Stop Adding Chaos To Your Child's Life

I've listed many reasons why most people should avoid having children, getting married, or even being in a relationship at all.

I know full well most people will still do these things.

If someone doesn't want children, they should ensure they won't. Men who don't want children should get vasectomies and women should get tubal ligation or have their ovaries and/or uterus removed, whatever is best for them given their health considerations.

But if someone is going to have children, they have a moral obligation to set up the best situation they can to raise those children, who have no choice in the matter except to go along with what their parents set up.

That means:

1) Finding a suitable person of the opposite sex. [1]
2) Marrying them. [2]
3) Treating that person well. [3]
4) Building a stable, suitable life for raising children. [4]
5) Then having children.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who do #5 before (or without ever doing) the others, even before #1. And there are also people who, because they didn't really do #1 or #3, they end up divorced or widowed or separated (physically even if not legally). So there are many children now living in what we call a broken home, meaning mom and dad are not living together, raising their child together.

Dr. Laura (and maybe others?) insists that parents of minor children should not remarry until their youngest child is grown and certainly not make more babies. She goes further and says that the existing minor children should not even be exposed to a parent's new lover. So many people think this stance is bizarre. It just sounds so radical to them because parents of minor children getting into new relationships is so common these days.

But I agree with her.

Aside from the many things I listed in that first link, there are very good reasons to have this position. It is based on reality, data, and experience, and focused on the well-being of children. Those who reject these boundaries usually do so based on their horniness, emotional  or financial neediness and other selfish reasons, and fantasies like The Brady Bunch and current television shows.

The good reasons for having these boundaries in place include:

1) Since your children already have a broken home, they need your attention; they don't need your attention going to your new lover and that person's children.


2) Most dating or even boyfriend/girlfriend relationships don't last. If you introduce your new lover to your children, your children may bond with them and then suffer another loss after the breakup. How many times will this repeat?

3) Likewise, 70% of "second" marriages in which stepchildren are involved divorce. At least some of the remaining 30% are bad or have big problems, even if they don't officially divorce.

4) Bringing your new lover into your child's life correlates to higher risks of that child being abused.[5]

5) Stepsiblings (potential, functional, or actual) and new half-siblings can also be a new source of conflict, abuse, and risky behaviors.

6) Also, they're usually treated differently, which brings all sorts of problems.

7) If your child lives with you and you make new babies with your new lover, your child has a broken family but gets to live with children who get to have an intact family (for now).

8) If you share custody of your child or your child only visits, and your stepchildren live with you, your child essentially gets to visit their parent, who is raising someone else's child(ren).

9) If you make new babies and you share share custody of your child or your child only visits, and you've made new babies with your new lover, your child essentially gets to visit their parent, who is raising children who get to have both of their parents full-time (for now).

10) Having your new lover sleep over (when your child is home) or shack up with you is bad role-modeling.


Having to go back and forth between two homes is enough chaos. #2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are adding unnecessary additional chaos. Grated, you can't control what your ex does. They may bring more chaos into your child's life, but that's all the more reason for you to choose not to do it. (It's also a reason to stay married until the kids are grown, because it is much less likely your spouse will be introducing their new lover to your children if you're still married and living together.)

Maybe you're inclined to object with "Kids just have to learn to deal with life." No. They don't have to deal with this unnecessary chaos. Not if you don't do it. You can choose not to do it.

Another thing you might be saying is, "But it's good for kids to see their parents happy!" Odds are, that happiness will turn to misery. Kids don't need to see you finding a new lover. Children do best with their married mom and dad. If they're not going to have that, most will do better without a (potential, functional, or actual) stepparent, especially without stepsiblings and half siblings. So don't whine or gripe to your kids about how lonely you are. Their home is broken through no fault of their own and they don't need your complaints.

