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Comment by fasthands9 | Hacker News Reader

I can't read the whole article but remember learning in the past that children of widows have outcomes more similar to two-parent households than divorced parent households. This would seem to suggest the divorce is more of a signal of family/status than something which is driving bad outcomes.

At the same time, I do think people have gone a bit too far in their want to not give anyone shame. Yes - some shame is not going to help single-parent households now but I would think some societal shame would prevent people from being reckless with having kids or maybe make people think twice about leaving their partner when it really is just a rough patch.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1566757

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There could be a lot of contributors to that. A child of a widow will deal with grief but hopefully move forward together as a family. Potentially even trying to honor their fathers memory in the process.

A child of a divorce is likely to deal with anger, instability from custody agreements, custody battles, emotional fights and manipulation between parents, new relationships on both sides and the changes that come with that including issues with step siblings.

Divorce comes with so many negatives for children. A “healthy” divorce is rare from what I’ve seen to this point in my life.

It's self-selecting. If the relationship was not in a healthy state to begin with, divorce doesn't fix that dysfunction. It's full admission the relationship between two people isn't something both parties can come together and resolve. The fact that there are any "healthy" divorces amazes me.

We can easily see the population of divorced families, it's much harder for us to shine a light on "should be divorced but aren't". I have a hard time believing kids with a dysfunctional parent relationship at home would be better off.

The difference will always be that in a divorce, at least one parent left voluntarily and for a widow that was not the case.

For the kids, they’ll feel this for the rest of their lives regardless of any other circumstances.

I think it's probably a bit of both and a bit different for each family. Divorce as an indicator of dysfunctional family dynamics that lead to bad outcomes on the one hand, and conflict post divorce that demoralizes the growing people in the family on the other. I'm a child of divorce and I'll say that I probably wouldn't have turned out better if my parents had stayed together forcefully, just different. They're damaged people, they had a dysfunctional relationship, and it would've affected me negatively. At the same time, if their split had been amicable it probably would've affected me positively in comparison, but at the same time if they had both been people capable of such a split they probably wouldn't have needed to split in the first place. I think largely it's just who our parents are that determines that, and how we choose to use our experiences as adults.

"At the same time, I do think people have gone a bit too far in their want to not give anyone shame."

I have said something like this for years now.

Specifically, I have said:

"I don't know how much shame should be employed in a society but I suspect it is not "none"".

Could it be that a widow might inherit some of the remaining assets of the deceased, whereas in a divorce the assets are split?

Not to mention the possibility of life insurance.

Coming from divorced parents, the divorce process can be really bad for everybody, can last years even after it's concluded. It dominated 15 years of my life and it puts you in the awkward position of telling people you love "you actually fucked up big and damaged me in the process" (and them being completely unaware)

> prevent people from being reckless with having kids

Do people want the birthrate to go down or up? It's very easy to shame people into "you should have way more than the median income and own a house before having kids", and guess what effect that has.

I can't read the whole article but remember learning in the past that children of widows have outcomes more similar to two-parent households than divorced parent households.

One possible (partial) explanation: If there is enough insurance/benefits to cover the bills after dad's death, mom is usually the primary childcare provider. So if dad's role is primarily as provider, his loss can be substantially mitigated with money.

A man is not an interchangeable wallet, although it's probably true that a man with foresight to prepare financially for such a scenario is probably a responsible father in other ways too. It's quite possible that the existence of such financial preparedness are also indicators of other factors that end in good outcomes.

Shame could be the active ingredient in poorer outcomes of children of divorce, I'm not sure casting it more broadly will help the general picture.

I agree shame does not help once you are divorce, but there is some envelope math which seems fair.

If divorce makes outcomes 10% worse but makes divorce with children 20% less likely, maybe it's a wash?

At the very least, it seems incorrect to insist to me the downsides of shame always outweighs the benefits from it. Even if putting numbers on it is kinda farcical, but I think the point still stands.

"societal shame would prevent people from being reckless with having kids"

Meanwhile, several US states are working against this goal by preventing women from having unwanted pregnancies. It's as though policy has consequences!

I think you stumbled on your words a little bit there. It's hard to tell exactly what you mean. Preventing women from ending unwanted pregnancies you mean?

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