The Intrinsic Dangers of Divorce

There are three intrinsic dangers of divorce. First, the child is taught that family members are disposable. Second, the child is deprived of a parent. Third, the child is deprived of seeing how a harmonious, successful marriage relationship works.

Even if the divorce is not acrimonious, both in terms of the events leading up to it and the process of divorce itself, the child will learn that family members are disposable. A divorce is by definition a breaking up of a family, and so is a discretion against the family bond. The child learns by example that his relationships, no matter how intimate, are undependable. This sense of undependability creates a sense of fear and anxiety about relationships in general, or outright suspicion and hostility.

Divorce that occurs in non-extreme circumstances (extreme circumstances including abuse, violence, adultery, severe neglect, abandonment) teaches children the atomistic conception of family and relationships. They teach children that relationships are like private contract, and/or that people are sources of pleasure that when they become burdensome can be disposed of. If the divorce is truly conflict-free and nonchalant, then the child is taught that individuals they have intimate relationships are disposable or replaceable, and really don't matter.

In a divorce, the child can lose either the same-sex parent or the opposite-sex parent. Either way, the child loses a critical role-model, from the "functional" perspective of family. If it's the same-sex parent, the child loses a role-model to explain how to deal with and grow into gender roles. A boy without a proper father will have difficulty knowing how to act as a man as he grows older. If it's the opposite-sex parent, the child loses a resource to understand the opposite sex from. A daughter will not know how to deal with the different types of men that could potential hurt her, nor how to tell the difference, as well as if she learned these things from her father instead of her mother.

The loss of a parent, an intimate family member, is emotionally devastating, and needs no further explanation here.

Finally, the child is deprived of experiencing and seeing how a harmonious, successful marriage relationship works. Instead of working problems out, the parents give up and call the marriage a failure. So the child learns the problems, but nothing of the right solutions. So the child is left not knowing how to properly resolve conflicts, and may become suspicious or hostile toward relationships in general. The child does not learn to value harmony enough, nor does the child learn how to successfully pursue harmony.

To all those who argue that divorce is not an evil, you yourself are committing an act of evil. You are like someone who goes up to a sick person and tells them that they are healthy and have nothing to worry about; only disaster and great suffering will result.

Divorce may be a necessary evil, and I will never argue against this all-too-frequent situation where divorce is a necessary evil, but we should never deny that it is indeed an evil.