Why Children Ruin Marriage
Cancel the Wedding
There’s a question every man should ask his fiancée before their big wedding day; too bad he doesn’t ask it: Are you marrying me to become my wife or a mother? If she doesn’t immediately reply, without hesitation, “to become your wife,” cancel the wedding.
Why would I make such a bold assertion? It’s not just because all my assertions are bold. Marriage, as strictly defined, has nothing to do with children. That’s right. Yet, in the typical home, the husband and wife will allow their marriage to revolve around their children. Worse, when that marriage ends, and there’s a good chance it will, their divorce will revolve around their children, too.
In my observation, wives are more guilty than husbands of making children “priority #1.” This is because such behavior is socially acceptable and politically correct in a country that considers motherhood noble and fatherhood trivial. When I discussed my article “Are You Her Number One?” on various radio shows, many a female caller was outraged at the prospect that any man should outrank her children!
According to Harvard psychology professor, Daniel Gilbert, children take the happiness out of marriage. In fact, Gilbert claims that sadness increases with the number of children. Most people don’t like to admit this, because it would sound horrible, but it’s true.
Ignoring Their Wedding Vows
I’ve examined the vows of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic weddings — as well as the texts of numerous states’ marriage licenses and certificates. Nowhere in these vows or documents can I find the word children. In other words, marriage is a bond exclusively between a husband and a wife. It does not include children. It does not include in-laws. But, is this what really happens in marriages? Hell no.
Ask any woman whom she loves more, her husband or her children. I’m betting she’ll say, “my children, of course.” Her husband is, obviously, programmed to respond, “Well, that’s the way it is, right?” Yet, he’s the one with whom she created a sacred bond in marriage. But, if hubby says he loves his children more than his wife, he’s history. Double standard?
Based on the high divorce rate, the high adultery rate, and the high number of unhappily married women, why do people bother marching down the aisle at all? There’s no logic here. If one could lose money on Wall Street as easily, predictably, and consistently as he can in matrimony, there would be no Wall Street. But, people continue to marry. Why?
Women marry to have legitimate children and receive financial support for themselves and those children. I believe this because women bring 70% of divorces. Men, on the other hand, given the highly expected financial and child-custody losses, take huge matrimonial risk because they genuinely want to be married and to have families. There’s no other way to explain the respective nuptial decisions of men and women.
But, regardless of their financial or familial motivations for saying, “I do,” what men and women don’t do, quite clearly, is adhere to the vows they took to forever cherish, love, and honor each other. Somehow, the import and memory of these vows vanish when children arrive, and THAT is the problem. Children are born outside the bounds of marriage and must never be allowed to invade it. Alas, they’re allowed, even encouraged, to invade it.
The NoNonsense Bottom Line
I’m not suggesting for one minute that spouses not have children. That’s ludicrous. I am suggesting, though, that spouses gain perspective on where those children rank in the hierarchy: not at the top. Spouses must keep each other at the top, as they promised to do.
Now, if you’re concluding, while reading this, that I’m advising you to ignore, abandon, and mistreat your children, you’re not intelligent enough to marry or procreate! Parents own and run the home; children must respect them and their rules. Brats cannot survive in a home where parents honor and admire each other.
It is inexcusable to vow, on your wedding day, to place your spouse first and then violate that vow by subordinating your spouse to your children. Marriages disintegrate because they weren’t integrated in the first place — wherein the participants viewed their wedding vows as meaningless utterances. Finally, at the marriage’s end, there’s nothing but hatred and revenge between spouses — exactly what they promised would not happen.
Children don’t ruin marriage, unless their parents give them the power to do so. Spouses ruin marriage — way before they become spouses — by believing that children belong at its center. Again, if that were true, marriage vows would include children. They don’t.
So, don’t get married until you have enough maturity and conviction to treat your spouse as the most important person in the world — above and beyond your children — and receive the same treatment in return.
If your children ruined your marriage, you never had a marriage: She married you to become a mother!
About the Author
Marc H. Rudov is a globally recognized radio/TV personality and author of 80+ articles and the books Under the Clitoral Hood: How to Crank Her Engine Without Cash, Booze, or Jumper Cables (ISBN 9780974501727), and The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth (ISBN 0974501719). Mr. Rudov hosts The Marc Rudov Show, a radio talkshow for men, and is a regular guest on Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto and The O’Reilly Factor.
Rudov’s books, articles, blog, and podcasts are available at TheNoNonsenseMan.com.
Copyright © 2008 by Marc H. Rudov. All rights reserved.
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Stumble It!
Stupid people have children. Period. Be an independent free thinker. Don’t follow the “norm.” Childfree and single = footloose and fancy free! It’s W O N D E R F U L !!! Just to not have to deal with other stupid parents are kids gatherings – wow… “my kid is better than your kid…” “my suv is newer than yours…” um, I can live without that nonsense (and sleep in on the weekends too!!! =D!
