do you think divorce can affect the kids

[angie87]

Iam a young mum and i have been with my husband for 10years and and married for two years i am not happy in this marrage at all. i want to leave him but im really worried what affect it will have on my two sons which are 5 and 2.how will they cope and cause my oldest son has just started school will this be to much for my boy to cope with.

[SassyMummy]

It'd be naive to suggest that a marriage breakdown has no impact on the children at all. Of course it does. It changes their whole way of living.

That said, you can minimise the damage done by making sure you both act like mature adults and not cranky children when dealing with each other, make sure that the non-custodial parent sees the children regularly and often and has a say in their upbringing as well (as well as has responsibility to them), organise counselling to help your children deal with this, etc etc.

[Guest1234]

I think you have to look at it from this perspective:
Will your sons benefit with a happy, but single mothers, or a unhappily married mother?

I don't think divorce will affect your children badly, they will benefit a lot from a happy mum. It will be hard for all concerned, divorce/breaking up isn't easy on any one, but as time passes, it will get easier.

I so badly wish/wished my parents divorced as my mum is so unhappy with my dad.

[sweetseven]

Yes of course a separation/divorce will affect children.
But living in an unhappy home will adversely affect them more.

I pretended for 10 years, and thought I had successfully hidden my dissatisfaction from everyone (including the children). I was wrong. We finally split and now years later I have spoken with my eldest and she has told me about how she felt about family life when we were together. She is adament that I did the right thing by leaving, and expressed her beliefs at the time that the unhappy home we had was normal and the way everyone lived.

The younger children have differing views because they dont remember a lot of what went on before we split. And they've had their father badmouthing me telling them how I gave up on our marriage and I left him because I wasn't willing to try hard enough, etc, etc. But only the second eldest has taken objection to me.