The only thing that is going to make any person want to stay together through the harrows of raising children is love, love for each other, love for the child, and love for ones community and world. Raising children requires a commitment to something far greater than oneself and ones own immediate desires. This is why I find the idea of having a child with a man who won’t marry you repugnant. If he cannot commit to you, what on earth is going to make him stick around for a child? Raising children means growing up and making sacrifices for the greater good. I believe that one of the reasons for so many broken families and abandoned children in our society is because we lack love. Many people simply live to serve their own needs and desires.

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I personally think that children bring happiness to the family. However concerning all the other issues raised above, parents should sit on a round table, discuss and reach a compromise for the good of the family but not just to declare divorce as if it is last solution to the problems. Divorce only serves to add an insult to an injury both on the side of the parents and children.

Kids don’t “need” all that stuff – it’s the whacked out parents that do.

My husband and I got along great before our son came along. Having a baby changed EVERYTHING. Everything. We argue. We disagree about it all. The things we had discussed about co-parenting were great, but there is SO MUCH other stuff that we didn’t talk about. I read somewhere to give it the first year of parenting together before doing anything drastic, and I did. Things are better as my son gets older (almost 2) but it was pretty bad for a while.

I think a lot of people get married and think parenthood is a *maybe*. But really, if you get married, you should be ready, at least mentally, to be a parent. When i married my husband, we both understood that children would be part of the deal – and we’ve since had a passel :) – i’ve had PPD with #2, he’s had a major injury from playing football (all healed up now) – we’ve moved, on average, every two years. But we are deeply committed to marriage, to each other, to our children. Everything we do is checked against the “is it worth it” meter – is it worth missing out of time together? He works full time but i’m home full time. It means a lot less money, but more time for being a family, for spending time together. A lot of people were not made the priority as children, and don’t have that template to work from as parents when they grow up.

CoSpeaking from someone who has two small children and is currently getting seperated… I think it’s not the kids that wreck the marriage, it’s the realization that your partner is a crappy parent and can’t get by his/her own selfish needs to support the primary caregiver or even put the smallest amount of effort into putting the kids first. At least in my case lol.

I SECDOND THAT. If my husband had to pay someone to watch his child fall on his head while the caregiver was watching TV, it wouldn’t happen, but it is ok, in his mind, that he allows this……….

I think a huge part of it is the lack of social support nowadays. Many parents don’t have grandparents, siblings, etc. around to help (or those people are unwilling to help out) with childcare. Babysitters, daycare, preschool, these things are incredibly expensive and having a baby and/or small child places an enormous amount of stress on the parents, even WITH help. Without help, it’s no wonder a marriage could collapse under the weight of it.

We’re a society that no longer values community, helping out family members and friends, etc. and that’s done a lot of damage to families.

Comments I love my children. I love my husband. All you need is love.

I’m a husband and father and I adore my wife and son, my wifes of five years is good looking, fit and with a lovely, friendly, down to earth personality (I’m all that too, but fat, he he working on it). So first tick on marriage/parent success is get a good partner to be your friend, lover, and ideal breeder. This in turn led to our son who didnt inherit my body shape but got both our nice personalities, smart, easy and undemanding boy, very intellegent, reading any rote memory word at 3 nearly doing sentences. So good genetic and personality parents(both) often get a good kid, a combination of nature and nurture. This makes our son easy to live with and yeah lifes quite stressfull but home is ironically the safe zone. Oh and say I love you to your partner and child no less then six times a day, it sounds funny but its fun to say and gives off alotta feel good (not hippy at all). I do miss the sex, sex is still great between us BUT less frequent and not the casual, do as you like freaky sex of our courting year (yeah singular before things moved along). No regrets but you do have to find a “GOOD” person to breed with, and if you are’nt good yourself, well being a non-parent is less stress so do the world a favour.

Children both bioglically yours and/or adopted stomp all forms of romance. Sex before kids is spontaneous like combustion. It runs the whole gambit from being playful to animal, but it is by nature best when spontaneous! Kids although a wonder in and of themselves blunt and erase these opportunities. They tire you out every freaking day. Then one day you wake up and find it’s been years since sex!You cannot schedule the special moments…EVER! I used to think folks without kids were odd, but I am not so quick to judge them now! I see why people get divorced. Sometimes having children around is like a freakshow that never ends and by the time they move out you’ll be an old dude with nothing left to give an old spouse.