Love Over Money

By Thomas Creen, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

Every human being is different, is free. Even identical twins who look alike and have basically the same DNA are unique souls who think and choose freely and individually. Therefore it is hard to speak with any exactitude about humans because there are always exceptions to a greater or lesser extent. There are mostly trends rather than rules.

It strikes my attention, though, how important a stable family is to the overall well-being of children. People who like to take a materialistic view of humans often push the idea that money is the biggest factor in good outcomes for children. But I think the family is more important.

If you only look at educational outcomes of children, you can see that family stability is more important. There have been many serious studies about the effect of divorce on the school grades of children. The best studies that I have found say that there are generally two types of divorce situations: high-conflict, abusive ones (about 33% of the time) and low-conflict, non-abusive ones (about 66% of the time). If the relationship leading to divorce was high-conflict and abusive, then the children in those families usually experience an improvement in their educational outcomes after the divorce. If the relationship was low-conflict, non-abusive before the divorce, then the children usually experience a worsening of their learning results. Of course, a stable marriage generally fosters the best results of all in the children.

I have read books about people who started life in horrible economic circumstances but ended up becoming very successful in life. In every case, although there is little money in the family, there is love. And love provides the springboard for these people to launch out into the big, bad world and do well and be okay. So, money is nice and necessary for certain things. But love is more important to secure the future.