I’ve said it before: There’s a marriage agenda in divorce data.
I’ve said it before when it comes to women and their choices, especially mothers: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I’ve said it before: We are often more focused on the wedding than the marriage, and so intent on marrying people off, we don’t pay attention to whether they have a shot at making it or whether they truly know each other.
I will point you to a column in The New York Times that is both infuriating and tragic: “Two Parent Households Can Be Lethal.” I strongly recommend it.
Describing the Catch-22 of many abused women with children – leave and you’re screwed, stay and continue to endanger yourself and your children – Sarah Schoener elaborates on her research into domestic violence, first noting Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data for 2011:
… more than one-third of American women are assaulted by an intimate partner during their lives.
She also cites a 2010 Pew Research Report that reflects our persistent (negative, simplistic) view of single mothers:
… 69 percent of Americans say single mothers without male partners to help raise their children are bad for society, and 61 percent agree that a child needs a mother and a father to grow up happily.
Bad for society. Hmmm. And how is that, precisely?
While I might agree that two happy parents (regardless of gender) are the ideal for raising children – along with an extended family if possible – millions of us manage with a less picture perfect arrangement. And at the very least, we ought to agree that domestic violence does not a “happy” model make.
Yet women maintain contact with their abusers in part because of the realities imposed on them in terms of our institutions – the very institutions that are designed to help. Ms. Schoener sums up the situation in a consistent message she heard throughout her interviews:
Mental health professionals, law enforcement officials, judges and members of the clergy often showed greater concern for the maintenance of a two-parent family than for the safety of the mother and her children.
She goes on to explain the absurdity of the situation: Mothers who leave abusive men are seen as unable to protect their children, and also, as potentially “alienating” them from their (abusive) fathers.
Does that mean staying is more likely to keep kids safe?
Would you care for a few more specifics on the prevalence of domestic violence?
How about these figures from Safe Horizon:
Every year more than 3 million children witness domestic violence in their homes… [They] also suffer abuse and neglect at high rates (30 to 60%)…
Safe Horizon provides additional data, including on the effects that growing up in these environments bring to bear on children.
So where does that leave abused women and their children? To “tough it out” until they can’t take it any more, and then find themselves or their children at the mercy of a court system that stacks the decks against them?
When do we cease touting marriage as the be-all, end-all – and other family arrangements as inferior? When do our legal and mental health institutions start looking at the common sense (or its absence) of their actions?
Given that we cannot seem to protect mothers in domestic violence situations, should we be surprised that verbal and emotional abuse are tolerated for years as well?
I would agree that the family unit, however you define it, is essential to a healthy society. But that means a non-abusive family unit, first and foremost.
I would like to think we have evolved sufficiently in our views of the very real dangers of domestic violence to cease punishing the victim and her children by separating her from her children. Apparently, at least to read the statistics, we are far from understanding and acting on any such rational response to these appalling cycles of violence.
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Thought provoking article – it’s so very true. No matter what the unit looks like – single mom, single dad, two moms, two dads, or traditional family unit – as long as it’s healthy, the children will thrive.
Isn’t it horrifying to look at the statistics, Liv, and realize how many mothers feel trapped by the systems that are supposed to help them. (Do read the NYT article I reference. It’s enlightening.)
I did read the article. It’s alarming. But I was one of those women. I made the right decision for myself and my children.
I grow weary of information that assumes if we cannot provide the mythical “ideal” situation for our children, then they are somehow destined to less-than futures. Provision, stability, consistency, discipline, direction, protection, guidance and security are the building blocks for a healthy child, who will become a healthy adult. These can be provided in more than one setting.
I do believe there is an ideal. I love the thought of mom, dad, siblings and pet together as a family unit successfully inter-relating. It’s the model with which I grew up and I relish the security it represented for me. However, it’s not the only way. Attempting to recreate that positioned me to remain in an unhealthy marriage for longer than I wish. So, there are many ideals yet the reality for most is much different. I think it wiser to live in reality.
Like you, Missy, I love “the ideal” as well. But as you so wisely put it, the reality is very different for so many of us, and there can be many “ideals” when it comes to raising our children in a healthy environment.
Mythical, indeed.
What Liv said, above. “Studies” be damned!