First up, I think this belongs in the NP&CA thread, because it's to do with sociology and greater philosophical questions, as opposed to living arrangements.
The other weekend, I may or may not have been divulging in some illicit substances. Anyway so it was an intimate group of close friends were very forthcoming with things that they have never told anyone before, especially about their families.
Like one girl was saying how her Dad had depression, and he turned alcoholic and used to just sit on the couch crying every night. And she never used to want to come home from school when she knew he would be home, because she didn't know what she was going to find hanging from the ceiling. And how once they got a call from him saying that he was going to drive headfirst into the next car that ran around the corner. He had an affair and she hasn't talked to him for months, even though he's heaps better now.
Another friend said how her Dad is also an alcoholic, and put her Mum's boyfriend's head through the wall (her mum also had an affair).
Most of my friends' parents have split up, including mine, and i know of some other pretty fucked up situations with the families.
We came to the conclusion that the concept of the merrily happy middle-class family is the biggest load of shit ever and that just as much dysfunction and unhappiness takes place in wealthy families as it does in lower SES families, sometimes on a much more hush-hush, psychologically damaging level.
So this got me thinking about marriage, and the social construct that it is. Why do we, usually (although less so now) at a very young age, decide to choose to spend the rest of our lives with the one person. We do this even though we know that a huge amount of marriages end in divorce and general unpleasantness, and many of the ones that don't are the home of two very unhappy people, who may only stay together "for the good of the kids" or out of sheer habit.
But is marriage really the best fit for kids and the adults? Does the perceived negative emotional effect on children only exist because they are conditioned from birth to accept that they have a mum and a dad and that that these two roles will never change. Of course there can only ever be the two biological parents, but in some ways biology is a lot more simple and unforgiving than human emotions.
I believe that a family can be a great place for the socialisation of children, but I also think that I would embrace a situation where adults could change their partners when they fell in and out of love or a relationship was not working no matter how much effort was put in. If children knew this to be the case as they were growing up, surely the effect would be much much less.
Discussion please.
