I can't think of a single divorce with which I've a personal connection in which the originating spouse gave any indication that the children were otherwise than a secondary consideration

There's a clever name for this type of fallacy, but it escapes me at the moment:

Aside from cases of abuse and neglect, if children are held as the PRIMARY consideration, then there will be no divorce.

See what i mean? If kids are secondary, divorce proceeds. If kids are primary, parents stay together "for the kids sake".

In my experience anyway...

The issue is to what degree are the effects on the children considered.

Marty - Thanks for your honesty of the real agenda in this post. I think Jusitn agrees with you that if children were a 'primary' consideration, there there would be no divorces where children were involved. Even in cases where there is abuse of the spouse and not the kids orm adultery, if children were truly the primary consideration the abused or betrayed spouse would stay in the marriage for the sake of the children. Because the goal of a healthy family life is based on one man, one woman, one marriage certificate and their bioligical children.

In the same way that peace on earth should be the goal so why not make war more legally difficult - maybe add a veto power so that if another country disagrees with going to war then the war is not allowed.

Reminds me of a discussion I was having with a friend who is anti-Bush who said that Bush did not consider the effects on others' lives before deciding to go to war.

- Peace is preferable over war.
- No-divorce is preferable overe divorce.
- Everyone having health care is preferable to some people not having having health care.

Simple enough.

So what's your point mr. smarty pants? Please, don't waste all that effort just to insult me -- i'm immune. Tell us what you really think. If you do...

My point was that I admire your honesty in saying that you don't feel that one can make the choice to get divorced and also have the children as a primary consideration (unless the children are being abused).

I don't agree with that but admire its consistency.

As opposed to the view of others that preach the best interests of the children and assert that anyone who opposes them does not consider the effects on children yet they are not willing to come forth as you did.

I think your approach to divorce is too extreme. But I admire its consistency in strictness.

Finally, you are callimg me mr smarty-pants ? Is anyone more saracstic and caustic than you on this blog ?

Perhaps a relevant data point to add to the question (were it available) would be, what percentage of divorces (that also involve children under 18) involve some sort of physical or emotional abuse? I think if you set the emotional side at a reasonable place (i.e. something less than extreme abuse, but something more than just normal marital stress/fighting), the percentage must be fairly low. (But I'd like to see the statistics if they exist.)

Then the question is, for the remaining cohort, what percentage is the decision 'agonizing'? Of course, we can't really answer this question, because agonizing is a subjective term, and we're talking about how the individuals involved feel. Somebody can say that the decision is agonizing, "because of the children", but we don't know if they're just saying that, or if they are truly torn.

The other question is, does it have to be agonizing for both members of the couple, or just one, to count in the statistics? I would argue that if one member is not truly agonized, but is primarily concerned with their own wants (including anger at their spouse), this divorce should count in the "non-agonized" category. So now we're talking about divorces in which there are children under 18 involved, there is no significant physical or emotional abuse, and both parents are truly agonized between their desire to get divorced and their desire to do what is best for the children. I only have limited experience with such situations, but based on that I certainly would not say that the decision to divorce is agonizing for a majority of couples.

Another way of looking at this question is, why is it agonizing? It must be because two or more goals or desires are conflicting with one another. Obviously one of these goals is the needs of the children involved. (It could be agonizing for other reasons - for example, the spouses have a love/hate relationship.) For a choice to be agonizing, the two alternatives must be equally bad, since otherwise the decision would be relatively obvious, and thus no longer agonizing. If one makes the assumption that in 90% or more of cases where there is no abuse, the children are better off with married rather than divorced parents (It's hard for me to imagine what would fall into the other 10%, since there is plenty of evidence that kids are better off in a home with conflict and married parents than with divorced parents, but I'm leaving it there to be generous), then it is hard to see what would be equal to the children's needs in half or more of those cases. In any case you have to argue that the parents' needs or desires are equal to the children's. But the whole point of parenthood is that you are supposed to subsume your needs to those of your children.

