"Broken Home"

[UptownHippie]

Can we retire this phrase? It's incredibly condescending and outdated. It's also rather inaccurate in that it implies that there are homes where nothing is broken ... as if any of us are perfect, unbroken people.

Please, let's get rid of this phrase.

[UptownHippie]

(08-02-2011 04:08 PM)Donb123 Wrote:  I have heard that term in ages. Do people still use it?!?! You'd think with 50%+ of marriages ending in divorce people would've divorced the term quite awhile ago.

Seeing it all over the forum prompted this thread.

[Josh]

My dad says it all the time. As in, when he's praying, he thanks God that we don't have one (he's always been married to my mom).

Frankly, I never thought about it that way, and now that you've brought it up, I will try to scrub it from my vocabulary. I rarely have an occasion to use it anyway, but I feel like I should be extra cautious now that I know.

[Innocent Lamb]

I agree that it should be retired! That phrase has bothered me for a while now, and especially now that I'm divorced myself. Whether or not the speaker means it in this way, it usually comes across to me as smug. ("Oh, thank you God that WE aren't like THOSE people with a broken home.") I'm not sure if my "home" qualifies as "broken" since we didn't have any children, and since most people use "broken home" as a label for the children (but it sure felt broken to me when I was in the midst of being abandoned.....)

And as a kindergarten teacher, I bristle a little bit at the idea of labeling children, especially for something over which they have no control at all. Down with the phrase "broken home!" It's outdated, smug, and generally unnecessary.

[myotch]

I like the term, and don't consider it condescending at all. Of course, I came from a home that was very well broken, just not by divorce.

[Just Curious]

I've never liked it either. If the issue of domestic trouble comes up in conversation, usually I use the phrase "difficult home life" or some variant of that--I hope that's not condescending as well, though.... What do y'all think?

[amyrose5]

My nearly 70 year old father still uses it. Usually in reference to my poor baby nephew (who is 16.5 yrs, 6'4" tall and weighs over 250 lbs, but don't mention these facts to my father who considers him a "poor little boy") whose parents were never married to each other. My father frets that the "poor little boy" must get picked on because he is "from a broken home". Then references incidents of the lone kid from a divorced family getting crap when he was in school. You know, in 1952 or so. My mother, who worked in a public school for 22 years, tries to explain to him that it is not an uncommon situation for a kid anymore, but his perceptions are firmly planted in pre-1960.

With the divorce rate as high as it is (Christians and everyone else--at the Christian school I taught at we graduated a class of 18 kids one year, only 4 of whom had parents still married to each other) and so many unorthodox family situations, and most kids thriving in spite of it, it is definitely a phrase that needs to go!

[elfdream]

(08-02-2011 11:50 PM)myotch Wrote:  I like the term, and don't consider it condescending at all. Of course, I came from a home that was very well broken, just not by divorce.

My husband has said that the only thing worse than coming from a broken home is growing up in one. He should know.

[captain_solo]

I know I am one who used it. In used in with an intentionally sarcastic sneer if that means anything. as in... "a girl dumped my friend because her parents thought he couldn't have a solid marriage because he came from a 'broken home'"

I hear you though. I think a "broken marriage" might be more accurate. Even a home with divorced parents or single parents can be a whole home. And plenty of homes with 2 fundy parents are broken.

[Beowulf]

I've heard the phrase "dysfunctional family", which I find to much more accurate than "broken home", but only slightly less distasteful. It's still a label.

FWIW, I've seen many homes not "broken" by divorce (as well as many abusive IFB homes as described in these forums) that were much more dysfunctional.