Married Couples with Children Should Not Divorce

張貼日期：May 27, 2017 1:58:25 PM

Amy Chau

The shocking sighs when the public heard the “perfect” couple- Brad Pitt and Angelina Julie’s divorce last year are still fresh in my mind, while so far in this year, there were even more frequent occurrences of celebrities untying the knot, with the most recent notorious case of Chinese actress Fay Bai (known as BaiBaihe by Chinese). I believe it was not only a pity for the fans who still believe in happy-ever-after love stories, it also caused a lot of problems for themselves, the whole family and especially their children. So is the case for every divorced couple.

For either side of the couple, divorce may lead to psychological trauma, custody disputes and financial burden. It is generally accepted at present that divorce is a basic right of a person who wants freedom. Unfortunately, truth to be told, it is a totally different matter if you have children. Being a parent means responsibility. You are not alone and unconditionally free anymore, since your fate has been linked with individuals who you gave birth to. Although myriad divorced parents hate to admit that their decision lacks consideration, they do always say that they are irresponsible and selfish for their children. For years and years after divorce, they would have to swallow the bitter guiltiness. To make things worse, some of the parents may lose in the battle of fighting for custody and can only see their children several times a year. In the custody battle alone, the relationship between the couple and between a parent and the child will be devastated. The parents will fiercely argue about who should get more assets, who should shoulder more responsibility for raising their child, and who the child or one of the children belong to; the children, however, will feel abandoned by one of their parents and will hate his mom or dad for this. The family will be separated into two sides, both of which hold grudge for each other, making the parents besieged in a tangled web of children hatred. More realistically speaking, once divorced, most single parents will have to deal with heavier financial challenge, since he or she will be in charge of everything that was supposed to be shared by two people, not to mention how heavy the burden will be for housewives who don’t have a job.

If we view the family as a whole, there will be conflicts and tensions among the parent, the stepparents, the children, their grandparents, and other close relatives. As what has been mentioned above, children tend to hate the parent who has abandoned them, while they will still have a hard time loving the parent they live together with. For one thing, if the parent has not remarried, he or she will have countless negative comments on the other and keep complaining about the failure of marriage, making the children annoyed of such a grumpy person. For another, if the parent gets married, things will become much more complicated, not only for the fact that the children will have a tough time accepting their new parent, but also because the endless eternal conflicts in the genetically unrelated relationship. We have already heard a great number of cases where a stepparent abuses the stepchild, just like stories of Snow White or Cinderella, which was written for very good reasons, as it’s almost impossible to treat a child whole-heartedly especially when the stepparent has his or her own child. There is a high chance that frustration will arise from the unfairness and the birth parent will either have to be a mediator or just ignore what the child says and feels, so the conflicts will never end and tensions will always stay, not to mention the situation when children from the previous marriage fight for resources and love with children of his birth parent and stepparent. Luckily, their grandparents may have a tender heart and the older generation will favor the children who have suffered from parents’ divorce; however, this leads to their dissatisfaction towards the stepparents and even the birth parents. Sometimes the children will choose to live with their grandparents to escape the unfairness or the children will be forced to live with their grandparents so that the parents will have a “new” family. In this case, their aunts or uncle will have opinions about the children, thinking they are occupying the maintenance they provide for the old generation. They would argue that the children should not be there and go back to their “own” home, which, sadly, no longer has room for them.

The ones who will be hurt the most are undoubtedly the children, who may suffer from desperation, prejudice, and other emotional torture which could cause their personality flaws or even juvenile delinquency. Those children who don’t have to witness the process of parents’ divorce are the luckier ones. They don’t have to see the dishonesty between their parents, they don’t have to hear the mad arguing sounds and they don’t have to feel the heartbreaking moment of seeing a family falling apart. This experience is highly possible to result in their dishonesty, bad temper and distrust in others. However, even for those children whose parents have divorced before he or she can remember, the aftermath of the divorce prevails. When chatting with his or her peers about family, he or she will never have a chance to brag about how delicious and happy a dinner with mom and dad is; when he or she encounters the first weekly journal topic “My Family,” the embarrassment and upset of writing or even thinking of how to write is beyond expression. Other innocent kids will laugh the kids from divorced families and bully them. Family may become nothing but a deep scar for them and they may find it hard to be grateful, trust and love others in their later life, not to mention the family conflicts mentioned above, which are likely to lead to an unhappy life and create an unhealthy environment for the kids’ growth and character-shaping. We are no longer surprised to learn that kids from the divorced family have schoolwork problems, have anger towards others, do shop-lifting or even try to commit crime to revenge unfairness he suffered and do harm to the society. Some may feel sorry for them, and yet no one could ever understand that all they need is not the thrill of behaving badly, but a little attention and more love from the parents they love so much.

To conclude, the best policy to save the troubles for the couple who wants to divorce and to purchase real happiness is not to divorce. Many divorces are caused by impatience and misunderstanding, while just give a second thought and be more tolerating and there will be a brighter future for both the parents and the children.