Children of broken homes

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I think the reason everybody I know is so useless is they all have 'issues' from their parents' divorce. People have 'abandonment' problems so they cling on to you all the time, or they're overly suspicious and look for the worst in everybody. Either they develop a ridiculous hostility to ANY authority ('authority' = 'anyone who asks them nicely to do anything'), or become simpering fools who throw themselves at anybody, looking for luv I imagine. You can't even have a conversation because they're paranoid and read stuff into everything you say, plus it's unwieldy talking about "my other dad" and "my other other dad" and "my biological mom" like Dolly the sheep. I'm the only person I know whose family made a pretence of holding it together, does that mean I'm genetically 'better' or what?

― dave q, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Blaming the victim, so what? People can always make up for the sins of their foolish progenitors by joining the Promise Keepers or something

― dave q, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Don't buy your general argument for a second, if only because I know some real wonderful folks whose parents split up when they were young, and I know some horrible people who were raised in a 'normal' home. If you're only surrounded by horrible folks, that's unfortunate but...

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dave, I think you just know lots of people from broken homes. The characteristics you describe are very common in people from non- broken homes too (except for the other other dad stuff). Basically, people are fucked up and dysfuctional and needy and paranoid, some less so than others.

Don't you think you are fucked up at all?

― toraneko, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

in britain, seems an incredible amount of people come from 'broken homes', and certainly looking at it from personal experience - i know very few people who's parents are still together. i feel like an exception when it comes to this now

― gareth, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hi Dave:) You and I know that holding it together is a thing of the past now. There is too much abuse to hold things together that we don't have to put up with anymore. Did you grow up happy?

― Gale, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

ay son, there were no such thing as abuse when I were a lad

― Golden Age, Silver Surfer, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hi Alan :) Is that right? You are very fortunate then.

― Gale, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

One thing I noticed when sat round the table the other day was that nearly all of my close friends come from stable family backgrounds, parents still together etc. I wondered why that was.

I still do, considering the statistics.

― Pete, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was going to say this Pete. Clearly we shun the offspring of broken homes with their crazy mixed up heads.

― Emma, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I currently work for an organisation that does lots of policy work on these issues, and the research is inconclusive. Pro-nuclear family organisations produce research indicating children in lone parent families do worse academically, and try to make a case that the kids are suffering from having no father figure. Alternatively you could say: kids from poor families (which lone parent families often are) do badly academically - the issue is economic rather than moral/whatever. There are a bewildering number of factors.

From my own experience, I think I would have grown up much more messed up if my dad hadn't left when I was 8 - for many families, removing the violent/alcoholic/nogoodnik is generally a positive thing. Growing up amid marital strife can be worse than growing up with a single parent. As the man says: "they fuck you up, your mum and dad / they may not mean to, but they do".

― Edna Welthorpe, Mrs, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There may also be the side of where I met most of my close friends and the kind of background that this gives them financially and class wise (I see myself perhaps at the bottom of the barrel on that front but it is still a pretty comfy barrel). That said an awful lot of my friends at school, and almost the entirity of my cousins have had parents who split.

― Pete, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes, Pete, we see you as very much our scraping the barrel friend. We often have secret meetings where we discuss hurling you out of our barrel, but someone always pipes up with 'oh but he comes from a Stable Family Background' and we decide to let you stay.

Most of my friends from school had divorced parents and 'financially and class wise' they were pretty similar to me so I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make there is Pete? If you are trying to make a point? The middle classes don't do divorce? Eh?

― Emma, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No, I wasn't trying to make a point - just banging ideas around. I guess what I was alluding to was that I met most of my close friends at Oxford and so Edna's comments above re: statistically kids from non-broken homes (I don't like any of these terminologies btw) academically do better at school may lead to them going to Oxford. Obviously I do have friends who are from a different background - but it is a disproportionate minority to what statstically it might be.

I think different family backgrounds give us different skills in dealing with relationships. Some people I know from very stable, non- arguing 'perfect' parents seem to have settled down very quickly - as if to replicate this in their own life. Others have been shocked at parents splitting up after the children have left as everything "seemed" okay. The price of repressing these argument, living with abuse (of whatever kind) as refered to above is not necessarily worth it.

― Pete, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"They give you all the faults they had/ and add some extra just for you"

Dave I think you're wrong. Very much so. The faults you describe could be ascribed to people from a wide range of social/ familial backgrounds. And whilst I accept that there are social forces that create certain patterns at the extremely personal level you're talking about then it's overly simplistic to say that one factor shaped a person's whole character.

― Anna, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I really don't think our very small social group is an accurate microcosm of Clever People from Stable Homes - it's just a coincidence. I'm sure there are plenty of kids at Oxbridge and other universities from 'broken homes'. Just cos the 10 or so mates we have from then aren't proves nothing. And saying that your family background affects how you deal with your own relationships is surely a bit of a no-brainer?

― Emma, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The middle classes do divorce. My parents did, although not acrimoniously.

Having said that I didn't make any effort when sixth form teachers suguested I should go down the Oxbridge route. But I put that down to me being a lazy cow rather than any childhood experience.

Going back to Edna's point I think it's more to do with ecconomic factors rather than emotional.

― Anna, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i wish my paremnts wer4e divorced i really do. it really fukkin sux livin in a household where two people just scream at each other all day.

― di, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I have to agree with Di on this one. I lived a long time in that environment when I was a kid and got in the middle more than once to separate the two and got my ass beat for being in the wrong place, so I was actually releived when my parents got a divorce. I think they are both better off now.

― deadman, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Everybody comes from broken homes and/or has some kind of crazy fucked up family history that they can blame for everything. If you come from a good and nurturing home, that is very unusual. I think in that sense, most of us are on the same level. I don't think it makes us any better or worse off than anyone else.

― deadman, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I was one so I guess I may be an expert on this subject.

― Gale, Friday, 15 February 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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Children of broken homes - dud or dud?