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Comment by helpfulmandrill | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me like the effects of "normative" family structures might be different and better in countries that tolerate divorce. Where divorce is tolerated and non-stigmatised, those families that remain "normative" are, almost by definition, the most stable and healthy ones. If divorce were forbidden or stigmatized, then many more families would remain together where parents are always in conflict or where there is spousal abuse. So it is possible that the apparent benefits of normative family structures are only apparent in societies that tolerate "non-normative" family structures, and would disappear in less tolerant societies.

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While what you're saying makes sense from a logical standpoint, I don't think it adequately explains why so many children of divorced couples are absolutely cut up and bitter to the core about what happened to their family.

Nobody's saying that it's totally impossible for any given divorce to be worse for the children. What people are saying is that it is possible for a given divorce to be better for the children.

I am a child of divorce. It was a defining moment of my childhood, but with the benefit of years I can conclude that I had better relationships with each of my parents after their divorce than before it. Ironically, my parents also had a better relationship with each other after their divorce, though perhaps this is atypical.

If people want to help children of divorce, then make it so that having divorced parents isn't socially stigmatized, and implement social safety nets to reduce the economic uncertainty that accompanies divorce. But trying to keep parents together by any means necessary--no matter the cost--that doesn't help children, because when they grow up thinking that a toxic relationship is normal that only helps to perpetuate the cycle of marital misery that itself has a damaging effect on the well-being of children.

Your experience definitely reflects my own. It was so much nicer seeing having my parents become good platonic friends rather than married enemies.

I was relieved when my parents divorced, although it helped that while they fought like cat and dog while together, they cooperated fairly amicably when separated. Maybe I'm an outlier though.

Mine likewise, I only wish they had done it sooner and not hung on "for the kids" for 15 years.

It makes sense for them to be absolutely cut up and bitter, but I guess the question is whether they wouldn't have ended up cut up and bitter to the same degree (and just a different direction) if the parents had stayed together while the same underlying issues which caused the divorce ultimately remained. Perhaps that would be true for some families and not for others.

What happened to their family wasn't the divorce, but the event causing the divorce, which would have been there--marriage or not.

For example: A father loses his job and refuses to find work. The family becomes poor, moves to bad neighborhoods, the father starts drinking and becoming abusive. After a couple of years the mother divorces the father.

Divorce is not what the kids are cut up and bitter about. Had the above mother not divorced the father, the kids would have still been cut up and bitter.

A loss of stability and safety in what is supposed to be the most safe and stable part of a child’s life.

I would imagine that broadly applies to most social norms - you need to the find the "sweet spot" that reinforces positive behavior, without introducing rules that end up being counter-productive and creating new problems.

You can see that in action in terms of drug use - the ideal is that people don't use drugs in a socially (as well as individually) harmful way.

Putting people in prison for using drugs likely causes more harm than good (even beyond the person in jail).

Having an entirely permissive approach where showing up at work intoxicated probably causes more harm than good as well (again, even beyond the person intoxicated).

So the question is at what point can society get the most optimal outcome? Not an easy question to answer and likely one that changes over time (since there are feedback loops and changes to underlying, but related social beliefs).

While I agree with your point, I think we already have examples of this particular issue being solved: alcohol.

It's legal for me to go and buy alcohol, and it's also probably legal for my employer to fire me if I show up drunk to work.

There's of course nothing preventing me from drinking so much that I die, but then again I can also jump out the window of my apartment, no substance required.

I can see that being the same with other drugs. Maybe even mandate testing for certain jobs (operating heavy machinery, driving a bus, etc).

With over 50k alcohol related deaths each year in the US and the number of alcoholics, I don't think we can say that we've actually solved it. I'm not advocating for ban, but saying that there are likely additional educational, technological, and treatment interventions that could be taken.

Interesting side note, if an employer is aware of a substance problem, they have to offer to help you get help before they can fire you.

Also, just about any job can be dangerous or cause destruction. How about programming at a bank, or defense contractor, or industrial machine manufacturer? Even things like working in a ast food kitchen can be dangerous to yourself and other. It's hard to draw a line for testing when the vast majority of jobs could involve injuring others or massive losses if done incorrectly.

> an employer is aware of a substance problem...

No, they have to grant you one unpaid medical leave for rehab before firing you, not "help you".