You guys would probably do a lot less grumbling if you’d limit your dating pool to childfree women. We’re out there! And some of us are looking to get married, and YES, be WIVES and PARTNERS, not child-obsessed, acquisitive succubi who leave your drained corpse lying on the driveway. I, for one, enjoy my job and have neither needed nor wanted anybody to support me since I turned 18…but I would still like to be a wife to a husband in a marriage where we care for *one another*, and NOT a passel of kids. You don’t need to shop outside the country for us; you just need to edit your dating-site profiles to say you’d prefer childfree women — and THEN you need to stop wasting your time responding to ads from breeders desperate for that next walking ATM/wallet. Most of them look like they were rode hard ‘n’ put away wet anyways, and as someone here has already mentioned, their cars and homes are littered with disgusting drive-thru detritus. If you’re tired of being chewed up and spit out by child-centric harpies, make skid marks as soon as you find out she has kids or wants them from you. If you want a wife AND a life, marry a childfree-by-choice girl. ;?) XOXO from Gigi
Marc, on the one hand you are correct, that’ll solve the matter for that couple.
The other expositions here are not only fun and fascinating, they are in some way important.
Personally I like the big picture, even if in the end my individual action is just asking that question.
Please try and remember your audience do have minds of our own and the reason we read your articles is that we like using them.
In most cases, when (or if) she says, “Because I luuuuvv youuu”, you can accurately translate this into the following:
1). I want more money. Can’t wait for the divorce.
2). I want a sucker to play daddy (and future ATM) to my kids.
3). Because my kids are becoming expensive and I want to marry a future ATM to maintain my lifestyle.
4). Because I want to make my middle aged friends jealous, and later on, of course, see #1.
5). Because I want to quit working and see #1.
So now that we have discussed history, anthropology and religion, how about those anti-peonage laws?
Marc said:
Keep it simple: ask her why she wants YOU, why she wants to marry YOU. If you don’t like her answer, don’t complain. Just go to the next woman.
She will almost always answer that with “because I love you”, not “because I want more money coming in”, or “because I want someone to play daddy to my kids now that I got rid of their father”, or “because I want more kids and more child support”, or “because I want a sex partner and you’re good”, or “because I want a man but he’s unimportant to me next to children”, or whatever.
In other words, rely on her answer not only being true now but forever at your own detriment, whether she is being completely honest or not, with you let alone herself.
But yes, certainly, if she answers with something that isn’t going to work for you, by all means move along before saying “I do”.
Many of you are getting utterly carried away with paragraph after paragraph of history and religion and anthropology and whatever. Why? To what end?
Keep it simple: ask her why she wants YOU, why she wants to marry YOU. If you don’t like her answer, don’t complain. Just go to the next woman.
The typical man is afraid to ask anything of a woman, for fear he won’t get laid. So, he keeps his mouth shut, ends up with a bitch, and then complains on MND.
Life is simple. People love to complicate it.
There are corrolaries to the thesis being expounded here.
It is easier for women to have the child as her primary ‘love’. She can dominate a child. She can manipulate it. She can coerce it. She can shame it into submission to her will. In the child’s ‘best interests’ of course. A child, even with its tantrums and inabilities, is so much easier to coexist with than another independant, individual adult. Even if she has to charge around in an SUV from arsehole to breakfast time. She can always blame a child too.
It is a failure of the average woman to achieve adulthood herself. And an excuse.
A real, live, mature, functioning adult has to co-exist in the closest, most intimate, humanly possible way with another adult of the opposite sex, to fully flower. It is he or she to whom the soul is opened. It is he or she who is the only one who can be trusted to see the secrets we keep even from ourselves and those parts of ourselves that we cannot see for ourselves. We can only know ourselves fully through another in whom we trust. Completely. That other has to be of the opposite sex for us to see and confront and understand and love our deeper common humanity which has components which only the opposire sex has in sufficient abundance.
Homosexuals just cannot show that unknown other side to each other.
By taking another being, just for the time being, and then casting them off, favouring an immature being, is a strong and clear signal of a Failure of Maturity. And it is a deliberate failure. A cowardice. Culpable.
To have social systems which facilitate, even encourage this, is a human crisis. It could lead to the eradication of matured human beings altogether. Humanity could fail to achieve its singular potential altogether.
Fortunately, the world is still sufficiently diverse in its cultural ‘baggage’ to resist the total demise of humanity. Other cultures, whilst seemingly less ‘civilised’ as western/anglo/european/enlightenment/post-renaissance/graeko/Roman/Christian whathaveyou will nevertheless carry on when we have sank into the history books.
