In my life I don’t know many divorced or remarried couples. So I am very glad that we discussed this topic because I felt very uninformed going into the week.
Most divorcees are glad they ended the marriage.
-In the research that we looked at in my class, 70% of american couples said that they wished they had saved their marriage and not divorced.
Divorce is better for the kids.
-After divorce fathers often disappear. One study showed that divorced fathers live an average of 400 miles from their children. In previous weeks we have talked about how a missing father does not benefit children.
-Fathers usually don’t choose to disappear from their kids' lives, but they have to move to get a higher paying job.
If your marriage is struggling the best thing to do is to separate.
-Separation is probably the surest way to kill a marriage that is already struggling.
The other thing that I learned about in class was blended families. We did a lot of comparing the differences between a blended family and an intact, two-parent, biological family. I want to talk about how the family systems differ.
A nuclear family has:
-2 parents with children, progeny of both
-The marital and parental tasks are exclusive to the marital dyad
-Marital pair predates the parental pair
-Members belong to only one family system
-Relatively closed system
A remarried family has:
-2 parents, but each child parented by only one parent
-Marital dyad may well not be the same as parental dyad. At least three adults are involved in most cases
-Parent-child unit was there first
-At least two members are part of another family system
-System has to have somewhat flexible boundaries
-Boundaries are blurred
I asked my mom what she thinks about the difficulties in blended families. She said that it would be hard because there are more parents, and different views for the same situation. I think this goes back to divorce being “better” for children. Children don’t do well if they're constantly being passed back and forth between homes with different rules. In most states the rule is that the mom keeps the children for the majority of the time. The dad will get the kids every other weekend, and the wednesday of the week they don’t have them on the weekends. This confuses the children.
After this week's classes my eyes have been opened. I am more aware of the challenges that blended families face, but that they can work. I also learned that divorce isn’t the answer in most cases.
First I want to discuss a few myths about divorce. Because I didn’t know much about this topic, I honestly believed some of these myths.
-In the research that we looked at in my class, 70% of american couples said that they wished they had saved their marriage and not divorced.
Divorce is better for the kids.
-After divorce fathers often disappear. One study showed that divorced fathers live an average of 400 miles from their children. In previous weeks we have talked about how a missing father does not benefit children.
-Fathers usually don’t choose to disappear from their kids' lives, but they have to move to get a higher paying job.
If your marriage is struggling the best thing to do is to separate.
-Separation is probably the surest way to kill a marriage that is already struggling.
The other thing that I learned about in class was blended families. We did a lot of comparing the differences between a blended family and an intact, two-parent, biological family. I want to talk about how the family systems differ.
A nuclear family has:
-2 parents with children, progeny of both
-The marital and parental tasks are exclusive to the marital dyad
-Marital pair predates the parental pair
-Members belong to only one family system
-Relatively closed system
A remarried family has:
-2 parents, but each child parented by only one parent
-Marital dyad may well not be the same as parental dyad. At least three adults are involved in most cases
-Parent-child unit was there first
-At least two members are part of another family system
-System has to have somewhat flexible boundaries
-Boundaries are blurred
I asked my mom what she thinks about the difficulties in blended families. She said that it would be hard because there are more parents, and different views for the same situation. I think this goes back to divorce being “better” for children. Children don’t do well if they're constantly being passed back and forth between homes with different rules. In most states the rule is that the mom keeps the children for the majority of the time. The dad will get the kids every other weekend, and the wednesday of the week they don’t have them on the weekends. This confuses the children.
After this week's classes my eyes have been opened. I am more aware of the challenges that blended families face, but that they can work. I also learned that divorce isn’t the answer in most cases.
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