Wow – that really simply makes sense. I have friends that have children and husbands, but they often feel like single mothers. One friend has a husband that works the oil fields and is gone A LOT, she very often says, “If I wanted to be a single mother, i wouldn’t have gotten married when I got knocked-up!”

And I have noticed that there are a lot of similarities between my single-parent woes and their married-parent woes, they are a lot alike….

This unquestioning of the questions at the basis of such studies is sooooo ridiculous and such bad practice for researchers.

It is my contention that every adult should be able to make a living wage, eat healthfully, and live in safe homes/communities. It is my contention that each individual adult or human has the right to universal healthcare and reasonable prices for prescription drugs whose development was underwritten by tax dollars. It is my contention that children have the fundamental rights to education and child-care, separately considered from the rights of parents. If instead of talking about parents or mothers or fathers when discussing day-care/childcare, we should recognize that when a child is born in our country, he/she is a citizen and has certain rights–healthcare, daycare, education are all part of those rights and in return, when they are productive workers, they can aid future children and provide for the elderly through their social security/income taxes.

If we had all of these things in mind, then divorce and how parents parent would be less of an issue in terms of social impact and instead matters of privacy. Forcing women into servitude is wrong: because please, what these reconsidered divorce statutes would result in is the abolition of a woman’s right to divorce, since 2/3 of divorces are initiated by women and somehow, rich white men who want to “trade up” would be allowed to via some sort of “she got fat” clause in the divorce laws.

They are asking the wrong questions!

Though I will say, in terms of partnership, it is hard to imagine entering into motherhood without some sort of partnership–but that’s me on the outside looking in. One anthropology teacher I had, who was going through a divorce, said to me “all mothers are single mothers”– the lucky ones have supporting spouses (male/female) or support networks (extended families or urban alt families) that can help out, but “all mothers are single mothers” echoes still and though I see my brother taking on about 40% of the childcare (which is a hell of a lot better than many hetero structures), becoming a mother is all the more daunting in this world of shifting security. Remember Kate and Alley? I’ve often wondered why more women who are heterosexual don’t form similar partnerships?

Because it could never be assumed that men who get women pregnant then duck out of their responsibilities – like paying child support or see their children – or those who leave their wives for a younger model/midlife crisis or routinely abuse their families would responsible for any of those problems.

And then there is the “mutual consent/unilateral divorce” that would do away with the relatively painless divorces couples can attain without charging the other spouse with wrongdoing
This again, in an abusive relationship, puts the burden of proof on the woman. What if she can’t “prove” that he is hurting her? Must she then stay married to him until he does enough damage that she can take pictures of? What if he is raping her and he says it was consensual? The list of what if’s and how she could/could not prove it go on and on – and in the end, it is still blaming the victim and putting the burden on her, not the abuser.
Sickening.

Or perhaps I should have stayed with the husband who undermined my authority with my child (not his – she was conceived during a rebound relationship after my first divorce). The one who thought that it was perfectly ok to threaten my then-adolescent child with corporal punishment even though I had explicitly forbidden it. The one who thought that witholding meals from a growing child was an acceptable means of punishment. The one who knew my rules regarding her and expected me to abandon them in favor of his after we were married. The one whose behavior led to her developing an eating disorder. He didn’t want a divorce either.