This is tough for me, as a divorced father of two girls. Since this is public and I use my handle in a number of spaces, I’ll just say that we got divorced for reasons that were worse than “We were bored of each other” (literally something a friend told me about her divorce once) but way less bad than any kind of abuse.
But once that decision was made, we tried to do everything right. We had 50-50 custody. We hammered out the divorce agreement in a single day with the mediator. Child support was never a problem. We worked together on every issue. We didn’t badmouth the other person. We sat together at the kids’ sports games. My youngest likes to tell the story of texting her sister , on a day when she was switching houses, saying, “I hate that our parents get along so well. I’m cold and want to go home and they’re still talking to each other. Why can’t they hate each other like other divorcees?” (Joking, obviously)
But even with all that... it sure didn’t help their psyches, particularly our eldest. In some ways, this was how difficult it is to keep a consistent message to your children (notably, when sexuality raised its head as it does with the pubescent) when you aren’t in the same house and can’t put together a unified front; you don’t know what the other is saying, and so a consistent message gets garbled. But even worse, and hardest on them both, was having the bedrock of their lives taken away from them. We were a pretty stable family, and to lose that sense of support and permanence really messed them up and left scars that never fully healed.
They’re both doing pretty well, all things considered, and that’s partly because of the work we put into keeping the divorce amicable, partly because of their innate temperament and resilience, and (tbh) partly because they’re moderately privileged and it seems like the hit to socioeconomic status is responsible for a lot of the harms associated with divorce. But yeah. I can see the harm it did. It’s hard.
Yes, I read Matt's shocking statisticsthe other day too. "As Matt points out, trying to talk about traditional family structures today will have you pilloried as right-wing, regressive, even reactionary." Therein lies the problem. Young people are so removed of the possibility of marriage with few role models for a traditional, healthy, archetype of a relationship. In their eyes, the negatives outweigh the positives; i.e. marriage as slavery, domestic servitude, giving up their freedom. It is incredibly sad.
I still remember my Grandparents, other members of my extended family, even family friends and neighbours having stable, happy, healthy marriages. They were having a lot of fun and joyful times.
Commitment seems to be the idea young people are afraid of. The hook-up culture is testament to this. Short-term gratification and sex as a commodity, made too easily accessible via 'dating' apps. Of course, nobody uses dating apps for 'dating' - it isn't a tool to find a life-long partner. I suppose my views too, would be considered right-wing...
So much is class-based. My girls grew up in a relatively well-off rural Minnesota town; I would guess two-thirds of their friends were divorced. When I finally moved to a fairly tony suburb with my youngest daughter (packing the eldest off to college), she marveled that literally _none_ of her friends there came from divorces families.
But that also makes the easy transition from progressive empowerment-speak to family breakdown not so clear, right? These are the urban educated cultural progressives with all the “correct” attitudes about feminism and gender and what have you, and yet they’re also the ones that are providing the best model for good relationships!
What’s going on here? I think the answer is very, very complex, where cultural attitudes about marriage are actually downstream of larger anomie and institutional breakdown. But that would be a whole essay to tease out.
Well, aside from the 'luxury beliefs' point (which is indeed a form of hypocrisy), wealth provides much needed stability to a marriage. Therefore, the poorer you are, the more stress there is on your marriage - and that's not even getting into government handouts to single moms, which has single-handedly driven the divorce rate from under 20 percent in the 1950s to over 80 percent today in the US black community.
Recently, I stumbled upon 'luxury beliefs' on substack by Rob Henderson. Educated, cultural progressives may claim to be pro-feminist, woke etc. but not leading by example in their own lives. A 'do as I say, not as I do' type of virtue-signalling. I think he uses examples of consumer goods to show hierarchy of status, but it can extend to political ideas too.
If I was to say to you, yes you should enjoy a drink with your friends on a Friday night and it doesn't matter if you get drunk, yet, I am a sober, non-alcohol drinker who thinks alcohol ruins people's health, wouldn't that make me a hypocrite?
People are more nuanced than that. “People should be empowered to make whatever choices they want but this is what works _for me_” is pretty reasonable and not at all hypocritical.
Sure, but the progressive types elevate single motherhood, and deride marriage, while simultaneously being and staying married. Feminism and progressivism are not value-neutral on this subject, and even if they were, people need a direction to move towards. Telling someone 'anything goes' just ends up paralyzing them, and the odds of them moving in a bad direction increase dramatically.
You see, for the people I’m actually talking about--well-off married professionals, with true blue voting records but by no means activists, I don’t think there is _elevating_ single motherhood at all, nor is there deriding marriage. Rather, by and large, there is a terror of passing judgment. It’s fine to do your own thing--they just don’t want. To be viewed as the kind of patriarchy shills who tell _other_ people what to do.
Well, deriding marriage and elevating single motherhood is implicit within the progressive paradigm, and so people who buy into it also believe it implicitly even if they never think about it explicitly.
That being said, you are also right in that one of the core failings of liberalism is that the only judgement that can be passed is unto those passing judgement.
What is often let out of the equation is by reducing marriage and gender relations to a material calculation, feminism has completely removed any incentive or interest for young men to get married. It's not so much fear of commitment, at least from the male perspective, but rather a reasonable and rational response to the modern idea of marriage.
If marriage is little more than a legal contract, then there are very few reasons why men would ever want to get married. Modern statistics on marriage bear this out, too: while fewer people are getting married than even in the Great Depression (as of 2020), this is largely driven by plummeting male interest in marriage. Female interest has dropped slightly, but the gap between the sexes on this subject is only widening.
Thanks for writing about this. Not only do we not talk about it, but we also celebrate the child sacrifice that it is with euphemisms of bravery, self-love, and living your best life. Parenting experts/blogs/books bend to not offend nearly 50% of their audience by further normalizing separation.
I don't know what the solution is (the no-fault divorce debate is complicated and nuanced), but placing the best interest of kids ahead of all else and discussing the undeniable harms seems like an important step. I have seen several families/kids devastated by separations that seem imprudent and unnecessary, primarily driven by the selfish desires of parents and encouraged by a culture that insists it’s no big deal. Reconciliation and therapy are hard work - no-fault divorce is an easy escape hatch that drastically lowers our marital satisfaction threshold.