It's illegal, for any company that works with the Federal Government, to tolerate drug use or intoxication at work.

Any sources to back up your claims? And yes, by help I mean not fire and provide accommodations and/or time to attend rehab.

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/worklife/reference...

https://corporate.findlaw.com/human-resources/what-are-an-em...

I agree with everything you've said, but want to make one minor note:

> There's of course nothing preventing me from drinking so much that I die, but then again I can also jump out the window of my apartment, no substance required.

It's important to note that the ease of committing suicide can affect the suicide rate quite significantly. For example, before gas was made to have a terrible smell, people would often commit suicide by sticking their heads in an unlit gas oven. Similarly access to guns greatly increases suicide rates. In societies that have taken away such methods, it was observed that suicide rate directly drops: it seems many people who are willing to, in the moment, commit a painless act to kill themselves renounce if it requires more effort or the threat of pain or defeating other instincts.

In contrast, throwing yourself off a building requires defeating a very powerful survival instinct, and thus is less likely to lead to suicides. I believe that drinking enough alcohol to die is also relatively hard, especially for an adult, so it's not a common way to commit suicide (though alchohol + other drugs is).

The suicide equation may be much different with drugs you can more easily overdose on (heroin comes to mind).

You wouldn't necessarily call it suicide, but it can lead to a slow and drawn out death if one becomes addicted. Good addiction treatment is not so easy to get in much of the US.

Also, I believe the smell of gas was not the change. They switched from coal gas to natural gas.

> Good addiction treatment is not so easy to get in much of the US.

From the sort of results you get from rehab centers after googling certain drugs I don’t trust addiction treatment period. I’ve had those sites try to make it seem that kava is more dangerous than benzodiazepine addiction.

I'm sure some of them are just in it for the money - whatever insurance covers and as many beds as they can legally fit. That's why there are places that offer very basic 30 day programs, when in reality the success rate is much higher in longer and more complex/individualized programs, like 90 days. But good luck finding people who can pay for that, insurance that will cover it, etc.

Natural gas isn't as smelly as the sulfur smell of coal gas, so they add smelly gas to it so leaks can be identified without equipment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanethiol

Yeah. What I'm saying is that people killed themselves with the coal gas. The mechanism of suicide with coal gas vs natural gas is different, with natural gas being less "user friendly" for the purpose of suicide.

https://gizmodo.com/why-have-people-stopped-committing-suici...

> It's legal for me to go and buy alcohol, and it's also probably legal for my employer to fire me if I show up drunk to work.

What if we spin it around and do what we want to do for "hard drugs"? What if tobacco and alcohol were only available with a prescription from a licensed medical professional such as a doctor? Maybe put a timer on it like this only applies to people born on or after 2025 or something?

Access to healthcare with no out of pocket expense (Medicare for all born on or after 2025?) would be a prerequisite for this.

It would be more like ephedrine.

The problem with alcohol is that it is extremely nonlinear in its negative effects vs amount purchased/consumed.

Prescriptions are pointless because no one needs alcohol to live.

Alcohol abuse is both common and tremendously destructive, though. Drunk driving accidents in the US alone killed more than 10,000 people in 2019[0]. We might be at something of a local maximum in terms of policy -- I don't know, I'm not a policy expert -- but I'd want to see some evidence before calling it "solved".

[0]-https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving

An obvious possible step is to put BAC interlock devices on all new and existing vehicles. That's not going to have a lot of public support, but I would bet it reduces that number.

The more you take human discretion out of the equation the more you are going to have to confront the massive variability between people and that is a very, very, very, uncomfortable topic for (in my estimation) an overwhelming majority of the people who want automated enforcement such as ignition interlocks and whatnot.

I don't think there's much variability to people in this instance. It would be more likely questions about reliability of the device to not render false positives.

It's not truly automated enforcement, at least the way I see it (not using the reporting ones, just don't let the vehicle work). If it was, it would report attempts to drive while intoxicated and send a summons.

There are certainly issues to be worked out with that approach (I don't necessarily support it), but I bring it up as an example that there are still improvements that could be made (that the example of alcohol being a well regulated drug with little societal harm is not true).

It looks like they will do something similar for new cars in the coming years.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/infrastructure-bil...

