For the child/children’s sake which is the better situation details inside?

Option One is better because the discord in Two is destructive to the psyche of the children. Option Two is emotional abuse.

No parent should ever belittle or discount the other parent to a child. To tell a child that one parent is bad is a way of telling a child half of him or her is bad. The two choices are not even alternatives.

Why would anyone consider Option Two better?

maybe the parents are happier except when they are talking about one another. The parents in option one are never happy. ever. Both situations are bad for the child, but at least in adulthood, it seems to me the child will be able to see “My parents were happy, except when they talked about each other”.
Children have this thing where they think everything is about them, so if the parents are always unhappy (option one) the child will feel like it is his or her fault. And the child will never know why they are unhappy. Probably end up being Woody Allen, neurotic and having creepily uncomfortable relationships with adopted children.

@janbb Why would anyone consider Option Two better?
Because people will see, or think, that the custodial parent would be happier and less pensive if not around the person they use to love and be passionate for. They would be able to go find someone else and live a happy life, and that would have trickle down effect to the child/children.

But you didn’t say that the parents were happier – only that they dumped on each other.

The parents in #2 are not happy; happy people don’t hold that kind of resentment and grudge. The parents in #2 are angry. The parents in #1 are not angry. And they are not unhappy, they just aren’t affectionate with each other.

@zenvelo Yes, that’s where I was coming from too. And I think children care more about living in a stable environment if there is no cruelty in it than whether their parents are passionately in love still.

The BEST situation is behind door #3.
The parents are true to themselves, split, do their emotional/psychological growth work and interact like modesty evolved people! lol
Kids know when their parents energy is dead as well as when conflict is too much.
Neither is good.

I vote for SHOWING your kids and explaining the ever fluid and changing dynamics of relationship and that it is perfectly OKAY that sometimes people cannot make things work and being true to oneself IS what you most want to model for your children!
The above scenarios are setting the kids up for their own unhealthy relationships at some future time.
Check out and become a zombie or scream and fight all the time.

Some choice!

It’s been found that children who grow up with stress are better adapted to the real world and can better handle stress as an adult. I’d say option 2. Option 1 is sorta creepy.

Neither one is good for children, but option two certainly seems worse.

Neither option is good and neither should be tolerated for one second. Children respond variously to stress and there is a real risk of permanent damage. Is that why the long running comic, The Lockhorns does not feature children? It is a clever satire.

@flip86 Option 2 isn’t stress, it is trauma.

@janbb But you didn’t say that the parents were happier – only that they dumped on each other.
No I didn’t because that was irrelevant. You asked why anyone would choose option two and I answered it, that is why I said ”people”. Some people, (at least in conversations I have had), believe that if the child is only exposed to the chaos 20% of the time but 80% of the time with one parent that seem, or is happy because they are free of a dead, or anchor relationship, the trickle down affect would be better for the children. Even if they were not happy because they are stuck with someone they don’t love but do it calmly and function as a unit raising the kids, it plays little in the environment the kids will have. The parents in option 1 could be happy when not around each other, or happy in the presents of each other just having the other play into their happiness. Same as the parents in option two can be happy apart from their ex-spouse but miserable the moment they have to interact with them.

@flip86 It’s been found that children who grow up with stress are better adapted to the real world and can better handle stress as an adult.
Many adult friends, not all of them, who came from a family of divorce were tore up as adults. Many were just faking it until they make it. They would have rather been in a family of two parents that fought, than have two separate parents that still fought. The parent dumping a bad relationship so they can get on with their life, the child did not have a choice in divorcing a parent and leaving him/or her, it was something the parents trusted upon them.

Neither. The children would do best in a situation where there parents let them know they are loved. PDA, angst, and/or indifference between parents doesn’t really mean shit when compared to that.

If I had to choose, for the sake of the question, I would choose quiet indifference. I grew up in your second example.