I can always use more prayers, so thank you. But what exactly is ugly about telling women they are responsible for choosing the men they chose? (And vice versa… ) There are no arranged marriages in this country, your family can’t force you. There is no timetable. You can take as much time as you want to get to know someone before you marry them. When severe problems crop up, like the alcoholism you describe, and the woman claims she had NO IDEA, one of three things is usually true:
- He already had the problem, but hid it. It may have been less severe than it became later. Or he had character flaws that would indicate he would not handle difficulty well and might choose to escape rather than face it. The couple didn’t date long enough before getting married for her to see it. This is “bad choice by hurry.”
- He already had the problem, or the character flaws that predict it, and didn’t really hide it, but the woman is too invested in the relationship for whatever reason, and will not let go, so she puts on her blinders or rationalizes it away. She may think he’ll change, grow up, etc. That time and her love can make it better. This is “bad choice by willful blindness.”
- He really did have absolutely no problem before the marriage, no real character flaws, but then had a mental breakdown after marriage. This is just bad luck.
(P.S. These three can go the other way, too. Especially #1.)
In your description, you said, you try again, and then another baby comes, and you repeated that a couple of times. So, when a woman already knows her husband is an alcoholic, and keeps bringing more babies into the world to have that for a father… um, whose fault is it that the children have a bad father and she is more and more trapped? I agree with Dr. Laura that women have special responsibility in this area, because we carry the babies. Of course, the father who refuses to reform is at fault, but the mother chose to conceive a child with him knowing that he was an addict who was not sober, or had not been sober very long. That’s an awful huge risk to take! And the kids pay the price when women do that! (And I would say the same to a man with an addict wife!)
This really isn’t fair. Before her mother died, Dr. Laura didn’t talk about her much, to preserve her mother’s privacy. She did talk about it some, though, so to claim she hid it is not accurate. I know she wrote some about it in her book
Parenthood by Proxy, and that came out before her mother died. But after her mother died, she started to talk more about why they were estranged. She tried many times to help her mother, and her mother pushed her away repeatedly. Finally, her mother cut her off and refused to speak to her any longer. Dr. Laura took care of her mother in what ways she could. I think the condo her mom lived in was paid for by Dr. Laura. But Dr. Laura has said that by the end of her life, her mother had cut off both of her daughters for years.
A child can’t force a parent to receive their love and respect. So to fault Dr. Laura for that estrangement, is, I think unfair.