PETER HITCHENS: Our selfish dismantling of marriage has left children in a lonely Dickensian hell

It doesn't really matter what he thinks he is talking about because he is manifestly wrong. There isn't a scrap of evidence linking divorce to children being taken into care. There is substantial evidence that most children taken into care are victims of abuse or neglect. As far as neglect goes there is a lot of evidence that inadequate parents benefit from proper support from experienced social workers and from organisations like Sure Start. Both things which have suffered devastating cuts under this right wing government. If Hitchens really cared about those children he would stop spouting irrelevant rubbish and demand families regardless of their make up got the support they need to look after the children they love but have problems raising.

Great post happycatholicwife. It's been interesting and surprising to read some of the comments in this thread.

Responses about the 1950's housewife and patriarchy; 'a woman's place is in the home' etc. He's talking about the lack of commitment to marriage and family life. He's not having a go at single parent families, saying people should remain in abusive relationships for the sake of their children or decrying same sex couples who parent.

He's talking about the apparent ease with which some walk away from their commitments and responsibilities, questioning whether they were ever fully committed to begin with.

Relationships appear to have become more disposable and not just within marriage but the wider family too and if there is suffering as a result, it's the children who suffer the most.

happycatholicwife very good post. .Understanding exactly what the debate of Title thread is meant to be about!

There’s plenty of people around who suffered from their parents’ unhappy marriages and plenty who benefited from parents who separated but, despite their own feelings, worked hard to continue an amicable relationship to support their offspring.

well said Elegran - I think also the welfare state has partly given some men the green light to father children to many different women without taking any responsibility for them. But in saying that -it has also helped a lot of single parents too. Hitchens has mentioned this many times- as he believes that if people do not make a commitment to one another for the long term it impacts the children when one or the other leave. I don't think he is referring to abusive or unhappy relationships but just 'generally' speaking

There is a lot of Truth in what Peter Hitchens says. I grew up being taught that the Three A's were the only acceptable reasons for divorce (adultery, abuse, alcoholism). There is an argument to be made that too many people are too quick to get married and often for the wrong reasons. When that happens, then there are lots of divorces because the people involved are just not satisfied or are actively unhappy. I've seen a lot of kids trundled between homes of parents who love them, but not the other parent. These kids do not like going from place to place. They don't like different rules at different houses. They don't like the feeling of never being settled for good. How many people appreciate marriage for the institution that it is? It is so crucial to family life and to community life. Nobody is saying women should stay pregnant and in the kitchen. But I would like to see a lot of women be choosier about the person they marry. I would like to see people care more about the marriage and much less about the wedding. I dare say everyone would be much better off.

Good post, Lady H D.

I used to chair a local government children's homes committee and I can assure you that the great majority of children who are in care are there because they were abused by family members and need to be protected from their parents' 'stable' marriages.

As a male contributor, may I add my two penneth?

I split from my first wife, the mother of my two daughters, when the latter were 11 and 13 respectively. It broke my heart to do so at the time but I felt it the right thing to do, strange as that may seem.

My daughters stayed with their mother for almost a year but then, they too, started to get the brunt of their mothers' moods and unreasonable behaviours. They both told me that they wanted to come and live with me. I had to quickly rearrange my life and my accommodation, but come with me they did. Now in their late thirties, one eventually got her A levels and went to university and, now, has an excellent and very responsible job after having several equally good jobs previously, including working in London for 12 years.

My other daughter never went to uni but has worked her way up through sales, management and HR to become the HR director of a company employing over 6,000 people. She earns x3 times my salary when I retired.

I tell this tale because Hitchens is talking generalised nonsense. I firmly believe that neither daughter would have achieved what they have without that breakup. EVERY situation is different.

abuse in a family where there are children is classed as child abuse, children know what is going on, as many on here have said. men have always abandoned children and families, one thing you learn when you do family history, it's nothing new. There have always been serial marriages when one or more of spouses died. Men died young from war, disease or industrial accident, leaving mothers to either find someone else or move in with a daughter and family or they would take in orphaned grandchildren to raise alongside their own. /even unmarried mothers managed to find husbands, maybe a widowed father .
Why should anyone have to put up with any sort of abuse, or infidelity, women in particular suffered hugely in the past
And yes Mr and Mrs Fred West are no poster children for marriage being better for children, nor people like the Philpotts
For sure a stable happy marriage or partnership is best for children, but thse are not always the case

My husband walked out on me in 1975, leaving me with infant children. But, as chocolatelovinggran said: I got on with it, brought them up and maintained a good relationship with their Dad.