This is a longwinded way of getting at Marty's point: given the assumptions that children are better off with their parents married, and that parents are supposed to put their children's needs above their own, there are very few cases where divorce can honestly be an agonizing decision. In order for Mark's formulation to make sense, one has to change one or both of those assumptions: either the benefits to children of married parents has to be downplayed, or parent's needs should be at least as important as their children's. Another assumption it makes is that the couple involved is not capable of working to deal with whatever problems there are in the marriage - the asusmption is that it is unfixable. I think that a very small number of divorces occur after both parties have truly made every effort to save the marriage.

Even in cases where there is abuse of the spouse and not the kids orm adultery, if children were truly the primary consideration the abused or betrayed spouse would stay in the marriage for the sake of the children.

I don't think any of us has argued that adultery should not be legal grounds for divorce, so I don't know what you are talking about.

You seem to think that we're actually in favor of a particluar family model based upon our personal, arbitrary, preference, and not because we really believe that our preferred family model is actually more beneficial to children and society (Justin made this point in and earlier post). And that we're just arguing that divorce is harmful to children because that helps us support our (supposedly arbitrary) family type. If you're going to accuse me of such intellectual dishonesty, I'd like to see you present some evidence from other things I've said to back it up.

An old of college friend of mine recently told me of a married couple she knew. They had been together 23 years, with three kids in public school. Wife thought she had the perfect marriage ... until the day that the husband announced, without warning, that he was leaving her. Turns out that he had been nurturing a new relationship with a new woman. His rationale as far as his wife was concerned? "I just felt that I had grown apart from her," he said.

The depths of human cruelty and betrayal never fail to astonish me.

Mark Miller puts WAAAYYY too many words in my mouth. My point was not a matter of opinion or agenda, it was simply to point out that if Justin only sees divorces that place kids secondary, it's because there are very few divorces take place when the kids are primary. Abuse is the one situation that comes to mind.

I have no idea why this upsets him so, but it does make one wonder...

For the record, I didn't have some nefarious subtext meant to trap the reader into my conclusions. Hence: "It's an honest question."

I really, actually don't know of a single divorce that didn't follow the model that Chuck describes (although it has gone both ways, genderwise). I do, however, have experience with parents who've toughed it out, right up to the brink of divorce, for the sake of the children and who are now still together decades after the children left the nest.

I've seen conflicting social science regarding how children of divorced parents turn out. While I know that divorce psychologically impacts pretty much all children of it, I have seen data that suggest that as long as a child is born to parents in an intact marriage, which subsequently breaks up, that child has no greater a chance of suffering from any social pathologies -- i.e., crime, poverty, teenage pregnancy, educational failure -- as a child whose parents never divorce. On the other hand, I've heard otherwise. Anyone care to clarify?

Jon,

I currently lack the time to go in search of statistics, but I will offer the somewhat vague observation that the criteria that you list, which are certainly those commonly mentioned, seem relatively extreme. As I suggested, I'm not prepared to substantiate this, but I would expect to find that the divorce demographics skew in ways that aren't easily captured in such "social pathologies."

Two upper-middle-class families, one divorced and the other not, wouldn't necessarily differ in their odds of poverty and so on (and "education failure" would have to be more specifically defined). How they differ within those class-determined borders — subsequent rate of divorce, happiness in relationships, marriage rate, likelihood to devalue marriage and children in public policy — would seem more appropriate items for inquiry.

Yes Jon, wounds DO heal over time. Suffering doesn't have to be a permanent disability. But what parent would put their kids through uneeded suffering, just to ease their own?

Mark Miller stated in another thread:
I think SSM would ultimately strengthen marriage by providing the same ideals and standards to gay couples as currently exists for opposite sex couples.

Mark, your assertion here is non-linear. The only thing that gay marriage would strengthen would be monogamous gay relationships. If you are suggesting that 1 percent of the total population would have a more profound effect on the social institution of marriage than Engaged Encounter and Marriage Encounter, you are exaggerating the importance of gay relationships. This assertion of yours in effect implies that gay relationships are somehow better than heterosexual relationships.

Mike S said:
I don't think any of us has argued that adultery should not be legal grounds for divorce, so I don't know what you are talking about.

