I am sorry, fellows, but some of you are either hipocrites or delusional or misunderstood my point completely.
First of all this article says ‘husband’ not ‘dad’ which is not necessarily the same person when we are talking about marriage these days.
And isn’t divorce rate some 40 to 50%?
Divorce between spouses has become a kind of social norm, regardless do they have common kids or not, meaning up to half of all marriages finishes this way.
No go show me an individual who divorced own kids! There is no such thing.
In Soviet Russia, kids divorce YOU!
Well, this is the point. The divorce rate is so high because we’re largely secular-humanist in our thinking instead of living according to the Bible, the way quite a large swath of the population used to.
Biblically, there is no separating husband and wife aside from a death, adultery or what could be classified as abandonment, i.e., the person walked away from their spousal duties. Voilence of course would be such a case, or any other behavior where the spouse becomes dead to their Christian responsibility and thus makes it impossible to function as a household. In such cases of divorce, Biblically it is treated as though the offending spouse died; they of course would be excommunicated from their Church. The innocent spouse would be thus encouraged to marry a godly person to complete raising their children.
Biblically the marriage relationship is equated to Christ and his Church; the man is the head of the wife and she is his helper.
Biblically, children are to honor their parents, which really sets for the principle that people are to honor their family obligations and relationships in addition to honoring mother and father.
Parents who do well and are blessed with one or more good children will find they are not abandoned in their old age.
It’s actually the height of idiocy or possibly arrogance to think one can live all alone once one is elderly and not have any help from anyone. Parents care for their children when they are young - only the statists and lazies think it best for parents to hand their children off to someone else to raise. Same can be said for the elderly and sick.
Pagans and heathens certainly get divorced for no good reason, do all sorts of nutty things relating to children, e.g., letting them run the house, etc., and we certainly could expect heathens to wind up with lives of misery, though not necessarily.
I learned years ago, before my conversion to Christ, from experience that you can’t put children above your Biblical spousal duties. A parent needs to be a leader of their children, not a follower. The child may or may not turn out ok, even with the best efforts of a parent, though proper Biblical child rearing generally leads to success, i.e., children growing up into generally decent adults, whatever their blessings or shortcomings.
I find the parent who constantly overlooks instead of corrects, allows the child to get away with things, or allows them to get away without doing what they should do, who tries to give them preferential treatment... finds that the child does not have much interest at all in helping that parent in their old age. Such poorly raised children do not “return the favor” of all that favoritism and babying and having a parent that made excuses for them all along. And I also find that such a child will be the one showing up at will reading time - looking for money and stuff. They will never lift a finger. The children who did the work, were not babied, etc., they will be the ones usually that will help the parent when they are elderly and need someone to clean messes, work around the house and yard, cook and clean, bathe them, care for them. And those “good” children won’t be doing these things looking for money.
It all goes back to God’s Fifth Commandment: honoring father and mother.
As far as “divorcing” one’s children, many, many children are kicked out by their parents after becoming incorrigible, on drugs, violent, lazy, etc.
If they repent of their wicked ways, they certainly can return, and the parent should accept them back. Although frequently they do not, often they accurately discern that the child has not changed for the better but is just looking to go back to their old ways and be permitted to do that.
Only if your reading comprehension has flown the coop. Read the article again. The author speaks of her husband, and of her pregnancy after marrying him. She says they became mom and dad after becoming husband and wife.
It seems strange to me that you would assume anything else.
"And isn’t divorce rate some 40 to 50%?"
Nope. That's a myth. It was based on projections made in the 1970s. Do a google search and yo'll find endless refutations of it.
"Divorce between spouses has become a kind of social norm, regardless do they have common kids or not, meaning up to half of all marriages finishes this way. No go show me an individual who divorced own kids! There is no such thing."
Sure there is. I give you the example of my husband's father.
Husband's parents divorced when he was around twelve. Prior to that, his father had been a perfectly loving dad, and continued so for a while after the divorce. But when my mother-in-law remarried, the man moved to another state and effectively DIVORCED his children.
My husband and his siblings tried repeatedly to make contact with him in the form of phone calls, birthday cards, etc. The only reason they had his address was because his sister, who was disgusted by his actions, gave it to them. But all their reaching out was in vain.
Even as adults, they made occasional attempts---most recently a few years ago--to get in touch with him, as they knew he was getting older and thought it was the right thing to do. But to no avail. The aunt says he just doesn't seem to want anything to do with his children, that he seems to blame THEM for having a stepfather.
They won't try again...they understand it would be useless. It's truly his loss...not only because of his wonderful daughter and sons, but because he knows he has grandchildren he will never see, and he's fine with it.
As for me personally, my father-in-law is the stepfather who really DID "step up" to care for those kids...the guy who took off and put up a wall is just some stranger I've heard talk about.
So, yeah, divorcing the kids does happen.
Haven’t you read any of the many articles recently that the 50% divorce rate is a myth.