The no-fault divorce debate is simply a reflection of a deeper malaise. In Western countries without no-fault divorce, it just ends up incentivizing false accusations from both parties.
The real root issue is that feminism and progressivism have completely reduced gender relations to a material calculus. There's nothing sacred, mystical or divine about marriage anymore. Furthermore, it used to be understood that marriage was for children - nowadays, marriage is for the person getting married, like a pretty bauble to add to the tree of their life. The second it loses its shine it's tossed in the bin in favor of the next.
The shift towards marriage for love predates feminism, though! The shift to no-fault divorce was happening well before feminism had much cultural cachet. If you’re looking for a boogeyman there, I’d probably follow Patrick Deneen and name classical liberalism. The core morality of the Enlightenment is that the needs of the individual are paramount; America has a Bill of Rights but not a Bill of Responsibilities. Marriage as a transaction (I think that’s an overstatement but see your point and don’t want to nitpick) is kind of a natural outgrowth of that mentality.
(Can we also name that there were also some incredible injustices inflicted on women in order to place that responsibility above their desires or welfare? Like, say what you will about feminism but life could be miserable for women for a while.)
I have no qualms with marriage for love - in fact, I think it's a healthy ideal to aspire to.
It's completely untrue that no-fault divorce occurred before feminism - in fact, it was legalized in the US right at the height of second wave feminism's craze in 1969/1970. No fault divorce, however, is merely a symptom of feminism's annihilation of traditional gender relations.
While you are right that Liberalism's obsession with Rights does play a role, ultimately it is due to the fact that feminism is a materialist ideology with Marxist roots that is the cause. Implicitly, it is incapable of valuing anything beyond the material, which has led to transactional gender relations and extremely poor life advice for women.
I will say what I will about feminism - feminism is and has always been an evil ideology on par with Nazism or Communism, just with a less violent methodology due to the primary demographic being women (incidentally, a professor a few years back translated large portions of Mien Kampf, replaced 'jew' with 'man' and 'German' with 'Woman' and got it published as a paper in feminist publications. No-one considered it unusual until he pointed it out it was literally a Nazi text on racial - now gender - supremacy).
The idea that women were uniquely oppressed due to their gender is essentially nonsense. It's largely a lie created by second-wave feminists in the 1970s when the set about 're-examining history through the eyes of the oppressed' which largely meant making up the past.
The past was a cruel place - women had few opportunities (largely due to biological factors) and most men had few opportunities due to poverty, poor nutrition, and social barriers. The average man suffered just as much if not more than the average women historically - just look at the lives of coal miners in the 1800s and 'iron lung' if you want a taste.
Life was miserable for a lot of men or women historically, and the incidental improvements in women attributed to feminism were largely technological advancements that facilitated social changes.
In short, feminism is evil, and has generally made the lives of both men and women worse.
It's unclear to me how much family breakdown really is a causal factor for what you're describing rather than a consequence itself of a precarious disposition.
We've seen, for example, that low performing parents 'make' low performing rather than 'raise' them. Robert Plomin makes the case pretty clear in his book "Blueprint".
Still, I get the point of the article and I share your sentiment. It's pretty ridiculous that we point to the most trivial things as proximate causes of trauma while ignoring or even glamourizing one of the most obvious.
The statistic that 46% of children, by the age of 14, do not live with both mother & father in the same home may be misleading. The divorce rate is not 46% (nor the much claimed 50% either).
Remember that today, many couples NEVER marry and NEVER live in the same household. The percent of children raised by single moms is staggering (in the US): 72% of black kids, 65% of hispanic kids, 42% of white kids. You cannot lose what you never had.
Add to that kids raised by grandparents (a HUGE factor in poor communities)... ergo, not living with EITHER parent... and situations where one parent is deceased, on drugs, mentally ill, homeless or otherwise entirely unfit & unable to parent... and the real chance that the child is simply in a divorce situation drops to maybe 25%.
I am not pro divorce, mind you (as a former victim of an unwanted "NO FAULT" divorce) and lived the reality first hand of children trapped in such a situation. However, I will say that kids raised by miserable, fighting parents who DO NOT divorce... but scream at one another, throw things, drink, use drugs, are abusive...are probably NOT better off than the children of people who quietly & amicably divorce.
Some of the unhappiest adults I know (Boomers & GenX) came from entirely intact families with long married parents... who fought or were abusive... especially alcoholism, which is still very common... so it is not a simple formula of MARRIAGE GOOD...DIVORCE BAD.
Thank you for this comment. I grew up in the home you described with parents who stayed together but fought and screamed constantly, days of silent treatment towards each other and also me and my sister, alcoholism, drug addiction, emotional neglect... growing up in that household I used to wish that my parents would get a divorce. I thought for sure that they were just holding out until my younger sister left home but she and I are both adults now out of the house and they are still together and still just as bitter and miserable as ever. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why they’re still together, and while I do have my theories I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just an unknowable thing for me and I have to learn to be okay with that.
It was incredibly distressing witnessing my parents, two people who I love dearly be at each other’s throats all the time. Not to mention the pain of seeing each of them, as individuals, so unhappy. It has warped my sense of self in ways that I don’t even know fully and has certainly given me a strained view of marriage and relationships.
That all being said, I think that my sister and I turned out okay not because my parents stayed together, but because we were lucky to be surrounded by a large community of family and friends who loved us and looked out for us. We had a lot of other adults in our life that set good examples for us and were extremely supportive even when they had no idea what was going on in our home life.
This article was an interesting read, because honestly I hadn’t ever given much thought as to what my life would be like if my parents did get divorced while I was still a kid or teen. I’m not sure it would have looked all that different; I was certainly depressed and anxious and angry as hell because my parents were together. I don’t know how it would have played out if they had separated, maybe things would have been worse, maybe they would have been better like I always imagined.