Then allow me to start. The grounds of adultery are a piddling poor excuse for divorce. Every marriage has experienced some form of infidelity whether it be of body, mind, or heart. Every marriage that survives, does so despite that infidelity. Anybody who divorces their spouse because of adultery is only seeking to solidify that experience into their psyche, nursing the hurt, so to speak by playing the eternal victim from then on, or at least until they quit letting their emotions control them. I choose to argue against it being legal on the same grounds that Jesus stood against it. God never intended adultery to be legal grounds for divorce. Many, many marriages have survived adultery. I suspect many, many more will also.

To address the main question of this thread, the majority of divorces that I have experience with have been propelled not by motives of protecting the children, but by motives of self interest. That is not to say that I have not come across the other kind. My sister-in-law tried many times to continue the marriage with a husband that was mentally and verbally abusive as well as an established drug abuser. When he could no longer keep out of jail for a substantial period of time, she finally had enough. He had abandoned the marriage, her, and their children over a period of years. The only thing left at that point was to make it official.

smmtheory,

"Many, many marriages have survived adultery."

I debated putting into my post a comment on the distinction between a proper legal justification and what I would counsel someone privately (but it was already too long, so I didn't). I, too, would strongly urge a couple to not divorce in the case of adultery. But I think it is a legitimate grounds for a legal divorce (I've seen it stated that this used to be the primary, if not the only, ground for divorce.)

One of the reasons for this, I think, is that it highlights the importance of fidelity to the marriage. If fidelity isn't grounds for divorce, then it's not that serious, the reasoning goes.

But I'm sympathetic to your point.

Mike S,
I appreciate your comments, but I wonder why just sexual infidelity is singled out as a "legitimate" ground for divorce (assuming that it actually highlights the importance of fidelity) when other forms of infidelity are not held out as legitimate grounds for divorce. I could argue that if sexual infidelity is legitimate, then why not mental infidelity? Surely, criticism and nagging are as detrimental to marriage as sexual infidelity. What about being a workaholic?

All these various sorts of infidelity, and only one of them gets highlighted? That's where I'm coming from. Which would you ascribe as the leading breeding ground for adultery? Sexual addiction, lack of intimacy in a relationship, or something else?

I maintain that it is lack of intimacy brought about a breakdown of communication between spouses. It happens to everybody. I'm no exception. It seems like to me that if sexual infidelity is a "legitimate" grounds for divorce, then it boils down to being human is a "legitimate" grounds for divorce. Or am I jumping the shark here?

"All these various sorts of infidelity, and only one of them gets highlighted?"

First, I'd argue that sexual intimacy/fidelity is the most important characteristic, if it were possible to rank them. That doesn't mean that the others are not important. Roughly, sexual fidelity/intimacy implies a certain level of emotional intimacy, but any kind of intimacy is difficult if you don't have sexual intimacy (which includes fidelity). It's basically the ultimate symbol of your commitment to the marriage.

Second, infidelity results in babies that don't have two parents fully dedicated to their wellbeing. Working too much doesn't.

Third, sexual infidelity is a discrete act that you can punish someone for (we are talking about the law, after all). You can't legally punish someone for thoughts in their head. You can't assign how much nagging is too much - it differs in different relationships (and I remember reading somewhere that a certain amount of nagging is actually helpful, though I don't remember the details), and you can't measure the level of intimacy, or the level of communication in a relationship.

In a sense, you are taking the same viewpoint as Mark Miller - you just draw the line on where divorce is legitimate in a different place. I'm fully aware that having a healthy marriage involves many things - my point to Mark is that you can't have a healthy marriage if you don't have a marriage in the first place, so you should make the barriers to divorce sufficiently high. My point to you is that you can't encode into law subjective notions about what makes a good marriage, or a good spouse. But you can encode into law the expectation that couples will remain faithful too each other, because that has concrete aspects to it, in addition to the emotional ones, and the violation of that expectation (with the exception of physical abuse) does the most harm to society.

Mike S said:
First, I'd argue that sexual intimacy/fidelity is the most important characteristic, if it were possible to rank them. That doesn't mean that the others are not important. Roughly, sexual fidelity/intimacy implies a certain level of emotional intimacy, but any kind of intimacy is difficult if you don't have sexual intimacy (which includes fidelity). It's basically the ultimate symbol of your commitment to the marriage.

