People who grow up in loving and happy families tend to foster loving and happy families as adults. Conversely, research suggests that people who grow up in broken families tend to form unhealthy relationships.
The argument
Studies suggest that children who come from broken families are more likely to have problems forming lasting relationships. It is suggested that people with divorced parents are more likely to marry someone who also comes from a broken family, increasing the likelihood of their divorce. The pattern described there is one of transmission rather than coincidence: the experience is said to affect not only how a person conducts a relationship but who they select for one, and the selection then reproduces the same conditions in the next household. The mechanism proposed is learning by observation. Although all adults in a relationship argue, they have a tendency to resolve issues which teaches their children that after an argument things can be resolved. What a child takes from this is not instruction but demonstration — the repeated sight of conflict followed by repair, establishing that disagreement is an episode within a relationship rather than the end of one. If the parents separate or divorce, the child does not learn this lesson, and walks away from relationships with the idea that the problems cannot be solved together. Lacking the demonstration, their expectation is formed by the outcome they did see, and they carry it into relationships of their own as a default assumption about what conflict means. Further studies suggest that for females, the absence of a father in their life impacts their relationship choices. The father generally builds their daughter's confidence, which helps them develop standards when choosing partners. The connection drawn is between confidence and expectation: what a person believes they can require of a partner is held to depend on what they have already been shown they are worth, so the absence of that early relationship is argued to lower the threshold at which a later one is accepted. Some children who come from broken families choose not to marry, an outcome that follows the same reasoning, since an expectation that difficulties cannot be repaired makes avoiding the relationship altogether the safer course.
Premises
Counter-arguments
It is contended that all children that come from broken homes are not bad at forming romantic relationships. Some of the children from broken families take into account the mistakes of their parents to make their romantic lives more successful. These individuals become emotionally strong adults due to the range of emotions they have endured. It helps them understand that people have differences, and no one is going to be perfect, allowing them to have an open-mind towards others, making them great companions. Although they tend to be guarded around people, when they do trust someone, they are loyal and have value for the simple pleasures in life. These individuals can grow up to be self-sufficient and motivated due to having to channel their negativity into a positive process, and will use their lessons to ensure that any children they decide to have will feel loved and happy.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Parents are not the only model available. Siblings, extended family, teachers, friendships and later partners all demonstrate how disagreements are worked through, and a household that stays together while conflict goes unresolved models the lesson badly. [Rejecting P2] The inference runs only one way. Children of separated parents frequently draw the opposite conclusion, treating what they observed as instruction in what to avoid, and the emotional range they have had to navigate is as consistent with resilience, loyalty and self-sufficiency as with avoidance. [Rejecting P3] Confidence in choosing partners has many sources, and that some fathers supply it does not make a father its general precondition. The premise also reasons from daughters to a conclusion stated of all children. [Rejecting P4] The studies establish at most a raised probability across a population, which does not determine any individual's outcome — considerably less than the argument's claim that a broken family determines unhealthy adult relationships.