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IT and Divorce?
frank_tudor asks: "I am graduate student and work as a web developer. I am also getting a divorce and I have a son caught in the middle.
I believe my profession had a part in it. For my graduate thesis I am writing a paper about Dads who work in the computer industry, divorce and custody. I think our industry causes a high rate of divorce but I need some help from the Slashdot community.
My questions are: How many of you computer Dads have also gone through divorce and have retained either half or full custody of your children? Do you think your job had something to do with it? What were some of your hardest challenges and are your kids happy?"
IT didn't cause your divorce. Stop trying to look for external causes when they were internal. My Dad worked in IT and my parents are still married, nearly 40 years now.
1) Ask /. is now officially worthless
2) Your thesis is horribly flawed
3) Your wife is leaving you because you whine too much
This
Surely you can't discount the fact that IT workers are drawn from a different portion of the population which makes it difficult if not impossible to prove that there is a causative factor?
It sounds like an interesting topic, but be careful with overstating the implications of your correlational results.
... I just want you to know that I'm sorry that you and your family are in this situation. It's painful for everybody, and I feel for you.
Not sure if any of the data you have here is going to be significant ... and since this _is_ slashdot, I doubt highly that you could use it as a reference on a graduate thesis. Personally, I've been married for 3 years and have a son, which I'm sure outcasts me in the group. But, I digress.
... far from it. Here are some traits I observed which one side, the other, or both had in those cases: personality conflicts, lack of communication skills, unwillingness to communicate, unwillingness to listen, self-absorption leading to the exclusion of the other, disjoint financial strategies, unfair domestic workload balance, ho-hum disregard for the children. I never saw a particular job or anything actually interfere.
I have a couple friends that have been divorced, though they are from different professions. In those cases, the job wasn't the crowning gem in the divorce itself
Where I'm at now in my mid-30s, most of the guys I work with are married and have been for quite some time. There are very few divorcees and the people I know are very loyal to their partners and their families. I'd have to say that here in IT, those of us who are married are a pretty fun, stable bunch.
I think you need to stop blaming your career for your divorce and do a little more soul searching.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Marriage is hard. Its a lot of work. If you aren't willing to give up on your child, then why give up on your marriage? I wish people valued marriage half as much as they valued their relationship to their children.
I've seen divorcees willing to move to other states, pay lots of money, adjust their schedules, adjust their lifestyles... all just to be with their kids. Spouses should do the same thing. Its all a matter of priority. Marriage just doesn't mean as much anymore.
These days, people divorce because they argue too much. Or because "the spice" is gone. Or because they don't like arguing about money. Or because the in-laws hate each other. Or because wife gained some weight and doesn't look good enough anymore. Get over it. Man up and deal with it and treat the marriage with the importance it deserves.
I've been married for eight years now and I have a child. Some of that married time has been REALLY hard. But I treat my marriage like my child. It would take a LOT for me to give up on my child. Same for my marriage.
Its all about priorities.
I'm married with two happy children. I know several people who have gotten divorced and have shared custody of children. None are IT professionals.
The high instance of divorce in the US is much more related to materialism, disconnectedness (also called "independence") and ideas of "self", attitudes towards relationships and the myth of satisfaction than any scapegoat, popular (homosexuality) or unpopular (IT professionals).
I always tell my single friends that finding a spouse and marriage is more about being the right person than finding the right person.
Good luck on your thesis. I hope it's well researched and well received. Obviously there's more to it than you could put in an "Ask Slashdot."
I was in a relationship for eight and half years with my ex. We'd bought a house together nine months earlier and I thought things were okay. Yes, I'd been working *a lot*, like nearly every weekend for the last three months. She'd got a promotion which took her out of town a few nights a week, I didn't mind, she'd been really supportive of my career in the early days and I figured it was me returning the favour.
I came home one Sunday evening and she announced she'd met someone else and she was leaving me. She'd known him for a month and was in love with him, she still loved me but she wasn't *in love* with me. WTF?! No it's not up for discussion, I'm moving out. So I got fifteen minutes notice that my relationship was over.
I knew that we'd been distant but I'd resolved that I was going to put the effort into our relationship as soon as this project was delivered.
Have you figured out the moral yet?
and in this order of importance:
the key is to manage your time - you can meet a deadline *and* keep your private life if you're organized and diligent.
