The statistics also say that unhappily married parents are usually _still_ better than unmarried parents, unless they're outright molesting the children or chronically, physically abusive and resistent to therapy. (Which are rare behaviors among the married, and usually not the reason for the split.) We can also expect unhappy marriages to eventually become happy ones, if they just wait long enough, and vice-versa. Marriages fluctuate in quality.

And I think that is the most difficult part for adults to digest, as it means marriage offers children some concrete protection, even if the parents are miserable. We like to think that what makes children happiest is seeing their parents happy, but that isn't actually true. Raising children isn't about _you_, it's about _the children_.

Children don't exist to please their parents; they have their own path. Parents splitting up derails them from that path.