Our friends who have kids tend to be in their forties, i.e., too old to muster the energy and optimism necessary for divorce (divorce requires optimism because one would have to believe that one could be happier alone or with someone else). I was asked recently “Do you think Schlomo and Rebecca [not their real names] are going to have any more kids? They seem to fight a lot.” I replied that Schlomo would be better off with a third kid because then he would get along with three quarters of the other household members rather than two thirds.
Can this rule be generalized? For a young couple, each of whom might yet be able to build a new marriage with a more compatible partner, discord should lead to having fewer children. For an older couple, if they aren’t enjoying each others’ company, they should have as many children as possible.
Yes, or better yet they should adopt. The children, who otherwise might have grown up to add children of their own to an already crowded planet, will instead never enter relationships at all, having endured the constant fighting of their foster parents.
A fellow I know had horrible fights with his children as they entered high school. He was able to keep his marriage together until the youngest gained real footing, and then he had to bail. So I am not sure I agree with your premise that the parent will always get along with the children.
But it is possible that the more children there are the more a working parent has an excuse to stay at work. And is missed less in the general chaos.
Marriage (especially, cough, later marriage) also requires optimism. You have to believe you are going to be happier with someone else. Really, it requires delusion, because there’s no way you can get MORE of what you want if you have to compromise on some areas of your life. But you are optimistic to think there’s a balancing out of getting more of something you didn’t have enough of versus the things you are going to lose out on because you have entwined your life with another.
Is this your cheerful Mothers Day post?
Colin: As far as I know, both of the parents in question are very happy with their existing two children, so probably they would also get along with a third. In any case, statistically they are more likely to get along with a new child, whom they have never met, than they are with each other (since we know with 100% certainty that they don’t get along right now). And yes, dammit, this is my Mother’s Day post 🙂
Mark: Brilliant thinking! Thank you.
Couples fighting with no male heirs should have more kids. Divorce rate is higher in daughter only families but having a son seems modestly protective of marriage at least in Western society. I am not aware of similar studies being done in other cultures but I suspect the result would be fairly consistent.
Having additional children also provides a handy time sink in child rearing so having to actually interact, beyond screaming “toss me the Pampers STAT”, would be minimized.
Several women I have known over the years have mentioned that men and women simply see relationships differently in that men tend to be more optimistic and hopeful–open to the change–whereas women see the time spent as an investment, and the longer a couple is together, the more reason they have to stay together.
But kids can feel it when the parents don’t get along, even if it’s hidden, and any couple with serious marital discord should get whacked with a hammer before they have any more kids. They’ll teach those kids all kinds of bad habits, like: marriage is no fun and it’s totally normal to dislike your spouse and argue. Bad bad bad idea.
Adoption might be just fine given that they’re good parents, just bad partners. Happy mothers’ day!
Speaking from experience, I did have the energy to get divorced in my 40’s (this year) and the optimism to meet others. Having another child is not the answer to a marriage where the partnership has broken down and the participants are on decidedly different paths.
I’m enjoying my independence and don’t mind living alone (I have the kids and they’re almost out of the house). I also don’t see the point in getting married again. Using social networking has definitely made finding and building relationships with like-minded ladies much easier to do.
Werner: Congratulations on the new life, but the fact that your kids are “almost out of the house” means that you’re a very different demographic from the people I was talking about in the original posting. I’m talking about people who get married when they are already 40 or older and, at your age, would have infants at home, not high schoolers.
Here’s a “been there, done that” perspective from a mother — I do doubt that you can generalize the rule, and especially like @ Eric, where my experience with two husbands is opposite to the norm suggested.
As a young wife with a distinguished first husband, I fully expected to live with him as life-long partners, much like our esteemed parents. We never fought. He was a capable intellectual partner and traveling companion, in life and around the globe. His temperament was cool and aloof. When I had been married six years and my first son was two, I deliberately beamed in a second child so that my son and I would have another vibrant soul to warm our lives.
Life is too complex to unpack in a comment, but I can say that everyone involved has been glad for the enriching company of that second — son, as it turned out, from day one. He brought his own reality with him, led with a wry sense of humor even as an infant, and he’s the only deep-water sailor in family memory. @ Mark, perhaps because he grew up with capable but imperfect parents he always vowed that if he “had to have children around” he would only adopt a parentless child. Or perhaps that was his environmental perspective from “sailing the waters that wrap around the planet,” as he put it early-on. He and a couple of friends built and campaigned their own racing sailboat with their own funds while they were still in high school. I first heard of what became the Pacific garbage gyre from him after he was hired to fly to Hawaii and help sail a “90’ racing sled” back from the Transpac.
And in the suitably wry denouement, his daughter alone has been worth the price of the whole family ticket. 🙂
Phil,
Reminds me of the discussion about family values and families… which actually creates better families?
The link is: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/st_20100501_5904.php