>I don't think there's much variability to people in this instance

The BAC limit is like the speed limit. Start rigidly enforcing it or preventing people from violating it and you're gonna find out that a whole lot of people have been violating it left and right (probably most of them unknowingly) and were mostly not causing problems because they were tasteful about the details and generally not going overboard. Society at present does not seem well prepared to handle the debate that necessarily would follow in the wake of that.

Sure, there's even research showing that the same BAC level effects people differently, like up to 10% of people being able to safely operate a vehicle over .08 (eg their BAC of .1 is comparable to a BAC of .08 in the other 90% of people). But that's not how the laws are made. The laws are made to cover the vast majority and are set at .08.

It's not just because they weren't going overboard, but because they simply weren't caught. That can include for speeding, lack of turn signal, etc.

So there's no real variability to the people themselves, legally. Many have simply been lucky. The ones who have been violating it unknowingly have been posing a threat to society by not understanding how intoxicated they are, assuming we as a society believe that anything over .08 is dangerous per out laws.

Of course there will be debate. But that debate will be about false positives and edge cases. It's not going to be "but I want to continue drunk driving like I already am".

As I understand it, there's also a small percentage of people who naturally blow some level of alcohol even when there's none in their bloodstream (due to a genetic condition or something to do with their microbiome—it's been several years since I read about this).

Mandating something like this would cause severe issues for people like them, where not only can they not help it, but it's not actually giving an accurate measurement of what it's supposed to be indicating.

If autobrewery syndrome is producing enough alcohol to be over .08 (unlikely), then they need to seek some medical intervention. That reading would very much be valid though, as that is their BAC. Being able to help it or not doesn't change the fact that they would be over the limit determined to be safe (just like people with uncontrolled seizures can't drive even though they can't help it).

Is there some other condition that you're thinking of that somehow renders the BAC result actually invalid? I am not aware of any, so I'm curious. Without this, it doesn't appear that this would be an issue for anyone on the autobrewery basis, and if anything it might help them identify the issue so they can't seek treatment.

s/drugs/guns/ there and the setup is mostly the same but the conclusion is far different.

And even with alcohol, we have a DUI problem.

>Putting people in prison for using drugs likely causes more harm than good (even beyond the person in jail).

I hear this a lot, but Singapore has extremely harsh laws for drug posesssion and use, yet some of the lowest rates of harm caused by drugs on Earth.

Perhaps it's more than just finding the "sweet spot" in terms of social norms, but ensuring that they are enforced uniformly and fairly rather than used as a rod for beating society's "undesirables" with.

I mean Singapore executed someone for smuggling in half a kilo of marijuana.

Can someone argue that less harm was done in that situation? A human life ended versus people smoking marijuana?

>Can someone argue that less harm was done in that situation?

Yeah, one can. Killing the one guy who had the balls to smuggle in half a kilo of weed probably prevented half a ton from reaching the city.

Yeah I've had this argument in the past.

  "Kids do best when the parents are married"
  "OK"
  "So we must force people to get/stay married for the best outcomes for kids"
  "Nope, doesn't follow"

It's a correlation/causation issue, a gap in the logic that some folks seem blind to. Kids may well do best with a stable family life with married parents, I can well believe it. But that' not to stay that forcing people to remain together creates the same circumstances. What they're often proposing may well make things even worse for families that aren't that stable in the first place.

As the child of a family situation where the parents basically agreed to put up with each other and be miserable until the kids were grown up, I feel qualified to say "YMMV" on that one. I certainly did not get an example of a loving, respectful relationship out of the arrangement. I can't say whether it would have been better or worse had they divorced, of course, because I didn't see the alternate universe in which that happened. But I can say it might have been nice if they had been happy, at least some of the time.

There are good reasons to get divorced and there are bad reasons to get divorced.

If kids are going through a divorce for a bad reason, then they suffer. If kids are going through a divorce for a good reason then that still is terrible, but it is better then the alternative.

Simply hating or disliking your partner isn't a good reason. "Falling out of love" isn't a good reason either. Especially if you have kids. This is what responsibility means to a functional adult.

Lots of times divorces happen just through lack of maturity. Being selfish, not giving their partners a chance, not just taking a break and giving it a couple years to get through differences, etc. People who expect that they can live and love each other like horny 22 year olds until they are 85 are just not having a realistic view of what marriage actually is. They just need to grow up a bit more. There is more than one type of happiness. There is more than one type of love. You don't have to like somebody to love them, etc.

