Our Happiness

Ya know what I was thinking.  No child should have to choose between parents.  No child should have 2  parents that split up and hate each other and don’t communicate properly.  No child should go a year without seeing the other parent.  No child should think it’s their fault their parents split up.  No child should see their parents suffering.  No child needs to deal with adult problems.

But lots of children do.  Sometimes it’s unavoidable; usually not.  Usually it’s unhappiness on one side or the other, a gnawing dissatisfaction fed by daily irritation until it seems unbearable.  So unbearable it can no longer be borne.

I know a young woman who recently decided it couldn’t be borne, after living with a man for over ten years and creating two children with him.  To my knowledge, the three “A’s”–addiction, abuse, and adultery–were not a factor.  I’m going to be very blunt: this mother valued her own happiness over her children’s and that is self-deception in the worst way.

I know that sounds harsh, and is harsh, but by every objective measure it’s true.  Her kids are too young to express themselves, but the young lady I quote above, age 14, couldn’t have said it any better.  She speaks for the little ones who suddenly have no home, only temporary residences first with Mommy, next week with Daddy.  She speaks for those who perpetually come second, no matter what Mom or Dad says.  She speaks for those who bear the burden of their parents’ unhappiness: No child needs to deal with adult problems.

Back in the early days of the women’s movement, when mothers who walked out on their families received magazine cover stories, the reasoning went like this: If I’m unhappy, won’t my kids be, too?  They’re better off with a mother who knows who she is, who follows her dreams.  When I’m fulfilled, they will benefit.

We had it backwards, though.  When a woman becomes a mother, her happiness is linked to her children’s, not the other way around.  They don’t need our happiness—they need our stability, our reliability, our attention, our provision, all of which a single parent has to struggle to provide.  I know it’s not impossible to raise children alone, but it’s very, very difficult.  And two single parents who are bitter or resentful toward each other make it that much more difficult.  Sometimes a divorce is truly amicable but usually it just pretends to be—or why seek a divorce in the first place?  And then the pretense slips.

All of this makes the children unhappy.  Can we blame them? By the time a mother realizes that she’s traded her happiness for theirs, it’s too late.  Their resentment, sullenness, lack of direction and focus afflict her deeply.  Add on the bills, the endless chores and details falling to her alone, the little problems she never has time to deal with until they’re big problems, and (too often) the failure to establish a stable relationship with someone else—and that was clearly a bad trade.

It might get better.  The kids might be able to work through their trauma, find something or someone to ground themselves, and launch productive lives.  But the odds are against it, because we put them at a great disadvantage when they’re too young to understand why.  All for “happiness.”  Why can’t we learn?