If you do...and they bounced back...then thats great but they're likely in the minority. As I understand it, most studies show that kids whose parents split up and never reconcile suffer lifelong consequences from very mild to quite severe. They range from behavioral, educational, mental, physical, and even sexual & relationship disorders.
This is a bunch of bull-cr@p. Where are you getting your information about kids who grew up with divorced parents suffer more? It's not being divorced that makes kids screwed up, there's study after study that shows that it is the QUALITY of the parenting - not the number of parents - that the kids have which make all of the difference.
If a child has two parents that are invested in their kids education and lives, those kids will thrive, even if the parents are not married. But if you have parents that bicker, use the kids as pawns, etc., the kids are shuffled to the side as part of the parents power plays. It makes sense that they would have more educational problems...because the parents are acting like children.
Conversely, if you have a two-parent household where the parents can not get along and there's some kind of abuse, addiction, violence, whatever, the kids suffer from that. I have friends that grew up on what would be considered a perfect-white-picket-fence-two-parent household and they are screwed up bc their parents were so concerned about their status and how they appeared to the world that they pretty much ignored their children. On the other hand, I have friends that had parents who divorced and their parents took responsibility for their actions, never put the kids between them, and loved them. Those friends are very successful.
You can find information that is similar to this, that single parent households work out fine, by looking at studies about people who have been widowed or lost their spouse through accidents. If one parent dies, even though the trauma may be huge, the remaining parent can be successful or not depending on how much they are open and care about their kids.
It seems that the major factor with the success or failure of kids - meaning going to jail or become a drug addict or not working - is the economic factor. Marriage is a legal definition with economic benefits, such as tax breaks, and two people living together have fewer costs than two people living separately. For example, a married couple will have one mortgage, one phone bill, one electricity bill. For a separated couple, everything is doubled, two mortgage notes, two phone bills, two insurance bills, etc. With the money that is saved from a married couple - AND they want to invest it in their kids futures - there's more discretionary $$$ available. So that means little Suzy can pay for tutoring to get her grades up. If you are a single mom barely able to make your electricity payments, Little Suzy's tutoring is not available if you are hoping to keep the heat on.
The stories about single-parent households being less effective are just scare tactics from groups that want to support "traditional" ideas, even though ideas are WRONG.
Here's a link:
Children raised in single-parent households are no more likely than those from two-parent homes to fail at school or develop behavioral problems.
