On my Feedly Reader, I’ve set up 10 parenthood blogs for inspiration – 9 written by fathers and 1 by a mother – of which maybe only 5 post regularly. I really enjoy reading them. They encourage me to spend more quality time with my children and give me ideas on how to raise them.
A couple of days ago, I opened up my Reader to find that one of the fathers had just divorced his wife. This means that out of the 5 active blogs, 2 of them had divorces during the time I was reading them, and another 1 started the blog as single dad but just recently ended a serious relationship with his girlfriend.
Somehow, reading his divorce story affected me. He had ‘tapped out’ two years ago. His wife still wanted to try make it work; he didn’t. And it really hit me that such a large percentage of the more popular parenthood blogs I read don’t have parents who stayed together.
These are awesome parents. Unless what they share on their blogs practically on a daily basis is a complete fabrication of words, pictures and videos, they are truly amazing with their kids. The smiles in the pictures and the laughs in the videos from their children are real, and they definitely spend a ton of quality time together. For quite a few of them, their blog is their entire job and career supporting their families.
I’m just wondering what the implications of this are.
Do you need to have a stable marriage in order to be a good parent?
Can the concept of parenthood be so easily and cleanly separated from that of a spouse?
In that case, would it make any difference if a single person decided to adopt and parent a child?
I’m not trying to judge single parents or married parents who decided to divorce, or even those who adopt children, whether single or married. I’m just trying to understand whether we, as a society, have differentiated out the meaning of parenthood so much so that being in a strong marriage is not necessarily part of the equation of what makes a great parent.
And I’m trying to process what that would mean to me.
Is parenthood far more sacred than the covenant of marriage today?
There are already so many sitcoms which present vastly imperfect and dysfunctional family settings. We all laugh at them because on some level some of us can relate to it, and it actually makes us feel better to see situations that are more messed up than what we face.
But sometimes I wonder if it’s to the extent that we glorify these imperfections and begin to treat them as the common reality rather than just those days and seasons where the yoghurt really hits the fan.
And even when we take out the children for quality time, because of the nature of how busy we are as parents, many times it’s only one parent. Sarah’s off day is Monday so she might take Nat out to the mall for shopping while I’m at work. She works on weekends, so I might take the kids out for breakfast and a walk on Sunday morning without her.
When I see most of the pictures on the blogs I read, they are either only of the children, or even if a parent is in them, it’s a ‘selfie’ rather than the depiction of a fun family experience with both parents present.
I’ve just shared out my thoughts on this without thinking it through so this post may not really have a coherent flow but I’m going to end it with my conclusions for my life.
I think that if my parents divorced when I was younger, it would probably be singlehandedly the most painful and disruptive experience in my childhood. Even if they were to divorce today, I would be completely shaken and it would grieve me greatly. Whether I agreed with all their methods of raising me, they have formed the foundation of all I am, both in what they taught me and in what they showed me.
It’s not even that they shielded me from the reality and truth that divorce happens, but they gave me a hope that it was possible to reach for something better – to work through a solid marriage with my wife and that things can get better as you grow old together.
And my hope is that I never prioritise my children over my wife or believe that they are more worthy of my attention and affection. I could never be the father that I want to be without her holding my hand every step of the way.
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