Who rules the roost?

For some reason that has nothing to do with my own life, I've lately been pondering whether parents should make all of their life decisions based on child-centered criteria, or if they should make decisions based on what they, the parents, want and need, and have a parent-centered family.  I'm not talking about spoiling your child, letting him or her run the household, or dictate purchases "Mummy, I want a pony!" I'm talking about big issues, such as divorce, when it's just a matter of vague dissatisfaction, choice of mate, if divorced, major relocation decisions that are based on anything other than absolute necessity, and other big life adult decisions that can affect children.

In times past, parents ruled the roost, and the kids were expected to suck it up and adjust.  Children were not consulted, and often not considered when parents made major life decisions.  This reached an extreme for those of us in Generation X, who saw parents divorcing because they just didn't feel the passion any more, or they just needed to find themselves, or their sex lives weren't fabulous.  I saw children of divorce whose custodial parent would just take off and move out of state for a better job opportunity or for a change of scenery, and the child was then effectively cut off from their other parent. 

Baby boomers began a shift to a child-centered family, and, of course, we now hear constantly about "helicoptered" and pampered kids who often have difficulty severing the umbilical cord and thinking independently.  I reject the idea that the kids should be in charge of the main family decisions, but I also reject the idea that parents need to seek some vague need for fulfillment at all costs.

I tend to see divorce as something that should be reserved for cases where the children are better off with two parents living separately than together. Violence, rampant infidelities, conditions that are so bad that the kids feel the effects of the marital misery, would all be valid reasons to sever a marriage.  There are cases where parents divorce because they have an unrealistic expectation of what a long term marriage will feel like.  They lose their little flutters, and meet someone else who makes them tingle and spark, and off they go.  If there is a good, solid partnership between the parents, and they both genuinely LIKE each other, I believe they should fight tooth and nail to save their marriage and put off the "butterflies" until the kids have left home.  I especially believe this in cases where the parents delayed marriage. Sorry, but if you married at 35, you had plenty of years to begin and end relationships as you pleased.  You can just suck it up for the sake of your kids and make it work, unless your children are traumatized by the atmosphere at home.  Marriage can be excruciatingly hard, but those of us who are married signed up for it and had children under the assuption that we would give our kids a stable, two parent family.  I make some exceptions, of course.  If there is violence in the home, the marriage should be ended immediately.  If one of the partners is heartbroken because they are married to a serial cheater, then it's time to separate.  If the couple can navigate an implictly or explicitly open marriage, more power to them.  But a partner who is devastated by constant infidelity and deception is not likely to be able to parent with a full deck, and that tension will rub off on the kids.  And if one or both parents are so miserable at home that they have essentially checked out, and counseling doesn't help, then I think the kids are better off with divorce.

I wonder often about divorced parents entering the dating field.  Should a parent keep seeing someone that their children abhor? Should they marry someone their children abhor?  Should they even be introducing their children to a new romantic interest until it is looking very serious? To be perfectly honest, were I divorced, I'd probably date discreetly and keep my child out of it until the partner looked like marriage material.  I would not mention anything about dating, nor would I introduce the two.  Children get attached to adults, and how do children feel when they continually bond to partners that then disappear? Would I drop someone that my daughter didn't like?  If she absolutely could not stand a potential mate,  I would not want to deal with the stress that would ensue; nor would I think it fair to subject my daughter to pure misery living in a home with someone she despised.  She comes first, period.  If she tended to not like ANY potential mates?  We'd need to seek counseling, because I'm not sure that is a level of sacrifice that a child should ask a parent to make.

Some people seem to think that giving children a say about your major life choices is inappropriate, and ends up spoiling them.   I would say that I hope I will always give my child a voice- to take her opinion into account, but I would make the final decision, and I would try to always make decisions that were responsible and best for her.