Although Dr. Laura is generally not a fan of (unpaid) fornication or dating without an intent to marry, she's usually OK with someone going on dates when their children are with their other parent(s) or grandparents or whatever and will not have any contact with said dates. Intercourse, however, should be avoided unless the vasectomies or ligation or whatever have taken (and deadly diseases are not involved), and it has to be understood that there will be no introduction of the new lover to the children until the children are grown (so no shacking up, which is a terrible idea anyway, and no marriage).

It is important to remember that your new lover is not related to your child, and the later into their childhood they (and their children) are brought into your child's home, the more likelihood there will be some sort of sexual tension if not outright activity. Think about a couple of examples. A young, attractive woman comes in as a stepmother to a teen a boy. He does not look at her as a mother. She's some new woman who is living in his home (or the home he visits regularly). Or, she has brought along her teen daughter, who feels very competitive with her, seeking attention from men. Her stepfather is not a father to her. He's just another man. And the same goes for stepsiblings. They might not see each other as siblings. All of the sudden, there are unrelated hormonal teens living in close quarters.

Men, remember it is bad idea to date single mothers anyway.

The bottom line to all of this is as long as you have minor children, DON'T GET REMARRIED AND DON'T MAKE NEW BABIES.





Footnotes:

1. A suitable person of the opposite sex is someone who is fundamentally compatible with you, someone with compatible goals, values, and personality. There's a lot more that goes into it than that. This is who would be a marriage material man, according to Dr. Laura. If you're a man, this might help clarify things. One HUGE caution is that there ARE people, a small percentage of the population, who can fake it and misrepresent who they really are for years, until they have what they want. If this wasn't so, we couldn't have certain long-term undercover infiltrators of criminal or foreign organizations.

2. Studies show marriage correlates to positive indicators for children. I doubt, however, that any of those are caused by the default state legal contract, the "piece of paper". The one possible thing that the contract might do is keep people together who might otherwise split because of the financial hit they think they'd take if they divorced. I can't recommend people sign their lives over to that default state contract. A customized prenup is a must. The real power of marriage comes if the individuals are both devoted to each other and they cooperate; it's the mindset, the priorities, the attitude, the habits involved.* These things can be implemented without a state contract. As far as I'm concerned, I consider you married if you have made witnessed vows, consider yourself married, present yourselves as married, and treat each other as spouses.

3. Without treating each other well, the marriage is unlikely to last, and even if it does, children might not benefit much from it.* If you're going to be married to someone, if you're going to live with them, if you're going to raise children with them, it is a good idea to treat that person well. Treating men right is simple, although simple isn't always easy. It's more complicated when it comes to treating a woman right.

4. Children need parental supervision, attention, bonding, and nurturing, and they also need stability. Sticking them in a day orphanage (daycare) is not the way to go and once kids are approaching school age (school is Kindergarten and up, anything before that is daycare no matter what it is called) moving them from place to place becomes problematic for them.

5. There are good stepparents, bless them, but having a good stepparent in a good, lasting situation is definitely beating the odds. Generally, a guy who marries a woman with minor children is a sucker who is making one of the worst decisions he can make without breaking law. Also, let's consider this. Is a pedophile going to prefer marrying someone who has minor children or someone who doesn't? Think about that. In marrying someone with minor children, the pedophile gets a beard (the spouse) and gets constant private access to potential victims, victims who may think (perhaps correctly) that their parent wouldn't want their new spouse taken away, victims who may feel financially dependent on their new stepparent, even if they do understand that what is being done to them is wrong and not their fault.


 *Actually, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it isn't so much that "marriage is good for children" but rather the alternatives are so bad. Obviously, having just one parent in their life as opposed to two loving parents is bad, as is going through a divorce and the aftermath, especially if there's obvious fighting between the parents and trying to turn the children against the other parent. A string of other adults coming into, and out of, their life can bring problems. Losing a parent to death is obviously a terrible thing. If their parents never actually married each other but they're living as though they're married and treating each other well and being good parents otherwise, the children are probably going to be just as well off as children whose parents had some huge expensive wedding.