I think that kids need to have healthy relationships modeled to them throughout their lives but I don’t think that their parent’s relationship should be the only source for that modeling. Mine certainly weren’t. But like I said, I had a lot of other folks in my life to look up to. I think that parents should strive for their relationship to be healthy and mature both for their own benefit and that of their children who are witnessing it firsthand. I agree with you that divorce = bad, marriage = good is way too simplistic but I don’t claim to know what the solution is or if there even is one. My two cents though is that regardless of what family situation kids are experiencing (divorced parents, unhappy; together parents, happy; divorced parents, happy; together parents, unhappy or whatever shade of gray it may be) kids need to have other community and other adults to look up to. I don’t think the nuclear family model cuts it when it comes to showing our kids what happy and healthy relationships look like, they need to see that modeled from other people in their life, not just mom and dad. Thank you again for your comment, there are certainly a lot of shades of gray here in this discussion and I appreciate you shining light on some of that.
People don’t like to talk about it because their divorced friends will feel awful admitting they have really hurt their children. One of the worst things about divorce is when parents date new people. I remember a David Sedaris essay where he and his sister hear Dr Laura tell a single mother not to date and his sister said “what a bitch!” Well when I was a divorced 23 year old with a young son some of the behavior I am so ashamed of was related to having strange men around. You can’t care about your kids the way you should and pay attention to a new relationship too. So I agree with mean old dr Laura.
You have given not just me, but anyone who read your original post, a ton of info about your anger, bitterness, divorce, even the number and gender of your children. That is YOU. That is not ME.
You do not have to say you are part of the RedPill movement, because you literally state every word you type directly out of their "manuals" and videos.
This is not opinion. This is fact. Also some of it is just good plain common sense from someone who is older, smarter and more experienced than you are.
Nope, I am telling you the truth. You just cannot handle the truth.
You prefer the RedPill excuses for your own failings, because it feels good to claim "the courts were stacked against me! they are all FEMINISTS!" instead of accepting responsibility for your own actions.
I am happy to let any readers parse your original post, and determine if I was off-base in any way. I stand on what I have said here.
In fact I have at no point said I am part of the men's movement or fund it but yet here you are trying to fabricate otherwise. These claims you are making on my behalf are a compounding narrative of attempting to jump to conclusions by telling me what I am thinking. Opinion is not fact. This is magical thinking and is the definition of delusional thinking.
Nope, I did not blame my divorce or my ex for all the ills of all the families in the world, or claim all MEN are just like my ex husband... did I? or misrepresent the court system, or claim it was all stacked against me... did I?
YOU are the one projecting! YOU are the one blaming everyone and everything BUT YOURSELF for your failed marriage... and marinating in your bitterness long after it was over.
I don't need help; I got over my divorce and have a happy, wonderful life with a new spouse... YOU need to do the grief work to get over YOUR divorce, and stop blaming others, and take responsibility for your own life... and for dear gods sake, get out of the RedPill movement. It will destroy your chances at happiness in the future.
Triggered now into more fabrication. You have made up a narrative that if you compound enough fabrications it will hide your intention. This is delusional.
You basically did this to yourself, with your RedPill remarks which are easily identifiable as RedPillers say the exact same stuff, in exactly the same words... like an army of trained robots. Believe me, I engage RedPillers online all the time. You need to do the WORK to deal with your own anger and grief. I am just pointing out the obvious to you. I do not have to project, sir: you have that projector set up in PUBLIC and the film ON and everyone can see it.
You clearly didn't read 99% of my post, which had nothing to do with YOU PERSONALLY. You certainly have no more insight into this issue of divorce and children than anyone else.... you are one person out of tens of MILLIONS of people. However, if you go online and post bitter rants about "TEH EVIL WIMMIN OUT TO GET YOU"... I have an equal right to respond. You want to marinate in misery and bitterness? Your choice. It won't lead to happiness.
You are still ranting and speculating about me. In psychology terms what you are doing is projection. Add to that you have resorted to fabrication. I am done.
The outcomes for girls in family breakdown were very interesting in the documentary "Take care of Maya". Illustrating the destructive levels of state sanctioned interference in the family which are now at epidemic proportions. The destruction of the family at the hands of the feminist captured social services and family courts are at a point where surely there are studies should be available if the subject matter wasn't so politically inconvenient. However a fractured and fearful public is malleable to very morally questionable acts of governance. So children who grow up distracted from the influences that made them like that are less likely to question the very agencies who were involved in their family breakdown. I am watching closely the Maya court case this month. The outcome of which will have repercussions in the family court across the west.
No idea about the documentary, but if you think Family Courts are run by WOMEN... you have never been in Family Court (leastways not in the USA). Neither has feminism captured social services, that I can see. Both of these are very cruel to women, especially divorcing homemakers.
Most divorces never end up in Family Court, anyways, and most children have little or no interaction with the Court system. Most divorces are in reality, simple DISSOLUTIONS... both parties want OUT... the children go with the only parent who wants them, the mother. Fathers are most vested in THEIR NEW LIFE, which typically involves remarriage or living with a new girlfriend... the very person they were CHEATING WITH and broke up the marriage over. Kids get in the way of a fun, new party lifestyle.
In claiming Family Court intervenes too much... let remember that 40% of child support (and alimony!) awarded in these court systems... is never paid to women OR their children, but goes uncollected.
The author is from a different jurisdiction to the US. Having had the personal experience of the family court I know exactly how feminist captured the UK family court system is. The social services are by in large staffed by women and the family legal system is by in large staffed by women. So much so that in my jurisdiction the head judge of the family courts is a woman, neverminded all the legal representation which is staffed by women. Be aware there is now a whole men's movement as a result of the feminist captured family court system. So much so that there are some men making a living on social media espousing the pitfalls of marriage and promoting a single life. Divorce dissolutions are something different. I am not in the business of guessing how those dissolutions happen or play out . However as a father of 2 girls I know the damage first hand of social services hysterical allegations and the impact this has directly on the children. The homelessness and suicide statistics of men who cite family breakdown as the main cause are stark and revealing. Before generalizing any further you should see the documentary, "Take of Maya", the experience which is comparable to the UK and based in the USA.
INF J-T: you cannot go entirely by your own experience, where obviously you were angry and embittered. I would have to see something more compelling & factual to believe that EVERY family court in the UK (a nation of 66 million) is run ONLY by women... and ONLY women who are "feminists who hate men".
Also, there is no guarantee that a woman judge or mediator is going to automatically be sympathetic to the woman she is making a judgement on. For example: many women judges or mediators or lawyers... DESPISE non-working wives or Stay At Home mothers. They demand these women go out to work, even if they have no educations or job skills, and deny them support payments.
