Latest / Divorce Coaches Academy / Staying Together for the Kids- Are We Asking the Wrong Question
Transcript
- Tracy Callahan: Welcome back to Divorce Coaches Academy Podcast. I am your host, Tracy, and today I want to talk about one of the most emotionally loaded questions a parent can ask when a marriage is struggling. Should we stay together for the kids? And gosh, this question carries so much weight because almost no parent ever asks it casually. Usually, typically, it comes after months or years of trying. Worrying, second guessing, and imagining two different futures. In one future, the family remains under one roof, but the marriage may continue to feel lonely, tense, disconnected, or unpredictable. In the other marriage, in ending, the family faces the financial, emotional, and practical disruption that divorce can bring. Parents want to know which choice will do less harm. They want a clean answer from research, from a therapist, from an attorney, from a divorce coach, or sometimes from a friend who has already lived through it. But the honest answer is that research can tell us a great deal about risk, but it cannot make an intensely personal decision for a particular family. So this topic, obviously, relevant in my work daily. Came back into my radar again through an unexpected source, although perhaps not unexpected if you know me. I'm a huge housewife fan. Yep, a true conflict junkie. I can appreciate a reunion, a flipped table, a questionable tagline, and a table argument with the best of But every so often beneath the spectacle, mmm, somebody says something that raises a really real question about family life. So if you don't watch, Cy DaSilva from The Real Housewives of New York City recently spoke publicly about the end of her marriage. And I really want to be careful here because we do not know the private reality of her marriage, and this episode is not an analysis of whether she should or should not have divorced. Her comments simply give us sort of this entry point into a much broader conversation. In an interview with people, Cy described feeling. Lonely in her marriage, and said her children were beginning to see that she was not at her happiest. She said, quote unquote, kids are very perceptive. They can see when something's not right. She then went on to express a belief that children deserve to see their parents happy, and that remaining together while unhappy can teach children to repeat the same relationship patterns. And I suspect that idea is going to resonate with a lot of people. Right? Children notice tone, they notice silence, they notice when parents stop laughing together, when one parent disappears emotionally, when every ordinary decision becomes a source of tension, or when the family simply organizes itself around avoiding the next argument. At the same time, the I also understand why some people hear a statement like that and push back. Parents aren't guaranteed happiness after divorce. Children may lose financial security, daily access to both parents, their home, their school, familiar traditions, or the ease of having the people they love in one place. A child certainly may prefer an imperfect intact family to two households. Some marriages they move through painful seasons and recover. Some couples can change how they even relate to one another, right? Even if the affection has faded. So I don't want to turn either position into a slogan. Stay together for the kids can be too simple. And yet the children deserve to see us happy can also be too simple. Happiness matters. But adult happiness cannot be the only measure of a child's well being. And marital status cannot be the only measure either. So that brings me to a major working paper that was released in May of this year, 2025, excuse me, through the Center for Economic Studies at the United States Census Bureau. The paper was called Divorce Family Arrangements and Children's Adult Outcomes. Now, before we discuss the findings, one important clarification. This is a census working paper. The paper itself states that it has not undergone the review accorded to official Census Bureau publications and that no Census Bureau endorsement should be inferred. But that does not make the research unimportant. It tells us how carefully we should describe it. So in this paper, the researchers linked tax and census records for more than Five million children born in the United States, but between the years 1988 and 1993. They examined family arrangements after divorce and followed outcomes into young adulthood. To address the problem that families who divorce may already differ from families who remain married, they also compared siblings who experienced the same parental divorce at different ages. And the findings are serious. After divorce, household income in the residence where children typically lived fell by more than half, from roughly $90,000 to $100,000 before divorce to about forty-two thousand dollars after divorce. The average household moved from the 57th percentile of the income distribution to the 36th. Over the following decade, households recovered only about half of that initial income loss. The probability of moving nearly tripled at the time of divorce. Families tended to relocate to neighbors with lower neighborhoods with lower incomes and less economic opportunity. And parents increased their work hours. Also, the distance between children and the parent who did not live with them increased. And often continue to grow well over time. And for children who experience pr experience parental divorce between birth and ages five, the researchers estimated adult earnings that were 9% lower at age 25 and 13% lower at age 27. They also found higher rates of teen birth, incarceration, And mortality along with a lower likelihood of living in college housing. These are average effects across a very, very large population, and they deserve our attention. The researchers estimated that changes in income, neighborhood quality, and distance from a parent explained between 25 and 60 percent of the effects they measured. In other words, The economic and structural changes surrounding divorce appear to matter enormously. Here's the part though that can easily disappear when this research becomes a headline, and it did become a headline. The study does not answer the question should these parents have stayed married? The authors say this directly. Their counterfactual is not parents remaining in an unhappy marriage. Their sibling comparison asks whether a young child who lived through more years after the same family divorce could be experienced different adult outcomes than an older sibling who spent more years in the pre-divorced family. And I think that's a pretty valuable question. But it is not the same question a parent asks when they're sitting with