Yes. and I think its important to remember that the general context of child abuse is that the risk is much higher in broken or chaotic "families". So despite what feminists claim the "normal" family is very safe with risks rising the more broken and chaotic the family form. Like DV the risks rise also with mental ill health, addiction, alcoholism and intergenerational experience. In this country we had a TV show "Jeremy Kyle", which introduced the wider society to the chaotic maelstrom of all these factors, by exploiting their mess for the viewer. But it did do a service of revealing the reality of the circumstances where domestic and child abuse actually mainly occurs, and what Police and Social services actually deal with, rather than the very exceptional and therefor newsworthy cases that involve "ordinary" apparently stable families.
I've seen clips of Jeremy Kyle, very similar to the US show Maury Povich (famous for the line, "you are *not" the father").
The US shows that I found most illustrative about the disaster of "serial monogamy" were the numerous shows televising small claims cases. (Judge Judy, People's Court, Divorce Court, Paternity Court, Judge Joe Brown, etc., etc.) The parties to the suit would agree to have the case settled on TV instead of court.
They'd air any category of small claims case, (dog bites, withheld apartment security deposit, should there be a refund if the defective dress has visible pit stains?). But their bread-and-butter was adults and exes and new partners keying cars, filing unfounded claims of child neglect, and hair-pulling assaults. The frequency of such cases, and the participants' willingness to air it all before a nationwide audience was impressive in the worst possible way.
I never thought of the adult participants of being exploited, since so many seemed to relish being a TV star (if only for 12 minutes) and revealing to the world the abysmal behavior of the nemesis. Overall, participants seemed staunch in their belief in their own righteousness and the villainy of their opponent.
Weirdly, the other huge category was disgruntled brides whose "special day" was *ruined* by flowers one shade off from the requested color, too few smiling photos in the bridal album, or the DJ feeling entitled to be fed.
All the mayhem revolving around exes convinced me that however much people will claim to be done with the ex, go to the effort of uprooting their own lives and those of their kids, get new partners, the attachment remains unbreakable. Society has made a huge mistake in creating mechanisms that give the illusion that splitting up is a clean break, and has done untold damage to kids by allowing their parents so much latitude to indulge themselves.
Perhaps obtaining a marriage license should be far more difficult in the first place. I say this as the unmarried child or a mother twice divorced with 2 sisters also each divorced. Marriages are far too easy to create...and terminate.
Perhaps. I'd point out that in the days before no-fault divorce, there were mechanisms that made clear that marriage was permanent, and that the pair would have to expect tough times as well as good. The vows included for "better or worse, sickness & health, til death do us part." The Catholic church had - and still has - pre-wedding classes (called Pre-Cana) to impress the pair with the new duties they'd be assuming and teach them to get past conflicts. The Anglican church had the publication of the banns, several times, creating time between the decision and the actual marriage.
In the past, most people married people that either they knew, or were from close enough to their own social circle that family could vet the potential spouse.
Most of all, marriage being assumed to be for life was the standard - divorce always being allowed in cases of abuse, desertion or fraud.
I think the first most important step is to sever the assumption that marriage is supposed to make the partners happy. With 80% of divorces initiated by women, and being unhappy a very common reason they give to demolish the families they've created, this belief has fomented massive destruction.
PS, videos posted by women who divorced because the marriage was insufficiently happy, realizing several months later that life without the husband and family is utterly dismal, demonstrate the folly of legislating easy divorce.
I agree completely. In observing the divorces of my mother (twice) and 2 sisters, only the first divorce of my mother from my father was necessary. He was a truly abusive husband. Sadly, my mother like a good feminist overconfidence ignored the advice of friends and family and married a man older than herself who was from a Muslim culture. She repeated the same mistake of seeking the "exotic" in her second marriage which failed when her much younger husband sought a younger woman. My sisters divorces were both caused by their own inability to recognize that they had married a real person with all their strengths and weaknesses and not some utopian arch type. Both were very quick to find fault in the men they had married but remain to this day completely incapable of looking at themselves in the mirror to see that they were hardly models of perfection themselves. In all 4 instances, the women exercised poor judgement either in choosing their husband or in how they handled the inevitable problems that arise in all marriages. The first husband was truly evil. The rest were imperfect but hardly unsalvagable.