And on the other side... I have seen both sympathetic and NOT-sympathetic MALE judges and lawyers and mediators. You are making it awfully simplistic: that all females in power are automatically on the side of women (and presumably all males in power on the side of men)... that is not even remotely true.
Once you say "now there is a whole mens movement"... I know your thoughts here come from the RedPill Manosphere online and NOT a reasonable evaluation of social trends/norms... that movement is angry and highly politicized, tied up with incel manifestos and a grievance culture that ignores the very real advantages that men still have in terms of jobs, money and power.
Those men on social media SURE ARE making a living ($$$) because of gullible guys like yourself, who pay $$$ to listen to absolutely bogus B.S. to make themselves feel better about their social and marital failures in life. How does promoting a single life (MG-TOW) make things better for CHILDREN? how would it make things better for your daughters? do you think you would have a better shot at full custody of two GIRLS if you had never married their mother? Would you be happier if you had never had children at all?
It is just as likely that a WOMAN taken to the cleaners by a domineering husband (who doesn't pay child support OR alimony) is going to end up homeless than a MAN. Post-divorce, women's income craters with a drop of 70%, while mens income post-divorce increases by about 35%.
There is no evidence that men who commit suicide are divorced, or got a bad deal from feminist judges in court (and I would be awfully surprised if every UK divorce got a JUDGE and not mediator, or that UK does not have simple marital dissolutions). People who kill themselves have a MENTAL ILLNESS, usually (but not only) severe chronic depression. Depression is not CAUSED by another person. Men are ALSO 10x more likely to be schizophrenic or have paranoid delusions... just by biology. Men are also many times more likely to have substance abuse issues, including drugs and alcohol.
The documentary about "Maya", which I looked up and read about... has nothing to do with divorce or child custody. It is about a child with a very rare and difficult to treat MEDICAL CONDITION... whose MARRIED parents took her to Mexico for an unorthodox experimental treatment involving putting her into a KETAMINE COMA. What on earth does that have to do with DIVORCE?
Get out of the Manosphere, sir. I am sorry your marriage failed, but you need to MOVE ON and find a way to heal... along with therapy to deal with how bitter and angry you are at your ex-wife for leaving you. (HINT: she probably left because you were bitter, angry and rage-filled and think everyone is persecuting you.) FEMINISM is not what caused your divorce! your two girls deserve better than this weird misogyny you have developed, as THEY ARE WOMEN with all the inherited characteristics of their MOTHER.
If you go through life raging at "TEH EVIL WIMMIN"... you will never meet someone more suited to you, and remarry. You will end up alone and bitter. That is not a good future. RETHINK THIS.
Wow. I have never met you but you have decided that you know me and my history. There is some serious misrepresentation going on here and some seriously speculative ranting. I will not participate in any further nonsense.
This sort of article represents my worst fear. I fought off divorce for years until doing so two years ago when my daughter was 11, now 13. I was deathly afraid of her having to endure the awful element of her parents breaking up, of two houses. Etc. Her mom and I have diametrically different beliefs on parenting and so there has always been tension. So far despite all that my daughter seems to be fairing well, in school, with friends, activities. But I always worry it’s being kept to herself, what she isn’t telling me. It will continue to be the focus of my life as she navigates middle school and high school, of course college. Being a teenage girl is tough enough, doing so in two houses is that much harder.
Freya, another good post, about another important problem, plaguing our times.
I want to challenge you and others - to step back and consider this miasma, as well as all others - that are born from the decline of the nuclear family - were planned and implemented intentionally.
This is phenomenon is not some "crazy evolution" like a fish leaving the water to become a land dweller or a "cyclic phenomenon", like Haley's comet. It was an intentional subversion of the institution and all the legacy truth and tenants, that underpinned it, since families have been around.
I have not read Matt's material (so he may have hit on this), but I always find it baffling that academics cannot or do not correctly identify the origins of these problems, as coming from inside their ranks.
"What’s also weird and ironic to me is that a progressive culture so well-versed in therapy-speak has this much trouble talking about family breakdown."
It's not weird at all, if you understand that the radical Marxist infiltration, moved quickly through academia, as activist became students, then faculty and then government leaders and bureaucrats who created the psycho-bable policies and laws - further injecting any systems they inhabited, with this poison.
Now, lest those liberal progressives here start shouting "McCarthy-ism", let's do a review of what Marx and Engels thought about the family.
"It is a peculiar fact' stated Engels a few months after Marx died, 'that with every
great revolutionary movement the question of 'free love' comes to the
foreground'.' By the mid- to late-nineteenth century it was clear to advocates and
opponents alike that many socialists shared a propensity to reject the institution
of the family in favour of 'free love', if not in practice, at least as an ideal."
"The Utopian Socialists Charles Fourier and Robert Owen had preceded Marx
and Engels in their rejection of traditional family relationships, and many
nineteenth-century leftists followed their cue. Charles Fourier's ideas played a
significant role in the socialist movement in France in the 1830s and 1840s and his
ideas on the family were propagated in the first volume of the Oeuvres Completes
published in 1841. Fourier advocated the replacement of monogamous marriage
with a system allowing much greater latitude for sexual passions, since he
believed that monogamy was an institution contrary to human nature and was
thus an impediment to human happiness."
"He also proposed that children be raised communally, so society would be one, big, harmonious family rather than fractured into competitive, squabbling family unit"
- Anyone recognize the Michelle O. "it takes a village" sentiment in that last quote???
It's no secret, that much of academia now, is the product of radical teachers and professors, who were themselves the self professed radical Marxists of the 50's and 60's.
This breakdown was planned and implemented, long before any of us were born, however, it still lives and breathes now - in the halls of our elementary schools, colleges, universities, healthcare systems, governments and religious institutions.
Until we call out those, who've intentionally subverted these institution (and the family) - for the sake of a radical ideology - boys and girls will only find more pain, confusion, depression and hopelessness, in the generations to come.
This is tough for me, as a divorced father of two girls. Since this is public and I use my handle in a number of spaces, I’ll just say that we got divorced for reasons that were worse than “We were bored of each other” (literally something a friend told me about her divorce once) but way less bad than any kind of abuse.
