and could lead to imprisonment of one parent if they can't keep up with paying child support an imputed income a judge assigns to them. Were I to fall out of love with my wife I would be very much tempted not to divorce and instead maintain an amiable platonic relationship until my child is gone. I'm not sure which is worse, two parents who don't love each other, or two parent who don't love each other and are in separate households with one under constant stress of possible imprisonment if they lose their job.

brimble 5y ago

The trouble is that divorce, and even relationships turning bad, isn't something that necessarily happens in a vacuum. Very few marriages would really survive all changing circumstances, no matter what the vows say. A relationship that might have worked out OK can turn bad and end in divorce in part because money gets very tight, for too long a time. I do agree that a more nuanced analysis would need to find some way of determining whether, or at what rate, the particular cases that are pushed over the edge by financial hardship were already in some way toxic or creating a poor environment for the kids, and were likely to stay that way even if circumstance improved somewhat.

notch656a 5y ago
Poverty rate has remained fairly flate since ~1970 while divorce rates have come up. If poverty were the dominating reason for divorce, then divorce should have been much more common in pre-1980s and particularly pre-1960s America when poverty was significantly more common. It's entirely possible the new era of welfare benefits and no-fault divorce open up the door of divorce for many people. If fewer divorces is your goal then recreating social policy and values of conservative earlier America is a pursuit you may be looking into.
- brimble 5y ago
  I'm not sure that kind of multi-decade analysis gets at what you're trying to. Too many confounding factors. Meanwhile, money trouble is often reported as a major factor in marital/relationship struggles. Better might be to find a cohorts of broadly similar SES, then look at them over just a few years, and divide them into "household earnings went up" and "household earnings went down", then compare divorce rates. Still not perfect, but much closer to being useful. > It's entirely possible the new era of welfare benefits and no-fault divorce open up the door of divorce for many people. Yes, it probably did! Especially the latter. > If fewer divorces is your goal then recreating social policy and values of conservative earlier America is a pursuit you may be looking into. I'd prefer to try to fight it by improving benefits so being poor doesn't cause as much stress. Ideally, also by lowering the poverty rate.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    I'm confused, America had a system where divorce rates where much lower (even in the face of poverty!) , which is ostensibly your goal. You've simply brushed aside a tested system. Of course you could test your novel experiments in parallel, assuming you can find willing parties to fund this experiment.
    - brimble 5y ago
      "I'm just so confused that you don't want to go back to 1950s mores around marriage and divorce, it's tested and it works" Are you really confused, though? [EDIT] To be clear, I'm not uncertain about that, and know you aren't. That was rhetorical.