Though the ultimate symbol of the marriage relationship is the sexual relationship, this does not mean that this the most important part of the relationship. The sexual relationship is dependent on the total relationship which is in turn dependent upon the communication in the relationship and underscoring it all is our openness and listening in the relationship. Our sexual relationship with our spouses is not even the most visible symbol of the marriage relationship. Think about all the times you've been suddenly floored to have found out that somebody was having an affair. So the ultimate symbol of fidelity is not the least visible, but the most visible (the root of intimacy) which is our openness and listening. Now think about how easy it is to notice when a couple are not open to and listening to each other.

Just because a pregnancy from an adulterous relationship is a tangible result of infidelity, it is not a definitive sign that the child will not have two parents fully devoted to its well-being.

What you meant by - Working too much doesn't. - I am not entirely certain. Are you suggesting that being a workaholic doesn't result in a pregnancy, or instead that it doesn't mean there is a lack of two parents fully devoted to the well-being of a child?

Mike also said:
Third, sexual infidelity is a discrete act that you can punish someone for (we are talking about the law, after all). You can't legally punish someone for thoughts in their head. You can't assign how much nagging is too much - it differs in different relationships (and I remember reading somewhere that a certain amount of nagging is actually helpful, though I don't remember the details), and you can't measure the level of intimacy, or the level of communication in a relationship.

First of all, I think you mean distinct act instead of discrete act. Secondly, punishing a spouse for infidelity is society's standard. Jesus set forth a new standard of forgiveness. We would be in a world of hurt if God and Jesus decided to punish us for all our acts of infidelity as members of his bride, the church.

Finally, please clarify this remark - In a sense, you are taking the same viewpoint as Mark Miller - you just draw the line on where divorce is legitimate in a different place. - as I have not to my knowledge been saying that there is any legitimate reason for divorce. Though I have acknowledged the fact that divorce will happen, and though I have suggested that a peer jury trial for divorce would be a better venue or solution than the current state of no-fault divorce law, I believe I have been most consistent in the fact that I have not espoused any legitimate reason for divorce, including abuse. If you really believe that I am in a sense taking the same view point as Mark Miller, please let me know where I need to clarify my position so that you will no longer retain this belief.

smmtheory,

First of all, I think you mean distinct act instead of discrete act. Secondly, punishing a spouse for infidelity is society's standard. Jesus set forth a new standard of forgiveness. We would be in a world of hurt if God and Jesus decided to punish us for all our acts of infidelity as members of his bride, the church.

Finally, please clarify this remark - In a sense, you are taking the same viewpoint as Mark Miller - you just draw the line on where divorce is legitimate in a different place. - as I have not to my knowledge been saying that there is any legitimate reason for divorce. Though I have acknowledged the fact that divorce will happen, and though I have suggested that a peer jury trial for divorce would be a better venue or solution than the current state of no-fault divorce law, I believe I have been most consistent in the fact that I have not espoused any legitimate reason for divorce, including abuse. If you really believe that I am in a sense taking the same view point as Mark Miller, please let me know where I need to clarify my position so that you will no longer retain this belief.

I meant discrete, as a synonym for distinct.

I'm well aware that Jesus set a different standard, which is why I said I would counsel someone differently in private. Surely you don't think that the laws of our country can be based solely on Jesus's teachings. How would you get nonbelievers to follow the law?

I guess this is the crux of our argument - are we talking about legal justifications or religious ones? And what is the proper relationship between the former and the latter? I think we could have two separate arguments: one about the proper legal justification for divorce, and one about whether or not there is any religious justification for Christians to get divorced. I was talking about the legal justifications, while you seem to be talking about the religious ones. If you think there should be no distinction between the two, then I disagree - that is what Western societies have worked out over the last 400 years or so, and is fully in line with Christian theology for them to be distinct. I would probably be closer to your position in terms of the religious justifications, although I think a continued pattern of infidelity, physical abuse, or emotional abuse is justification for seeking a divorce.

What I was trying to get at by comparing your position to Mark's was that you were both focusing on subjective notions of what makes a good marriage. In Mark's case, this lead him to (in my understanding) propose too limited a role for the law in regulating divorce, because if marriage is subjective, you shouldn't have the government legislating it. In your case, this leads you to say that there is no justification for divorce, since any justification is equally arbitrary. Perhaps I am misrepresenting one or both of your positions, but the similarity I was seeing was the focus on the subjective aspects of marriage.

