Unison Parenting Blog: Loveless Marriages Harm Children

In my last blog, I said there was something worse for children than divorce. How about loveless marriages?

Parents in troubled marriages wonder whether they should stay together or get divorced. I'm not here to advocate for divorce, as I would prefer to see parents work things out. But statistics tell us that NOT working things out but staying together is more harmful to the child than getting divorced.

Several reasons why this is so:

• Children live in the midst of parental fighting or coldness.

• Even children at a young age can sense household friction and feel stressed by it.

• Parents are modeling lovelessness in a marriage, which has long-term ramifications to their child's future marriage.

Children can actually feel relief in a divorce. While new tensions and difficult situations come with divorce, the pain and stress of living daily with parental infighting is gone.

A consistent theme of "Unison Parenting" is the phrase "for the sake of the child." Whether it's their own parenting egos, their consuming hobbies and interests, or their marriage conflict, parents may make decisions without their child's best interests at heart. This phrase doesn't mean that we have to give up self-care or friendships, for example, but it does mean that the impact on the child should be foremost in our minds and hearts.

In the case of loveless marriages, we parents need the humility, maturity, diplomacy, and sacrificial attitude to work toward family harmony as first priority. But if spousal harmony cannot be achieved, we must also consider the long-term impact on our child and do what's best for them.