But once that decision was made, we tried to do everything right. We had 50-50 custody. We hammered out the divorce agreement in a single day with the mediator. Child support was never a problem. We worked together on every issue. We didn’t badmouth the other person. We sat together at the kids’ sports games. My youngest likes to tell the story of texting her sister , on a day when she was switching houses, saying, “I hate that our parents get along so well. I’m cold and want to go home and they’re still talking to each other. Why can’t they hate each other like other divorcees?” (Joking, obviously)
But even with all that... it sure didn’t help their psyches, particularly our eldest. In some ways, this was how difficult it is to keep a consistent message to your children (notably, when sexuality raised its head as it does with the pubescent) when you aren’t in the same house and can’t put together a unified front; you don’t know what the other is saying, and so a consistent message gets garbled. But even worse, and hardest on them both, was having the bedrock of their lives taken away from them. We were a pretty stable family, and to lose that sense of support and permanence really messed them up and left scars that never fully healed.
They’re both doing pretty well, all things considered, and that’s partly because of the work we put into keeping the divorce amicable, partly because of their innate temperament and resilience, and (tbh) partly because they’re moderately privileged and it seems like the hit to socioeconomic status is responsible for a lot of the harms associated with divorce. But yeah. I can see the harm it did. It’s hard.
Yes, I read Matt's shocking statisticsthe other day too. "As Matt points out, trying to talk about traditional family structures today will have you pilloried as right-wing, regressive, even reactionary." Therein lies the problem. Young people are so removed of the possibility of marriage with few role models for a traditional, healthy, archetype of a relationship. In their eyes, the negatives outweigh the positives; i.e. marriage as slavery, domestic servitude, giving up their freedom. It is incredibly sad.
I still remember my Grandparents, other members of my extended family, even family friends and neighbours having stable, happy, healthy marriages. They were having a lot of fun and joyful times.
Commitment seems to be the idea young people are afraid of. The hook-up culture is testament to this. Short-term gratification and sex as a commodity, made too easily accessible via 'dating' apps. Of course, nobody uses dating apps for 'dating' - it isn't a tool to find a life-long partner. I suppose my views too, would be considered right-wing...
So much is class-based. My girls grew up in a relatively well-off rural Minnesota town; I would guess two-thirds of their friends were divorced. When I finally moved to a fairly tony suburb with my youngest daughter (packing the eldest off to college), she marveled that literally _none_ of her friends there came from divorces families.
But that also makes the easy transition from progressive empowerment-speak to family breakdown not so clear, right? These are the urban educated cultural progressives with all the “correct” attitudes about feminism and gender and what have you, and yet they’re also the ones that are providing the best model for good relationships!
What’s going on here? I think the answer is very, very complex, where cultural attitudes about marriage are actually downstream of larger anomie and institutional breakdown. But that would be a whole essay to tease out.
Well, aside from the 'luxury beliefs' point (which is indeed a form of hypocrisy), wealth provides much needed stability to a marriage. Therefore, the poorer you are, the more stress there is on your marriage - and that's not even getting into government handouts to single moms, which has single-handedly driven the divorce rate from under 20 percent in the 1950s to over 80 percent today in the US black community.
Recently, I stumbled upon 'luxury beliefs' on substack by Rob Henderson. Educated, cultural progressives may claim to be pro-feminist, woke etc. but not leading by example in their own lives. A 'do as I say, not as I do' type of virtue-signalling. I think he uses examples of consumer goods to show hierarchy of status, but it can extend to political ideas too.
If I was to say to you, yes you should enjoy a drink with your friends on a Friday night and it doesn't matter if you get drunk, yet, I am a sober, non-alcohol drinker who thinks alcohol ruins people's health, wouldn't that make me a hypocrite?
People are more nuanced than that. “People should be empowered to make whatever choices they want but this is what works _for me_” is pretty reasonable and not at all hypocritical.
Sure, but the progressive types elevate single motherhood, and deride marriage, while simultaneously being and staying married. Feminism and progressivism are not value-neutral on this subject, and even if they were, people need a direction to move towards. Telling someone 'anything goes' just ends up paralyzing them, and the odds of them moving in a bad direction increase dramatically.
You see, for the people I’m actually talking about--well-off married professionals, with true blue voting records but by no means activists, I don’t think there is _elevating_ single motherhood at all, nor is there deriding marriage. Rather, by and large, there is a terror of passing judgment. It’s fine to do your own thing--they just don’t want. To be viewed as the kind of patriarchy shills who tell _other_ people what to do.
Well, deriding marriage and elevating single motherhood is implicit within the progressive paradigm, and so people who buy into it also believe it implicitly even if they never think about it explicitly.
That being said, you are also right in that one of the core failings of liberalism is that the only judgement that can be passed is unto those passing judgement.
Yes, you're quite right.
What is often let out of the equation is by reducing marriage and gender relations to a material calculation, feminism has completely removed any incentive or interest for young men to get married. It's not so much fear of commitment, at least from the male perspective, but rather a reasonable and rational response to the modern idea of marriage.
If marriage is little more than a legal contract, then there are very few reasons why men would ever want to get married. Modern statistics on marriage bear this out, too: while fewer people are getting married than even in the Great Depression (as of 2020), this is largely driven by plummeting male interest in marriage. Female interest has dropped slightly, but the gap between the sexes on this subject is only widening.
Thanks for writing about this. Not only do we not talk about it, but we also celebrate the child sacrifice that it is with euphemisms of bravery, self-love, and living your best life. Parenting experts/blogs/books bend to not offend nearly 50% of their audience by further normalizing separation.
I don't know what the solution is (the no-fault divorce debate is complicated and nuanced), but placing the best interest of kids ahead of all else and discussing the undeniable harms seems like an important step. I have seen several families/kids devastated by separations that seem imprudent and unnecessary, primarily driven by the selfish desires of parents and encouraged by a culture that insists it’s no big deal. Reconciliation and therapy are hard work - no-fault divorce is an easy escape hatch that drastically lowers our marital satisfaction threshold.
The no-fault divorce debate is simply a reflection of a deeper malaise. In Western countries without no-fault divorce, it just ends up incentivizing false accusations from both parties.