"Society has made a huge mistake in creating mechanisms that give the illusion that splitting up is a clean break, and has done untold damage to kids by allowing their parents so much latitude to indulge themselves " Yes indeed
Yes. and I think its important to remember that the general context of child abuse is that the risk is much higher in broken or chaotic "families". So despite what feminists claim the "normal" family is very safe with risks rising the more broken and chaotic the family form. Like DV the risks rise also with mental ill health, addiction, alcoholism and intergenerational experience. In this country we had a TV show "Jeremy Kyle", which introduced the wider society to the chaotic maelstrom of all these factors, by exploiting their mess for the viewer. But it did do a service of revealing the reality of the circumstances where domestic and child abuse actually mainly occurs, and what Police and Social services actually deal with, rather than the very exceptional and therefor newsworthy cases that involve "ordinary" apparently stable families.
I've seen clips of Jeremy Kyle, very similar to the US show Maury Povich (famous for the line, "you are *not" the father").
The US shows that I found most illustrative about the disaster of "serial monogamy" were the numerous shows televising small claims cases. (Judge Judy, People's Court, Divorce Court, Paternity Court, Judge Joe Brown, etc., etc.) The parties to the suit would agree to have the case settled on TV instead of court.
They'd air any category of small claims case, (dog bites, withheld apartment security deposit, should there be a refund if the defective dress has visible pit stains?). But their bread-and-butter was adults and exes and new partners keying cars, filing unfounded claims of child neglect, and hair-pulling assaults. The frequency of such cases, and the participants' willingness to air it all before a nationwide audience was impressive in the worst possible way.
I never thought of the adult participants of being exploited, since so many seemed to relish being a TV star (if only for 12 minutes) and revealing to the world the abysmal behavior of the nemesis. Overall, participants seemed staunch in their belief in their own righteousness and the villainy of their opponent.
Weirdly, the other huge category was disgruntled brides whose "special day" was *ruined* by flowers one shade off from the requested color, too few smiling photos in the bridal album, or the DJ feeling entitled to be fed.
All the mayhem revolving around exes convinced me that however much people will claim to be done with the ex, go to the effort of uprooting their own lives and those of their kids, get new partners, the attachment remains unbreakable. Society has made a huge mistake in creating mechanisms that give the illusion that splitting up is a clean break, and has done untold damage to kids by allowing their parents so much latitude to indulge themselves.
Perhaps obtaining a marriage license should be far more difficult in the first place. I say this as the unmarried child or a mother twice divorced with 2 sisters also each divorced. Marriages are far too easy to create...and terminate.
Perhaps. I'd point out that in the days before no-fault divorce, there were mechanisms that made clear that marriage was permanent, and that the pair would have to expect tough times as well as good. The vows included for "better or worse, sickness & health, til death do us part." The Catholic church had - and still has - pre-wedding classes (called Pre-Cana) to impress the pair with the new duties they'd be assuming and teach them to get past conflicts. The Anglican church had the publication of the banns, several times, creating time between the decision and the actual marriage.
In the past, most people married people that either they knew, or were from close enough to their own social circle that family could vet the potential spouse.
Most of all, marriage being assumed to be for life was the standard - divorce always being allowed in cases of abuse, desertion or fraud.
I think the first most important step is to sever the assumption that marriage is supposed to make the partners happy. With 80% of divorces initiated by women, and being unhappy a very common reason they give to demolish the families they've created, this belief has fomented massive destruction.
PS, videos posted by women who divorced because the marriage was insufficiently happy, realizing several months later that life without the husband and family is utterly dismal, demonstrate the folly of legislating easy divorce.
I agree completely. In observing the divorces of my mother (twice) and 2 sisters, only the first divorce of my mother from my father was necessary. He was a truly abusive husband. Sadly, my mother like a good feminist overconfidence ignored the advice of friends and family and married a man older than herself who was from a Muslim culture. She repeated the same mistake of seeking the "exotic" in her second marriage which failed when her much younger husband sought a younger woman. My sisters divorces were both caused by their own inability to recognize that they had married a real person with all their strengths and weaknesses and not some utopian arch type. Both were very quick to find fault in the men they had married but remain to this day completely incapable of looking at themselves in the mirror to see that they were hardly models of perfection themselves. In all 4 instances, the women exercised poor judgement either in choosing their husband or in how they handled the inevitable problems that arise in all marriages. The first husband was truly evil. The rest were imperfect but hardly unsalvagable.
"Society has made a huge mistake in creating mechanisms that give the illusion that splitting up is a clean break, and has done untold damage to kids by allowing their parents so much latitude to indulge themselves " Yes indeed