Should You Stay Together for the Kids? Hell No!

Editor's note: The following piece was published in Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Family and Personal Relationships.

“Maybe it would’ve been better if I could’ve kept us together?” my mother-in-law blurted after a couple glasses of wine about her ex and father of my husband. “I just can’t help but wonder if I should’ve done more.”

Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve? At some turn we all wonder what might be different if only…. Especially when it comes to our babies, we want to do what’s best. But as Republicans said during the 2008 presidential campaign of their VP pick’s teenaged daughter in the family way, life happens. And it doesn’t always mesh with how we see things ought to be. Despite Bristol Palin’s vow to “do the right thing” by choosing motherhood and marrying the dad, she and Levi Johnston split with their baby just weeks old, becoming another notch in America’s rising rates of teen pregnancy and record 40% births out of wedlock.

Life happens, often contradicting our box of shoulds or the latest stats. Still after doing the whole “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage,” many unhappy couples face a crossroads they never dreamed of traversing. Which is what makes so charged the political—as in today’s flush national marriage movement to get or keep parents hitched—and personal decision for couples to stay together, or not, for the sake of their kids.

It depends. Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you value? What’s unhappy and when does it bleed from disillusionment to hopelessness to your own private hell? How real are your choices?

Trapped in a dead end relationship in today’s turbulent economy, more couples say separation is a non-starter when together means the bare necessities for their family. Or to a maritally denied same sex couple, a breakup could turn shattering, as in the legal case of a soured Vermont civil union where the converted straight Christian ex forbids the lesbian non-biological mom to see their daughter. Or take my gay Mexican cousins who wouldn’t dream any disruption to their delicate charge of providing stability to their two adopted sons so scarred by mom’s abandonment and foster care nightmares, including being locked in a dumpster all day.

Clearly the agonizing conundrum immortalized by the Clash, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” is a luxury for those of us with children but not in dire straights. Physical, verbal or emotional abuse is when push comes to shove no matter the challenges ahead. But that line is fuzzy for too many, let alone the pundit distinction between unhappiness and high conflict. So digging through the variable muck of couples on the verge wanting what’s best for their kids, I say choose the pursuit of happiness—together or not—for self, for child.

Reality is that my mother-in-law had little choice in preserving her marital status. Her husband left for Afghanistan when my husband was just 6 years old. She concludes he didn’t want to be burdened with family, “We had three young children, and he wanted to ride a horse to China!” Reality is that she alone raised the most beautiful, grounded man in the world, and her ex—largely absent for his own boys beyond financial support—is now a routinely engaged papa to our 6-year-old, hiking together in the Rockies and teaching him to write. And reality is that my conservative parents, married 47 years, badly damaged their children by staying together, and their grandson has asked more than once if they’re alive or dead.

Maybe my husband’s mom was so wistful that night about saving her marriage because our family glow made her so. We’re blessed. We married at 30ish and welcomed our son eight years later. We both work from home and my sweetie, the primary breadwinner, daily nurtures and plays with our angel from skiing to rock climbing to milling a 6’ autonomous robot to packing his school lunch each morning no matter client demands. Still smitten 14 years married, we’re a tight parental team in sync with imbuing respect and gratitude, joy and dignity. My partner’s parents somehow staying married wouldn’t have recreated our family bliss.

With personal experience defying conventional wisdom that reflexively applauds enduring marriages and decries divorce as failure, I was struck by one Salon writer’s clarity on the Bristol-Levi split. “As someone whose parents were very young, conceived me by accident and broke up while I was still in utero, I believe sometimes the best thing you can do for your kids is be brave enough to know when to quit,” wrote Mary Elizabeth Williams. “I can't speak for any other family's circumstances, but I do know that I never spent a day of my childhood in a home where the people in it didn't love each other. And I wish to God we as a culture would get over our sanctification of staying together for the kids.”

Amen. From my fundamentalist Christian upbringing, I understood intimately that once married under God there’s no exit strategy. End of story, forget happily ever after. Knowing fear, sorrow and powerlessness, I vowed at 17 to never get married or have kids. My conviction endured for 15 years until I met my sweetie and realized I needn’t remain enslaved to traditional notions of wife and mother. My push to shed baggage, build my foundation and follow the American pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, means I now can offer beauty to my chosen family versus the ugly realism of yet another repeating cycle.