me in a session and wondering whether they should leave. The researchers also state that they cannot identify similarly unhappy families who remain intact. That matters, right? Because if we want to know whether children are better served by divorce or by parents staying in a distressed marriage, we would need a meaningful comparison with families experiencing similar levels of disconnection, conflict, instability, coercion, or abuse that did not get divorced. The stataset cannot give us that comparison. The paper measures what the authors call the divorce bundle. Legal divorce often arrives with two homes, less money, a move, more working hours, changing neighborhoods, new partners, more dependents, and a greater distance between the parents. The data shows the average consequences of that bundle. But the administrative records cannot fully observe whether parents cooperate, whether the child feels free to love both parents or Whether arguments stop or intensify, whether one parent undermines the other, whether a child becomes a messenger, or whether parenting time is dependable. The authors acknowledge that their data cannot measure many changes in family functioning, parental time, conflict, and cooperation. Those are not small omissions. They are central features of the environment in which children live. So the research supports a responsible conclusion. Divorce is not a neutral administrative event for children. Yes, it frequently changes their access to money, parents, neighborhoods, time, and stability. But the study does not establish that preserving every marriage would produce better outcomes. It cannot tell us whether one particular child would be safer, more secure, or more emotionally supported if the marriage continued. Population research is designed to find patterns. Families though live in particulars. So an average can tell us that children whose parents divorce face greater financial risk. But it cannot tell us whether one family will sell a home, whether both parents will stay nearby, whether a parent will pay support consistently, whether grandparents will help, or whether the adults will protect the child's school and community ties. An average can tell us that death Distance from a parent is associated with poorer outcomes. It cannot tell us whether two parents in a particular case will design a schedule that preserves meaningful relationships or whether one parent will gradually become peripheral. An average can tell us that divorce often disrupts children. It cannot tell us what was happening in the home before the divorce. A quiet household is not necessarily a peaceful household. Children may leave with live with coldness, contempt, fear, withdrawal, volatility, substance abuse, or a parent who has emotionally disappeared. None of that becomes harmless simply because the parents share an address. This is also why we should resist using data to shame a parent who is considering a divorce, or to reassure a parent too quickly that leaving will solve everything. Both responses skip the hard work of understanding the family in front of us. Instead of only asking should we stay together for the kids, I think families need a more complete set of questions. Like what are the children experiencing right now? Is the current distress temporary, treatable, and changing, or has it become the family's normal environment? Are the children exposed to fear, hostility, contempt, silence, unpredictability, or pressure to manage a parent's emotions? Can the adults reduce the conflict while remaining married? Can they create emotional and physical safety? Are both willing to participate in some level of repair? Is there coercive control or abuse that makes joint work unsafe or inappropriate? And if the parents separate, what losses can they anticipate rather than simply react to? Can both remain near the children? Can they preserve the school, important relationships, activities, and routines? Can they make the financial reality visible, visible before decisions are made? Can they avoid turning every transition into another conflict? And perhaps most important? What will each parent do to keep the child from becoming responsible for the adult's decision? That last question matters whether the parent stays or leaves. Children should not have to perform happiness to prove a parent made the right decision. But they also should not have to hide sadness because one parent is relieved. They should not be recruited to confirm that the marriage was terrible or that the divorce ruined everything. A child can love both parents, miss the intact family and Appreciate a calmer home and still struggle with the changes. Several of those things can happen all at the same time. But I don't want to counter the financial findings by dismissing them. I want to citate them more seriously. If household income loss, relocation, and reduced access to a parent helps explain poor outcomes, then those findings identify places where families and professionals can intervene. They do not merely offer a verdict on divorce. Parents need a realistic purpose. Post-separation budget before they make commitments they cannot sustain. They need to understand that supporting two households with the same pool of income changes what's available to everyone. A financial neutral, a CDFA, any divorced financial professional may be essential. And parents also need to distinguish, seriously, between an asset they want. And the life that asset creates. Keeping the marital home may sound protective because it preserves familiarity. But if the cost requires excessive work hours, constant final financial emergencies, or the eventual loss of the home, the parent's stability may not last. Selling the home may also force a move that disrupts school and community. There's no universal answer here. No one size fits all. The decision should reflect the child's whole environment, not the symbolic meaning of the house. And the report's findings about parental distance are also really important. Relocation is sometimes necessary, and in some cases, distance is connected to safety. But when parents have choices, continued access to both safe and engaged parents should be treated as a meaningful child resource. Proximity affects ordinary parenting, right? Homework, school events, sick days, transportation. The ability to remain present without turning every hour into a negotiation. And there's something else, right? The study also found that parents worked longer hours after their divorce. That makes sense. Two households cost more than one, yet longer work hours may leave less time for supervision and connection, precisely when children need more of them. Planning should therefore address childcare, transitions, and parental availability rather than solely focusing on the number of overnights. When