Seems kinda obvious a happy marriage is going to be better than a divorce. Shouldn’t the comparison be between an unhappy marriage and a divorce?
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I agree, personally, but really we should compare all 3.
Including happily married parents (or ones who fake it so well that as far as the kids are aware they are) is important because part of the reason for comparing married vs divorced is that the child of divorced parents may need extra help to have the same outcome.
And honestly, even unhappily married couples don’t always make for a bad homelife for the kid. Parents can be on their way to divorce and still co-parent well within the same house. Other times, it is an absolute nightmare for the kids. So even there, it gets tricky to decide where to draw the line
Married and divorced are easy black and white legally confirmed statuses. This is info you can get simply by looking at tax records or a general census. Unhappy marriage is not an easy thing to define or record. There is no “unhappily married” box to tick off on a tax return. One spouse may be happy, but the other isn’t, so is that a happy or unhappy marriage?
I know we hear about the clear-cut.Black and white between the two a lot, but I promise this does get studied. Everything gets studied. What times do you hear about?What’s political or what’s convenient, of course.
I’d never be able to find it, but somewhere between eight and twelve years ago, I read a study on r/science about negative psychological outcomes in young women with fathers who were depressed, but not alcoholics. THAT study linked to one about negative outcomes in young women raised by unhappily married dads, AND pinpointed sexual frustration among fathers as having affected childrens’ later interpersonal relationships.
So much gets studied, but pop-psychology doesnt discuss it, usually.
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