When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
I would also suggest that, in my ignorant layman's opinion, turning your trauma into your new career is likely to impede your rebuilding your life.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
My wife and I are both in a position where we work long, hard hours. The thing is, we're both willing (and often do) drop whatever we're doing in an instant to help the other out--even if "help out" is nothing more than "just sit here with me for a while."
Marriage, done well, is hard work. Marriage, done well, is telling your wife to put her feet up and relax while you do the laundry or cook dinner--never mind that you're both exhausted from a long day's work and you'd really rather just play video games if you had the choice. Marriage, done well, is moving to a new city so that your spouse can pursue a promising new job. Marriage, done well, is near-constant attention, care, and dedication. That said, it's easily the most satisfying, fulfilling, entertaining and educational thing I've ever done, and I don't regret a second of it.
My grandfather-in-law had some sound advice on how to make a marriage work. He told me that marriage is a 90/10 proposition: each partner should expect to do 90% of the work themselves and only expect 10% from the other.
How much did you give your wife and family? How often did you ask your wife to wait until you were done doing whatever it was you were doing? How many times did you tell your wife not to bother cleaning the kitchen or bathroom and instead do it yourself? How many hours a day did you spend "free time" in front of the computer?
Do you genuinely believe that the fact that you write web pages played a significant role in the collapse of your own household?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I'm the son of a man who's worked IT/EE/DOD for pretty much his entire life. He divorced my mother when I was six months old, and obtained full custody.
I'll guarantee being in the profession had NOTHING to do with it. When I turned 18 I went thru every document concerning the divorce (and a few old cassette tapes with my mother's adoptive father telling my dad to ditch my mother and take me somewhere else,) and I can easily conclude it wasn't due to him being in the profession, it was a matter of morality and family economics (what should've gone to diapers, food, etc. to me instead went to my mother partying every night and getting FUBAR'd.)
Now I will say that *YES* it's possible that working in the IT field, which is very demanding (sometimes requiring 30-hour shifts, from what my father's told me from his days at Texas Instruments,) will strain or destroy your relationship, mainly because your job keeps you away from your wife, or the job puts so much stress on you, that while you wish you could vent it at the job, you end up relieving it in unconstructive ways at home.
But it's a little unfair to place the blame squarely upon your job. Tell me, what did you try to keep the relationship working? She should've known that you would have long hours. Somehow, knowing how many relationships I've been in for the past ten years, not all of it is squarely the fault of the job, or even your girl (well, minus my three lying and stealing ex-fiancees,) but usually upon you. There are always exceptions, but most filed cases I've seen are the woman leaving the man, for infidelity, spousal abuse, drug usage, conflicting interests, etc.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Well, this topic is about to fall off the Slashdot homepage, so I guess my comment is destined to languish in obscurity. However, let's do this for posterity.
There are many posts here making the point that it's ridiculous to blame your job for your divorce. They make the distinction that human beings make these choices, and the blame should fall there. It's a good point, although maybe some could have said it more kindly. But it doesn't change the fact that some work environments are extremely hostile to marriages.
I worked at software reporting tools company for a couple of years. At one point, there was a Web site redesign scheduled. As the sole Web person at the time, I worked 2 90+ hour weeks back to back. It was something like 16 days on, each day up at dawn, home at nearly midnight. I was a (relatively) new father. I didn't once speak to my daughter during that time -- I only saw her sleeping at night. I was OK with this because it was a very short-term crunch. But I was a little sad. I launched the redesign Sunday night, got a few hours of sleep, and arrived at work Monday morning at 7:30 AM. I wasn't expecting much, but some acknowledgement of my hard work would have been nice. My boss was there, livid. I don't even recall what the problem was, but it was minor. She ripped into me. I defended myself with the truth -- "I've worked 16 days in a row, I haven't seen my family, there aren't any more hours in the day!"
Her response? "You'll just have to find a way to do more!"
You can say that the people in the marriage are always the problem. You can say that it's a cop-out to blame external pressures. And I agree to a certain point. I was at a crossroads, and I could have chosen my job over my family at that moment. It would have been my choice, my consequences. But I also know that certain types of people can and will take advantage. Certain people do NOT care about anything other than their own goals, and if they can manipulate a young, inexperienced worker bee into slaving away, so be it. If the worker bee crashes & burns, "maybe that worker bee wasn't cut out for the job." It is a fairly heartless way to interact with people, and to some degree, I think such people are not blameless for the pain that follows.
Oh, and I'm still married. I work freelance, my own schedule. We have income that is nowhere near what I used to make, but I'm way the hell happier.
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