The real root issue is that feminism and progressivism have completely reduced gender relations to a material calculus. There's nothing sacred, mystical or divine about marriage anymore. Furthermore, it used to be understood that marriage was for children - nowadays, marriage is for the person getting married, like a pretty bauble to add to the tree of their life. The second it loses its shine it's tossed in the bin in favor of the next.
The shift towards marriage for love predates feminism, though! The shift to no-fault divorce was happening well before feminism had much cultural cachet. If you’re looking for a boogeyman there, I’d probably follow Patrick Deneen and name classical liberalism. The core morality of the Enlightenment is that the needs of the individual are paramount; America has a Bill of Rights but not a Bill of Responsibilities. Marriage as a transaction (I think that’s an overstatement but see your point and don’t want to nitpick) is kind of a natural outgrowth of that mentality.
(Can we also name that there were also some incredible injustices inflicted on women in order to place that responsibility above their desires or welfare? Like, say what you will about feminism but life could be miserable for women for a while.)
I have no qualms with marriage for love - in fact, I think it's a healthy ideal to aspire to.
It's completely untrue that no-fault divorce occurred before feminism - in fact, it was legalized in the US right at the height of second wave feminism's craze in 1969/1970. No fault divorce, however, is merely a symptom of feminism's annihilation of traditional gender relations.
While you are right that Liberalism's obsession with Rights does play a role, ultimately it is due to the fact that feminism is a materialist ideology with Marxist roots that is the cause. Implicitly, it is incapable of valuing anything beyond the material, which has led to transactional gender relations and extremely poor life advice for women.
I will say what I will about feminism - feminism is and has always been an evil ideology on par with Nazism or Communism, just with a less violent methodology due to the primary demographic being women (incidentally, a professor a few years back translated large portions of Mien Kampf, replaced 'jew' with 'man' and 'German' with 'Woman' and got it published as a paper in feminist publications. No-one considered it unusual until he pointed it out it was literally a Nazi text on racial - now gender - supremacy).
The idea that women were uniquely oppressed due to their gender is essentially nonsense. It's largely a lie created by second-wave feminists in the 1970s when the set about 're-examining history through the eyes of the oppressed' which largely meant making up the past.
The past was a cruel place - women had few opportunities (largely due to biological factors) and most men had few opportunities due to poverty, poor nutrition, and social barriers. The average man suffered just as much if not more than the average women historically - just look at the lives of coal miners in the 1800s and 'iron lung' if you want a taste.
Life was miserable for a lot of men or women historically, and the incidental improvements in women attributed to feminism were largely technological advancements that facilitated social changes.
In short, feminism is evil, and has generally made the lives of both men and women worse.
Wow Freya, to use a British word, you are absolutely smashing it, another great one.
Thanks so much John! That means a lot
Sure, you should go on Louise's podcast, that would be the best episode of all time.
It's unclear to me how much family breakdown really is a causal factor for what you're describing rather than a consequence itself of a precarious disposition.
We've seen, for example, that low performing parents 'make' low performing rather than 'raise' them. Robert Plomin makes the case pretty clear in his book "Blueprint".
Still, I get the point of the article and I share your sentiment. It's pretty ridiculous that we point to the most trivial things as proximate causes of trauma while ignoring or even glamourizing one of the most obvious.
Of course I meant "low performing kids". Looks like I missed a word there!
Thank you for this thoughtful and insightful post, Freya.
The statistic that 46% of children, by the age of 14, do not live with both mother & father in the same home may be misleading. The divorce rate is not 46% (nor the much claimed 50% either).
Remember that today, many couples NEVER marry and NEVER live in the same household. The percent of children raised by single moms is staggering (in the US): 72% of black kids, 65% of hispanic kids, 42% of white kids. You cannot lose what you never had.
Add to that kids raised by grandparents (a HUGE factor in poor communities)... ergo, not living with EITHER parent... and situations where one parent is deceased, on drugs, mentally ill, homeless or otherwise entirely unfit & unable to parent... and the real chance that the child is simply in a divorce situation drops to maybe 25%.
I am not pro divorce, mind you (as a former victim of an unwanted "NO FAULT" divorce) and lived the reality first hand of children trapped in such a situation. However, I will say that kids raised by miserable, fighting parents who DO NOT divorce... but scream at one another, throw things, drink, use drugs, are abusive...are probably NOT better off than the children of people who quietly & amicably divorce.
Some of the unhappiest adults I know (Boomers & GenX) came from entirely intact families with long married parents... who fought or were abusive... especially alcoholism, which is still very common... so it is not a simple formula of MARRIAGE GOOD...DIVORCE BAD.
Thank you for this comment. I grew up in the home you described with parents who stayed together but fought and screamed constantly, days of silent treatment towards each other and also me and my sister, alcoholism, drug addiction, emotional neglect... growing up in that household I used to wish that my parents would get a divorce. I thought for sure that they were just holding out until my younger sister left home but she and I are both adults now out of the house and they are still together and still just as bitter and miserable as ever. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why they’re still together, and while I do have my theories I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just an unknowable thing for me and I have to learn to be okay with that.
It was incredibly distressing witnessing my parents, two people who I love dearly be at each other’s throats all the time. Not to mention the pain of seeing each of them, as individuals, so unhappy. It has warped my sense of self in ways that I don’t even know fully and has certainly given me a strained view of marriage and relationships.
That all being said, I think that my sister and I turned out okay not because my parents stayed together, but because we were lucky to be surrounded by a large community of family and friends who loved us and looked out for us. We had a lot of other adults in our life that set good examples for us and were extremely supportive even when they had no idea what was going on in our home life.
This article was an interesting read, because honestly I hadn’t ever given much thought as to what my life would be like if my parents did get divorced while I was still a kid or teen. I’m not sure it would have looked all that different; I was certainly depressed and anxious and angry as hell because my parents were together. I don’t know how it would have played out if they had separated, maybe things would have been worse, maybe they would have been better like I always imagined.