we can read the study this way, the message changes. We stop arguing about whether divorce is good or bad in the abstract. We start asking how do we reduce the preventable harms that so often travel with it? Yeah, and guess what? We should apply the same seriousness to a decision to remain married. Staying is not the absence of a decision. It is a decision about the environment the family will continue to inhabit. Sometimes that decision allows parents time to repair the relationship or stabilize finances or prepare carefully. Sometimes spouses create a respectful parenting partnership even when the relationship is gone. Sometimes remaining together preserves valuable stability while the adults do some meaningful work. But staying for the children cannot mean asking the children to absorb unlimited conflicts so that adults can preserve the appearance of being intact. It cannot mean pretending children do not notice. Size observation is fair. Yes, children are perceptive. They may not know the facts, but they often know the emotional weather or temperature, if you will. If parents choose to stay, The relevant question is not simply whether they can endure the marriage. It's whether they can change what the children are experiencing inside it. That might involve marital therapy, individual therapy, support, conflict coaching, clearer financial agreements, changes in roles and responsibilities, or a structured period of discernment. And when there is abuse or course of control, safety planning and specialized professional guidance must come first. Stain should never be promoted as a moral requirement that overrides safety. So now let's go if parents decide to separate. The way they move through that decision also matters. A divorce can reduce one kind of conflict and create another. Parents may no longer Argue about the marriage, but they can begin years of conflict about schedules, money, extracurricular activities, new partners, holidays, and who's to blame. I say this all the time. Legal closure does not automatically create relational stability. Children often struggle less with the fact that their parents live in two homes than with the pressure of living between two competing versions of reality. They are harmed when information becomes a weapon, when ordinary mistakes become evidence, when every exchange carries tension, or when affection for one parent is treated as betrayal of the other. This is where preparation before the acknowledgement conversation, before choosing a divorce process, before mediation, before major negotiations can be so important. Parents need more than a list of demands. They need the capacity to hear information without immediately defending against it. And to separate a legal position from a parenting need, and to make decisions while grief and fear are still present. They must slow down. A parenting plan can establish structure. It cannot by itself teach parents how to use that structure. A well drafted agreement may reduce ambiguity, but adults still decide whether each interaction communicates predictability or threat. A divorce coach should not tell a client to stay married or to get divorced. Nope, that decision belongs to the client with a whole bunch of other stuff. Our role is simply to help clients think more clearly about what they are deciding and what will follow from it. We can help a parent separate fear from fact, identify what the children are actually experiencing, prepare questions for qualified professionals, anticipate the practical effects of two households, and communicate without recruiting the children into the conflict. We can also challenge the false comfort of a binary question. Staying and leaving are not single acts. Each becomes a sequence of choices. If the client stays, what needs to change in the home? If the client leaves, what protections and supports will be built around the children? How will money be discussed? How will proximity be preserved when possible? How will the children maintain relationships? What will happen when a child is angry, relieved, confused, or asks a question the parent's not ready to answer? Divorce coaches can help clients move from proving a decision to preparing for its consequences. And that is a much more useful place to work from. So let's go back to Psy, right? She said she did not want to publicly bash her former spouse because her teenage daughter would see it. Whatever we may think about a celebrity divorce, we do not know. But that instinct is worth noticing. A parent can speak honestly about personal pain without asking a child to adopt the same conclusion about the other parent. A parent can say, this is difficult. Our family is changing and you do not need to take care of me. A parent can protect privacy without creating secrecy. A parent can acknowledge that the marriage contained good years without denying why it ended. Children do not need a public prosecution of their parent in order to understand that change is happening. They need truthful, age appropriate information. And repeated permission to remain children. That becomes more difficult when divorce unfolds in public, but it is just as relevant in ordinary day-to-day families. The audience may be a neighborhood, a school community, a family group chat, social media. Once a parent makes a child part of that public narrative, it can be really, really, really hard to give that privacy back. So Should parents stay together for the kids? Research cannot answer that question without knowing what staying means in that family and what divorce would set in motion. The census working paper gives us an important warning though. Divorce often brings financial loss, moves, reduced opportunity, greater work demands, and distance between parents. Those changes can shape children's lives well into adulthood, so we should not minimize them or cover them with reassuring language. The same paper also tells us why we cannot use its findings as a command to preserve every single marriage. It does not compare divorce with remaining in a similarly unhappy marriage, and it cannot observe many of the family dynamics that matter most to children. The most responsible question is this. What environment are the children living in now and what will the adults do to make that environment safer, steadier, and more supportive from this point forward? That question belongs in the room whether the marriage continues or ends. All right, everyone. I want to thank you for joining me yet again for another episode at Divorce Coaches Academy Podcast. If this conversation was helpful, share it with a fellow professional or perhaps a parent who's also wrestling with this staying together for the kids. And as always, continue building the skills that help families make difficult decisions with greater clarity and less harm.