However if there is betrayal in the relationship then that is a good reason to get divorced. Things like adultery, abuse, theft, criminal activity, substance abuse, etc.

When people are destructive, behaving in an evil manner, and is this is creating significant risks for the family than that is a good reason to get a divorce.

> Simply hating or disliking your partner isn't a good reason

It's a **ing great reason, if you hate each other you're probably creating a toxic atmosphere for the kids, and you're giving them a horrible idea of what a relationship should be like.

Hating each other is a prime reason people should be getting divorced. Kids shouldn't be brought up in an atmosphere of dislike, mistrust and animosity. Better two houses than one full of ice and eggshells.

> This is what responsibility means to a functional adult.

Yes, you have a responsibility to the kids, to bring them up well. This doesn't have to mean staying together and being miserable for a couple of decades. That's not good for anyone.

Your ideas are likely massively counterproductive.

I would argue that hate just like love is a choice you make. It isn't something outside of your control like infatuation or lust, no matter what the latest rom-com might portray on the screen.

If this hypothesis is correct then splitting up purely because you hate the other person is only necessary because you don't have the will to choose not to hate them.

That's a huge oversimplification though. Hatred isn't there in a vacuum. Maybe you just don't have the mental/emotional bandwidth to summon the energy up. And maybe you can't see a way to de-stress enough to get that bandwidth. It's possible that the partner is simply not trying either and that's a very heavy burden to carry alone. The hater may have quite literally run out of steam and can't summon the energy to choose differently.

It's a tremendously complicated and nuanced decision. Boiling it down to just I hate them though makes it essentially one individuals fault instead of acknowledging all the reasons it may be better to split up than to continue to harbor that hatred.

If you have the emotional capacity to choose to love and respect your partner instead of hating them or a way to regain that capacity then that is overall better than the alternative for the kids and splitting up should be the last resort after trying to deal with the reasons hate sprung up in the first place.

> I would argue that hate just like love is a choice you make.

And I would argue that's a simplistic way of looking at something massively complicated.

I would say that you have boiled "hate" down to something facile that can be solved with just "being the bigger person" and getting over yourself, when the reality is that's not going to work for a lot of people.

Guess what - I have first-hand experience of people trying to stay together and do the right thing for the children, and to move past it. They were both miserable for most of the time they were doing this, and so was everyone else around them.

> If you have the emotional capacity to choose to love and respect your partner instead of hating them or a way to regain that capacity

Right, and for those that don't, or those that try and fail? Your solution of "just stop hating each other" is wishful thinking.

And to get back to the whole point of the thread, not a good reason to force people to stay together, and a perfectly valid reason to get divorced. You want the best outcome for the kids, cooping two adults up together in a house who can't stand the sight of each other is not a way to achieve that.

Can some people move past hating each other? Probably. That doesn't mean it's good for the kids if society tries to force everyone to do that.

>>>>>>>>>>>> Hatred isn't there in a vacuum. Maybe you just don't have the mental/emotional bandwidth to summon the energy up. And maybe you can't see a way to de-stress enough to get that bandwidth. It's possible that the partner is simply not trying either and that's a very heavy burden to carry alone. The hater may have quite literally run out of steam and can't summon the energy to choose differently.

You could replace an entire set of marriage counseling/books with this single paragraph, and your message would still be worth a ton more than the lot of them... for anyone really paying attention to what you are saying.

Kudos for your eloquence & deep understanding.

When parents hate each other, every little interaction is an opportunity for point-scoring, criticism, one-upmanship, and toxicity. I know from personal experience (as the child), it is horrible to live in this atmosphere. Obviously the best scenario is parents not hating each other, but that's not always an option.

What evidence is there that American families were worse off in the dozen or so generations prior to widespread no-fault divorce?

Many things which affect family stability and happiness have changed since then, aside from no-fault divorce. Completely uncontrolled experiment.

There is none. Things are significantly worse for everyone, and for children in particular. This is obvious to anyone with eyes but will not be studied (source?!?) because the arsonists are the investigators.

Not for gay children!

The author mentions “stability” again and again. Stability means consistency over time.

Divorce, almost by definition is destabilizing.

It’s possible to have a divorce without a change in living and childcare arrangements for the kids. But that’s very rare, and frankly I can’t imagine he point.

“Stability” is agnostic to family structure, or whether the structure is normative.

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