Remember (if you already knew) that there were probably only 2000 human beings alive 70,000 years ago and we came a long way since then. Maybe good old fashioned lust will overcome the decaying forces of evil yet, and the drives toward humanising the planet will assert themselves again.
package deal indeed, I never had any success in a relationship with a women that had kids. Even if the real father was absent, I never was allowed the same status as the real mother, even if I was the only daddy available. I was always just some man and the woman always presented the idea to the kids that they did not have to obey me, even if I paid the rent, paid the bills or did all the things a daddy should do.
Women today are socially, legally and morally irresponsible, they have been allow to break the rules and harm other people and not be held accountable for doing it! This has caused their “bad behavior” to get progressively worse, until they have the belief system of ” serial killers” ie noones life or rights are worth anything and you can do any damn thing to them you want to.
What women and a lot men too, ie the one who run the government sponsored kidnapping and extortion racket laughingly called( no one is laughing) the family court sytem fs universe, wrong is wrong an you will answer for it. It may take years and it may not be the punishment those harmed by their action might desire, but they will get punished and it will be severe.
As for me, I just be glad they will be gone. Good bye and good ridance.
Yes, that certainly is another double standard, and one I had not noticed before reading the above.
Look at the women in their 30’s and 40’s on the dating websites. Invariably, over half of them proudly state things like “divorced”, “my children come first”, and that men should be happy with a “package deal”.
Whether the father(s) of their children ever came first in their lives or not, and whether he/they realized it or not, or whether either of them knew that the state would not only encourage but reward her for taking this attitude, one thing is certain, that you should stay away from her.
These women are at least being indirectly honest in that the woman is stating clearly that husbands and fathers can come and go, but the “family” is, was, and always will be her and her children.
Whether a woman states it clearly, or even believes it, yet, there is not much to be gained for a man to get involved with a woman who has small children, but lots and lots for him to lose, whenever she feels like it. So men, don’t even think about it working out with a woman who is divorced with children. You are relegated to the back seat from day one, and that’s where you’ll be when she cashes you in at a nearby “family law” courthouse, whether you become just another ex-husband or an ex-father as well. I was given this very advice once, but ignored it, much to my regret.
Amfortas this is horizon expanding:
“One can label this anti-life force ‘Feminism’ but frankly that ideology is just a manifestation of a wider and deeper evil loose in the world.”
This is true…and how!
But this narrow topic is more then an offshoot to the marriage crisis. It defines the marriage crisis in many ways.
In every western country I’ve visited I see children as primacy of daily routine. Here in the states it is I submit even responsible in large part for a great number of obese, or overweight women as they schedule such and incredible amount of activities they drive,sit,drive,sit,drive,sit…return home tell hubby they are tired…bitch at him for not “helping” enough…sleep, wash rinse repeat.
Aside, I am VERY fortunate not to have this dynamic in my life…w/ 4 kids it could be a nightmare.
I was a coach of many baseball teams for kids, and a scout leader. I watched and listened to mothers bringing kids, dragging other kids, all carrying along packages of fast food as there was insufficient time to take a family meal (look on the floors of the average American Mom’s minivan and you’d think “McDonalds” was a motif for decor), and discuss truly where they had eaten that day, the day before, and intentions for the week. Thundering through the stands with flushed faces yet an air of wagging finger and lecture skills that would send many a husband scampering for sheets and blankets to fit the couch, they were as reliable as sunset.
This is too far gone to fix in the aggregate. Advertisers always have the happy mom and kids present, products and even the essential meme of daily life are entrenched.
This doctrine of spouse first is spoken openly in churches, but like the churches opposition to divorce, it is spoken softly and NEVER directed at a gender for fear of offending the gaggle of gigglers in the rows.
A major purpose of men and women marrying is to have and raise children. It is nature at work. But the general thrust here is spot on – the man and woman must have each other as the Primary person in their life, before ALL others, which includes the children.
Nature works on various levels, some not very apparant. Sure there is the easily observable reproduction level but there is also a personal maturity drive. Men and women need each other to grow as human beings and that need necessitates each being Number One if the other’s life. It extends the ego and it decentres the ego.
Our current state of affairs focuses the ego tightly upon itself. Hyper-narcissism is the tenor of the age we are living in and it has been deliberately engendered by anti-life forces. It is not only limiting the reproductive capacity of people in our western world, but limiting the individual personal growth of people in the western world. One can label this anti-life force ‘Feminism’ but frankly that ideology is just a manifestation of a wider and deeper evil loose in the world.
It was Adolph Hitler who firts used the phrase ‘best interests of the children’ and it wasn’t in order to benefit children. We have allowed a sophistry to take over good sense and distort our natural drive.
Men, fathers, have allowed this to happen by neglect. It is not a culpable negligence however unless we permit its continuation and maintenance. It is a negligence born of ignorance; and fortunately that ignorance is slowly changing, in part by articles such as Marc’s.