I think that kids need to have healthy relationships modeled to them throughout their lives but I don’t think that their parent’s relationship should be the only source for that modeling. Mine certainly weren’t. But like I said, I had a lot of other folks in my life to look up to. I think that parents should strive for their relationship to be healthy and mature both for their own benefit and that of their children who are witnessing it firsthand. I agree with you that divorce = bad, marriage = good is way too simplistic but I don’t claim to know what the solution is or if there even is one. My two cents though is that regardless of what family situation kids are experiencing (divorced parents, unhappy; together parents, happy; divorced parents, happy; together parents, unhappy or whatever shade of gray it may be) kids need to have other community and other adults to look up to. I don’t think the nuclear family model cuts it when it comes to showing our kids what happy and healthy relationships look like, they need to see that modeled from other people in their life, not just mom and dad. Thank you again for your comment, there are certainly a lot of shades of gray here in this discussion and I appreciate you shining light on some of that.
People don’t like to talk about it because their divorced friends will feel awful admitting they have really hurt their children. One of the worst things about divorce is when parents date new people. I remember a David Sedaris essay where he and his sister hear Dr Laura tell a single mother not to date and his sister said “what a bitch!” Well when I was a divorced 23 year old with a young son some of the behavior I am so ashamed of was related to having strange men around. You can’t care about your kids the way you should and pay attention to a new relationship too. So I agree with mean old dr Laura.
You have given not just me, but anyone who read your original post, a ton of info about your anger, bitterness, divorce, even the number and gender of your children. That is YOU. That is not ME.
You do not have to say you are part of the RedPill movement, because you literally state every word you type directly out of their "manuals" and videos.
This is not opinion. This is fact. Also some of it is just good plain common sense from someone who is older, smarter and more experienced than you are.
Nope, I am telling you the truth. You just cannot handle the truth.
You prefer the RedPill excuses for your own failings, because it feels good to claim "the courts were stacked against me! they are all FEMINISTS!" instead of accepting responsibility for your own actions.
I am happy to let any readers parse your original post, and determine if I was off-base in any way. I stand on what I have said here.
In fact I have at no point said I am part of the men's movement or fund it but yet here you are trying to fabricate otherwise. These claims you are making on my behalf are a compounding narrative of attempting to jump to conclusions by telling me what I am thinking. Opinion is not fact. This is magical thinking and is the definition of delusional thinking.
Nope, I did not blame my divorce or my ex for all the ills of all the families in the world, or claim all MEN are just like my ex husband... did I? or misrepresent the court system, or claim it was all stacked against me... did I?
YOU are the one projecting! YOU are the one blaming everyone and everything BUT YOURSELF for your failed marriage... and marinating in your bitterness long after it was over.
I don't need help; I got over my divorce and have a happy, wonderful life with a new spouse... YOU need to do the grief work to get over YOUR divorce, and stop blaming others, and take responsibility for your own life... and for dear gods sake, get out of the RedPill movement. It will destroy your chances at happiness in the future.
Triggered now into more fabrication. You have made up a narrative that if you compound enough fabrications it will hide your intention. This is delusional.
You basically did this to yourself, with your RedPill remarks which are easily identifiable as RedPillers say the exact same stuff, in exactly the same words... like an army of trained robots. Believe me, I engage RedPillers online all the time. You need to do the WORK to deal with your own anger and grief. I am just pointing out the obvious to you. I do not have to project, sir: you have that projector set up in PUBLIC and the film ON and everyone can see it.
You are projecting your divorce and past relationships with men on me. Stop fabricating a narrative and seek help.
You clearly didn't read 99% of my post, which had nothing to do with YOU PERSONALLY. You certainly have no more insight into this issue of divorce and children than anyone else.... you are one person out of tens of MILLIONS of people. However, if you go online and post bitter rants about "TEH EVIL WIMMIN OUT TO GET YOU"... I have an equal right to respond. You want to marinate in misery and bitterness? Your choice. It won't lead to happiness.
You are still ranting and speculating about me. In psychology terms what you are doing is projection. Add to that you have resorted to fabrication. I am done.
The outcomes for girls in family breakdown were very interesting in the documentary "Take care of Maya". Illustrating the destructive levels of state sanctioned interference in the family which are now at epidemic proportions. The destruction of the family at the hands of the feminist captured social services and family courts are at a point where surely there are studies should be available if the subject matter wasn't so politically inconvenient. However a fractured and fearful public is malleable to very morally questionable acts of governance. So children who grow up distracted from the influences that made them like that are less likely to question the very agencies who were involved in their family breakdown. I am watching closely the Maya court case this month. The outcome of which will have repercussions in the family court across the west.
No idea about the documentary, but if you think Family Courts are run by WOMEN... you have never been in Family Court (leastways not in the USA). Neither has feminism captured social services, that I can see. Both of these are very cruel to women, especially divorcing homemakers.
Most divorces never end up in Family Court, anyways, and most children have little or no interaction with the Court system. Most divorces are in reality, simple DISSOLUTIONS... both parties want OUT... the children go with the only parent who wants them, the mother. Fathers are most vested in THEIR NEW LIFE, which typically involves remarriage or living with a new girlfriend... the very person they were CHEATING WITH and broke up the marriage over. Kids get in the way of a fun, new party lifestyle.
In claiming Family Court intervenes too much... let remember that 40% of child support (and alimony!) awarded in these court systems... is never paid to women OR their children, but goes uncollected.
The author is from a different jurisdiction to the US. Having had the personal experience of the family court I know exactly how feminist captured the UK family court system is. The social services are by in large staffed by women and the family legal system is by in large staffed by women. So much so that in my jurisdiction the head judge of the family courts is a woman, neverminded all the legal representation which is staffed by women. Be aware there is now a whole men's movement as a result of the feminist captured family court system. So much so that there are some men making a living on social media espousing the pitfalls of marriage and promoting a single life. Divorce dissolutions are something different. I am not in the business of guessing how those dissolutions happen or play out . However as a father of 2 girls I know the damage first hand of social services hysterical allegations and the impact this has directly on the children. The homelessness and suicide statistics of men who cite family breakdown as the main cause are stark and revealing. Before generalizing any further you should see the documentary, "Take of Maya", the experience which is comparable to the UK and based in the USA.
INF J-T: you cannot go entirely by your own experience, where obviously you were angry and embittered. I would have to see something more compelling & factual to believe that EVERY family court in the UK (a nation of 66 million) is run ONLY by women... and ONLY women who are "feminists who hate men".
