"Broken Home"

[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!