Mike S said:
Surely you don't think that the laws of our country can be based solely on Jesus's teachings. How would you get nonbelievers to follow the law?

and

What I was trying to get at by comparing your position to Mark's was that you were both focusing on subjective notions of what makes a good marriage. In Mark's case, this lead him to (in my understanding) propose too limited a role for the law in regulating divorce, because if marriage is subjective, you shouldn't have the government legislating it.

Okay Mike,
Which argument do you want to take up first?

1) Yes, I surely do think that the laws of our country could be based solely on Jesus' teachings. Except for the violently (and sometimes not so violently) radical, non-believers follow the law now, so I expect it wouldn't be any more difficult to get them to follow it if they were based solely Jesus' teachings.

OR

2)Marriage has always been rather subjective anyway. It started out as society's whim of self preservation. A society that wanted to survive as a society instead of being subjugated by another society necessarily codified marriage as a way to ensure procreation and by extension protect the children that would be necessary to man an army to ward off aggressors. As a secondary benefit, it was also used to determine transfer of property rights, by ensuring the property remained with a specific family, that family would either maintain its survival or grow. As always, human society was inclined to the attempt to codify marriage according to its own somewhat limited understanding of marriage in God's society. In the ideal, the underlying truth is that marriage is for the perpetuation if not the enrichment of society. Since this is true of human society it is based upon a fundamental truth found in God's society. A successful society at the very minimum will perpetuate itself and at the optimal will enrich itself. I think it is safe to say that God's society will achieve the optimal. Optimal results are achieved when there are no legitimate grounds for divorce. To achieve optimal results from marriage in human, and by extension American society, there should be no legitimate grounds for divorce. Plain and simple even in a subjective sense.

To achieve optimal results from marriage in human, and by extension American society, there should be no legitimate grounds for divorce.

That's why it's "Til Death Do Us Part"

I suppose that's a very quaint notion for some who take solemn oaths far too lightly...

"To achieve optimal results from marriage in human, and by extension American society, there should be no legitimate grounds for divorce."

I, for one, tend to eschew legal regimes who's supporters claim that 'optimal results' will follow if the regime is implemented - it sounds too much like utopianism, to me. And your comment about getting people to follow a legal regime based directly on Jesus's teachings is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to begin. (So I won't...)

Arguing that the law should not recognize divorce may be a plausible theoretical position. I think it is hopeless from a practical political and legal standpoint, however (hence, I think, your earlier statement about recognizing that divorce will happen).

As for the religious arguments, my position is that marriage is a covenant between the two individuals, and between them and God. I believe that it is possible for one person to break their side of the covenant (for example, marriage vows usually include the promise to honor the partner - people who physically abuse their spouse are not honoring them), and that when they do so it is acceptable for the other person to leave the covenant relationship. I'm willing to debate over what the precise standards are for breaking the covenant, but you seem to be taking an absolutist position that doesn't leave any room for debate. Why does the 'til death do us part' portion of the marriage covenant outweigh all the other portions? You're saying that that part of the covenant cannot be broken, even if other aspects of it have been (as in the case of physical abuse). That makes no sense to me.

Mike,
Try approaching it from this aspect... Given Jesus' stand on marriage that God never intended that divorce be legal, I find it hard to reconcile that there was no spousal abuse existent in Jesus' time, or that there was spousal abuse but Jesus was not aware of its existence, or that spousal abuse was existent but that Jesus ignored it. Maybe you can think of another scenario that I haven't thought of here for it not being included in Christ's outlook.

We are called to be forgiving people. And that is even more so with our spouses and children than with all the rest of the world, wouldn't you agree? If a spouse leaves the abuser, where is the forgiveness in that? If we do not forgive somebody, don't we bind ourselves to them just as strongly as we do when we forgive them, but with the opposite effect? Instead of setting ourselves free, don't we make ourselves slaves to that injury by preventing its healing?

And isn't the Kingdom of Heaven a Utopia? Is there something intrinsically wrong with striving for that sort of Utopianism? Making divorce illegal does not preclude having laws to protect spouses from physical abuse, does it? I also do not understand in what area having laws based on Jesus' teachings would be so onerous. Would you care to elucidate on that point?

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