I spent my childhood listening to my mum crying because of my bullying father. She never left, she just took it, in those days you didn't leave and get divorced. I would of preferred a life with a single, happy mother to the miserable times we had with my dad's temper.

Most children are in care because of abuse and neglect. The situation has not been helped by cuts to the very services set up to support children and families, rising levels of child poverty and the pandemic.
His arguments seem to be based on his personal opinions and not on facts or evidence.

I brought my two sons up on my own, with help and support from our extended family. Both are well adjusted, happy young men, with good jobs and one with children of his own.
Perhaps good boundaries, better manners and less entitlement would be a better option

On the 50s, the child rearing was women's job, how many fathers change diapers? Gave bottles? Baths, etc

This is about subjugating women to a submissive servant role

The point surely about Dickens is that he drew attention through his novels to the appalling conditions of children in his time, a time when marriage was regarded as almost indissoluble.

"Deprived of fathers"? It's far more often that a man abandons a family than that a woman does. He also - by his statement - carelessly insults such families as my daughter's. She and her wife are excellent parents to their daughter. No live-in father figure required.

Lyndie I empathise with this. It's a tough thing to do.

What a load of Victorian twaddle! The nuclear family hid many horrendous happenings and because divorce was frowned upon, people suffered in silence or were stigmatised. How typical of the Daily Mail. And if kids are suffering in care (which I know they are), it's because care in every single sector of our society has been cut to the bone. The problem is poverty and desperation, not the demise of a narrow interpretation of how we should live.

I think the report is simplistic. Should women stay in marriages where they are emotionally and physically abused and where children see that as the norm? Could be men in the same situation too of course. I think it’s Dickensian for couples to have to stay together when things have gone wrong. Hopefully splits can be amicable and children not involved in point scoring. That’s where the damage occurs.

I’d like to tell Peter Hitchens that my mother stayed with my abusive father “for the sake of the children” and the rows they had were terrifying. In fairness we were able to escape around the farm and that side of our life was the typical idyllic country upbringing but there was always in the background the fear that our father would come in from the fields or the yard in a filthy temper and my mother being no shrinking violet would retaliate. Then we’d run for cover and just wish they’d seperate. Not so easy back then. My father died at the age if sixty four and my mother became a new woman!

my parents stayed married but it was not a happy marriage. as a child it would have been so much better if they had separated Neither of them were happy . don't believe for one minute that a child is unaware of the tension that can exist between their parents. it may be why neither my brother or I had children .

The article strikes me as ill-considered.

I had school friends back in the 1950s and 1960s who suffered dreadfully because their parents were "staying together for the sake of the children".

Since then, I have taught children during a period extending from the 1970s to 2013.

Yes, more school-children have birth parents who have divorced and usually found a new spouse.

All children deserve a loving, stable home and most actually have one, or even two. These loving, stable homes can consist of a single parent with one or more children, divorced parents who have the child or children with them both, turn and turn about, a divorced parent who has remarried and has the children of the first marriage with her or him in the new home, or of a divorced, remarried parent who married another divorced parent, so we have your child, my child, and quite often "our biological child or children" as well.

Whether these constellations work or not depends on many factors, but usually if they do not work, or do not work well, it is not the fact of divorce that is the cause of things not working out.

Children in care? Many would not have needed to be taken into care if their parents had got their act together and divorced each other.

Children are in care for many reasons, but normally because of one or other form of neglect or abuse, which might and often could have been avoided, if the non-abusive parent had taken the child and packed up and left. She or he didn't, and the whole sad story was revealed when a teacher or neighbour reported the children's condition to the relevant authority.

I have had to do with children who were in care because their parents were addicts or abused their children. I never recall having a child in any of my classes who was in care simply because his or her parents were divorced.

don’t do it unless you really understand the consequences and how much bleakness and sadness they can cause, as well as joy. It’s all too ‘rosy’ a picture that they have about child rearing.

Couldn't agree more Millbrook. So many new mums are in shock about the chaos caused by a new baby which only partially abates as they get older.

Who invented marriage. some man who thought that it was good to have a woman who would look after his children, be there at his beck and call, meal on the table, kids washed, fed, and put to bed before he came in from a hard day work laughing and joking and complaining about his lot to whoever will listen and commiserate. I know loads of women who have managed perfectly well on their own, hurrah for them, you couldn't leave in my day and age, even though the husband came home half-cut and not very nice. I watched Cathy come Home the other night, l lived near Mantua Street, it bought back chilling memories of how we lived then, there was nothing for a single woman with children then but now the world is your oyster.