Women in the main are responsible for the overthrow of adult primacy relations, substituting children as the seemingly main focus, while all the time keeping the focus tightly upon themselves. The children are their excuse, just as it was Hitler’s.
The death of marriage and the family is a woman-crime against humanity. It has been demanded by women, supported by women and driven like a stake through the civil heart by women.
“As for a man being sentenced to 20 years in slavery because of a divorce, well it does not have to be!”
——————————————————
Darn right.
However, instead of this, “Men need to use the state to deter marriage….in order to make it work….change the laws…..overcome fear of commitment….enforce the marriage contract….kiss womens’ asses….kiss the governments ass in order to be granted “civil rights”…..”. Well, FYI, that isn’t going to happen.
Just get used to that idea. Marriage in the NAU..err, I mean the USA is finished. The people who run this country behind the scenes killed it with feminazism.
The basic solution is simple and easy. Don’t ever get married in this country. Don’t ever have nor raise children in this country. At this point in history, being single has never been easier nor more fun. If you really, really want to get married, expatriate first to somewhere where the government won’t be the third party in the marriage contract and will not be used to financially rape your butt in divorce court.
Well first we must make the marriage contract and yes it is a contract, enforcable. If anyone, and I usually mean the woman, breaks that contract, make them bare the brunt of the lose of that marriage and will make them very unwilling to risk a divorce. For women, there is little to fear in the way of a loss in a divorce. If she stood to loose anything, that might be a strong deterent to her wrecking the marriage.
Your spouse should be first, after all you had them even before the children came along and a strong committed marriage is best for the children.
As for a man being sentenced to 20 years in slavery because of a divorce, well it does not have to be!
Men need to learn the law and be willing to use it, both as a deterent to the women and if that fails to keep the state and its unreasonable demands out of the arrangement.
Women only act the way the do because they have been led to believe the state will back up their little ” acts of rebellion”. Once the state is neutralized and you can do that,they start acting like the complient, obedient and respectful servants they are supposed to be. Once an exwife or potential exwife learns that the state either cannot or will not( there is no money,power or control for them) back her anymore, her attitude inproves dramatically. The women now has to deal with the exhusband on her on and against a man the has some very powerful legal weapons at his disposal.
Once women can be held to the same standard and be subject to the same devasting losses as men have always suffered, then that might just stop a whole lot of them!
Being an adult has to count for something, otherwise we have reduced life to its most basic purpose: continue the species.
If adults turn control of their lives over to the needs of their children, we have achieved the reduction described above. And our children will grow up seeing this, and will live pointless lives.
Thanks for stating it plainly Marc.
To have children is to invite the state to ruin your life.
This post should be retitled: “Putting Children First Ruins A Marriage”. But then again, it may not get as many hits as the attention-grabbing headline “Children Ruin Marriage”, which is clearly not the case as Marc explains in the 2d half of this post.
Marc is spot on with this advice: the marriage must come first before anything else (I would add “besides God, whom both spouses must serve before each other” to Marc’s secular message).
Gents, there are a lot of women out there who see men as a means to an end…to fill their empty wombs. She is a sperm bandit on a mission. If you find yourself in a relationship with one of those, run away and fast.
My first marriage died because my ex put the kids first and me second. I didn’t help things when I retreated into my job as a result.
To echo what sstratford said, kids depend on a healthy marriage. Parents who put their kids first–thinking they are acting in the best interests of their kids–actually threaten the very environment that allows them to grow.
“I don’t know why any man in this society would decide to have children.”
I have two who were legally kidnapped by my ex, one by my wife, and want two more little ones. The reason why I do want (more) children is that I am called to do so.
Though I have to say that if a man has children, and then his wife divorces him, he’s in for 20 years of forced slavery at the hands of the state. That’s a great reason to avoid having kids. Was this what you were referring to?
Putting your spouse first is best for the children.
Children fare best in a household with a man and a woman who love each other. This is not debatable.
Therefore, having your spouse be number one in your life also means you love your children and want the best for them.
As a woman, I can tell you that you have hit the nail right on the head. My parents taught me to put my husband first because once my children were grown up and gone, he would be all I had left. That’s what I did, and we’ve been married for over thirty years and still love each other very much. Children are a by-product of a happy, healthy marriage, but that happy, healthy marriage must come first in order for everything else to work properly.
And lieweary, I really don’t understand your attitude. All the men I know, in our family, wanted their children and love them very much. The problem doesn’t lie with the man, so much as it does with the woman, as far as I can see. And “good” women are getting increasingly difficult to find, unfortunately.
I don’t know why any man in this society would decide to have children.
[...] read the entire article here [...]
Both the husband and wife can view each other as priorities, and view their children as priorities too. It doesn’t have to be a competition. The family should be the family, with each member regarding every other member as a high priority.
Spot on! Been there. Amen.