Poll: Are/were your parents divorced?

divorced since I was 10.. and I could care less..

What if someone was born through parthenogenesis? While I guess that is "something else" I think it deserves its own answer.

priests and cannibals, prehistoric animals? no one moves a muscle as the dead come home!

My parents were married 59 and a half years when my father died.

my parents divorced when I was 11. my dad is still an ass.

when i was 9. it was both my parents second divorce. my mom is remarried a 3rd time and my dad is engaged.

Mine separated when I was 9 (read: mom took off) and divorced when I was 10. Dad raised us. I think it was for the best. They fought too much.

Did this poll out of curiosity. It's easy to see so much divorce and assume it's the majority. I hope to see that lots of times marriages actually stick! :) (I know, I know, some of y'all don't believe in marriage. Not trying to get into that morass.)

and quite happily so. :)

I can only hope I find someone with whom I'm that perfect and long-term a match.

for 36 years this past July. Yeah there are fights every now and then, but their love for each other is still there.

When I was driving home this morning I was thinking about my parents being divorced and how I was happy when I found out they were splitting up.� I was thinking about how unlike any sitcom or movie I've seen about parents getting divorced.� I was even going to write in my blog about it asking if anyone else was happy when their parents got divorced.
freaky..

My parents are still together, so I can't say anything from my own experience, but most of my friends whose parents got divorced are glad they did it instead of being unhappy together.

That said, I don't think any of my friends' parents split while I knew them, so I can't say anything about what it was like for them while it was happening either.

That's sort of how I feel with my situation.

My mom never got married. My father left her when she was pregnant and denied I was his and blah blah. I never met him. So many sitcoms, movies, and talk shows are full of people who've never met a parent and desperately want to meet them and talk to them. But I was practically indifferent to the fact that I never met my father. I wonder what he'd think of me, but I grew up in a big, great family, where I didn't feel like I was missing anything. His not being there was probably the best for us all, really.

That's simmilar to how it is with my older brother Ben.� As far as I know he hasn't met his dad yet and short of carrying his picture in his wallet doesn't seem to want to.� I'm not sure if he still carries that picture honestly.

My mom and dad got married while she was pregnant with him so my dad is the only dad he's known.� My mom had told my dad when they met that Ben was some other guys (as in not the guy who was actually Ben's father) my dad knew that guy, or had met him soon after and I guess he was a real ass.� In some ways I'm glad that Ben hasn't met his dad, all selfish stupid reasons.� I like Ben being my dad's son, I am afraid that he will consider me less his sister if he knows his dad.� Then again, I wouldn't want him to use that as a reason to not meet him if he wanted to.

It's almost 3-to-1 marriage to divorce. Makes me wonder if this community is kinda odd, or if we need more votes, or if it's a fact of the "50% of marriages end in divorce" thing that it's skewed by multiple marriages-divorces by a smaller number of folks. (e.g. 3 people marry others, one divorces, remarries, divorces. That's 4 marriages and 2 divorces which is 50% but 2/3 of the people stayed married.)

And y'all are probably like "duh, doesn't take a genius to realize that". I'm just saying. It's easy to hear the statistic and picture something more dire.

You hit the nail on the head. While 50% of marriages end in divorces like in anything else, a minority does the heavy lifting.

A second confounding factor is that some respondants are the products of second marriages so while one or both of their parents might be divorced they didn't divorce each other.

statistics are so damn complicated. :)

I'm far from an expert on stats. When I was taking a sociology class last year, the instructor said that the statistics were based on each year. As in, for 2004, there were XX number of weddings AND X number of divorces, resulting in a 50% divorce rate for 2004. It's an interesting way to do the stats, especially since the divorces are from a broad spectrum of years, people, relationships, etc.

Also, there are other factors that statistically result in higher divorce rates: married more than once, cohabiting before marriage, not having children, etc. I always have to scratch my head at "cohabiting," because I always thought it would have the opposite effect. But hey, I'm not the stats-pro.

I always have to scratch my head at "cohabiting," because I always thought it would have the opposite effect.

The best explination I've heard for that is that it has to do more with the fact that people who are not willing to cohabit, are more likely to stay married, regardless of any happiness in the marriage.

Also, all of our parents had kids, but not all marriages involve children. I imagine that while many parents do get divorced, the rate is lower than it is with childless couples.

Of course, fruheads have never been the most average cross-section of the population either ;-)

Very good point about the children factor.

When I started grade school (in 1983 or 84), TWO kids of sixty in my grade had divorced parents.

I can't honestly remember about my peers' homes. I just know mine fell apart. Heh.� I do remember getting to sit in the library at school all day instead of going to class the day the divorce became final. I guess they wouldn't have let me get away with that if it was a common thing. :)

I remember one of the kids in my class had divorced parents... that's about it.

If your parents didn't have any kids the odds are that you won't either.

I remember being the odd one out at my elementary school because my parents were still married.� Divorce or never married was a lot more common amoung my peers.� One time one of my classmates asked me "do you live with your mom or your dad" and she was a little taken aback when i said "both"

married 27 years and he's an emotionaly constipated, mood swingy, bastard. my mum is like, the best, really.

my father and I are actually a LOT alike, but I'm internal and he's external. hurtful abusive bastard to everyone and I'm that only to myself(and the voices there in)... in both cases everyone gets hurt. *sigh*

They stayed married way too long. Separated 3 times, finally for the last time in may of 1998 when I was 16. I don't even know when their divorce became final, just that it was before they both remarried in 2003. The process was long and drawn out but they kept it to themselves. I didn't know anything about the legal proceedings. That they spared us.

And yes, I am still angry.

Still angry that it took so long, or still angry that they got divorced?

My mother was in the process of divorcing my father when I was born. She remarried when I was 5 and then (FINALLY) divorced THAT bastard after all the kids had moved away. Survey says: she should leave this one too. MOM, FIND A DECENT MAN OR ROUGH IT ON YOUR OWN!

Now I'm probably one of the few people who strongly recommend divorce when there's abuse in the family. Personally, I don't believe it can be "good for the kids" to stay together if there's fighting and other abuse going on inside the family unit.

Now I'm probably one of the few people who strongly recommend divorce when there's abuse in the family.

In this group??? I *highly* doubt you're in a minority.

:)

my parents are married, and have been for 14(?) years. yeah. my grandparents have been married for over 50 years.

My parents also got divorced when I was 9