Also, there is no guarantee that a woman judge or mediator is going to automatically be sympathetic to the woman she is making a judgement on. For example: many women judges or mediators or lawyers... DESPISE non-working wives or Stay At Home mothers. They demand these women go out to work, even if they have no educations or job skills, and deny them support payments.
And on the other side... I have seen both sympathetic and NOT-sympathetic MALE judges and lawyers and mediators. You are making it awfully simplistic: that all females in power are automatically on the side of women (and presumably all males in power on the side of men)... that is not even remotely true.
Once you say "now there is a whole mens movement"... I know your thoughts here come from the RedPill Manosphere online and NOT a reasonable evaluation of social trends/norms... that movement is angry and highly politicized, tied up with incel manifestos and a grievance culture that ignores the very real advantages that men still have in terms of jobs, money and power.
Those men on social media SURE ARE making a living ($$$) because of gullible guys like yourself, who pay $$$ to listen to absolutely bogus B.S. to make themselves feel better about their social and marital failures in life. How does promoting a single life (MG-TOW) make things better for CHILDREN? how would it make things better for your daughters? do you think you would have a better shot at full custody of two GIRLS if you had never married their mother? Would you be happier if you had never had children at all?
It is just as likely that a WOMAN taken to the cleaners by a domineering husband (who doesn't pay child support OR alimony) is going to end up homeless than a MAN. Post-divorce, women's income craters with a drop of 70%, while mens income post-divorce increases by about 35%.
There is no evidence that men who commit suicide are divorced, or got a bad deal from feminist judges in court (and I would be awfully surprised if every UK divorce got a JUDGE and not mediator, or that UK does not have simple marital dissolutions). People who kill themselves have a MENTAL ILLNESS, usually (but not only) severe chronic depression. Depression is not CAUSED by another person. Men are ALSO 10x more likely to be schizophrenic or have paranoid delusions... just by biology. Men are also many times more likely to have substance abuse issues, including drugs and alcohol.
The documentary about "Maya", which I looked up and read about... has nothing to do with divorce or child custody. It is about a child with a very rare and difficult to treat MEDICAL CONDITION... whose MARRIED parents took her to Mexico for an unorthodox experimental treatment involving putting her into a KETAMINE COMA. What on earth does that have to do with DIVORCE?
Get out of the Manosphere, sir. I am sorry your marriage failed, but you need to MOVE ON and find a way to heal... along with therapy to deal with how bitter and angry you are at your ex-wife for leaving you. (HINT: she probably left because you were bitter, angry and rage-filled and think everyone is persecuting you.) FEMINISM is not what caused your divorce! your two girls deserve better than this weird misogyny you have developed, as THEY ARE WOMEN with all the inherited characteristics of their MOTHER.
If you go through life raging at "TEH EVIL WIMMIN"... you will never meet someone more suited to you, and remarry. You will end up alone and bitter. That is not a good future. RETHINK THIS.
Wow. I have never met you but you have decided that you know me and my history. There is some serious misrepresentation going on here and some seriously speculative ranting. I will not participate in any further nonsense.
This sort of article represents my worst fear. I fought off divorce for years until doing so two years ago when my daughter was 11, now 13. I was deathly afraid of her having to endure the awful element of her parents breaking up, of two houses. Etc. Her mom and I have diametrically different beliefs on parenting and so there has always been tension. So far despite all that my daughter seems to be fairing well, in school, with friends, activities. But I always worry it’s being kept to herself, what she isn’t telling me. It will continue to be the focus of my life as she navigates middle school and high school, of course college. Being a teenage girl is tough enough, doing so in two houses is that much harder.
Freya, another good post, about another important problem, plaguing our times.
I want to challenge you and others - to step back and consider this miasma, as well as all others - that are born from the decline of the nuclear family - were planned and implemented intentionally.
This is phenomenon is not some "crazy evolution" like a fish leaving the water to become a land dweller or a "cyclic phenomenon", like Haley's comet. It was an intentional subversion of the institution and all the legacy truth and tenants, that underpinned it, since families have been around.
I have not read Matt's material (so he may have hit on this), but I always find it baffling that academics cannot or do not correctly identify the origins of these problems, as coming from inside their ranks.
"What’s also weird and ironic to me is that a progressive culture so well-versed in therapy-speak has this much trouble talking about family breakdown."
It's not weird at all, if you understand that the radical Marxist infiltration, moved quickly through academia, as activist became students, then faculty and then government leaders and bureaucrats who created the psycho-bable policies and laws - further injecting any systems they inhabited, with this poison.
Now, lest those liberal progressives here start shouting "McCarthy-ism", let's do a review of what Marx and Engels thought about the family.
https://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/History/Faculty/Weikart/Marx-Engels-and-the-Abolition-of-the-Family.pdf
Some tidbits:
"It is a peculiar fact' stated Engels a few months after Marx died, 'that with every
great revolutionary movement the question of 'free love' comes to the
foreground'.' By the mid- to late-nineteenth century it was clear to advocates and
opponents alike that many socialists shared a propensity to reject the institution
of the family in favour of 'free love', if not in practice, at least as an ideal."
"The Utopian Socialists Charles Fourier and Robert Owen had preceded Marx
and Engels in their rejection of traditional family relationships, and many
nineteenth-century leftists followed their cue. Charles Fourier's ideas played a
significant role in the socialist movement in France in the 1830s and 1840s and his
ideas on the family were propagated in the first volume of the Oeuvres Completes
published in 1841. Fourier advocated the replacement of monogamous marriage
with a system allowing much greater latitude for sexual passions, since he
believed that monogamy was an institution contrary to human nature and was
thus an impediment to human happiness."
"He also proposed that children be raised communally, so society would be one, big, harmonious family rather than fractured into competitive, squabbling family unit"
- Anyone recognize the Michelle O. "it takes a village" sentiment in that last quote???
It's no secret, that much of academia now, is the product of radical teachers and professors, who were themselves the self professed radical Marxists of the 50's and 60's.
This breakdown was planned and implemented, long before any of us were born, however, it still lives and breathes now - in the halls of our elementary schools, colleges, universities, healthcare systems, governments and religious institutions.
Until we call out those, who've intentionally subverted these institution (and the family) - for the sake of a radical ideology - boys and girls will only find more pain, confusion, depression and hopelessness, in the generations to come.