| The whole point to marriage is that it
imposes clear obligations, not just the right to pursue your own happiness. And
the main obligation is to provide both emotional and practical nurture for
children. The glow of burning passion may well have faded, you love for your
spouse may not be as exciting or satisfying as it once was, but going off in
search of another love will not help your children. The Love Family is either
too amorphous (不定型的) for children—your friends have no obligation to provide for
them—or it' s too unstable, with adults moving on if the relationship no longer
answers their search for perfect happiness. What divorce does is to damage children. I am aware of the complex research surrounding the effects of divorce on children and I acknowledge that some children are better off without a violent father, an income boozed (嗜酒如命) or gambled away, unhappy parents taking out their spleen(发脾气) on everyone in the family. But divorce severs (打破) the stability ,security and continuity that children need; it results in poverty for many women and children; it damages the voluntary link between father and children and replaces it with one of regulated, arranged parenthood (父子往来); it removes the father from co-residence, the only sensible basis for a working parental relationship; it overloads the mother-child bond and leaves her with a double burden; and it often disrupts the child' s schooling, friendships and neighbourhood contacts, those underpinnings (依托) of trust and social capital that every child must have. It even weakens the child's links with grandparents and other kin (usually on the paternal side) ,and few para-parents (继父母) are willing to take on real responsibility for the child's well-being. |