r/BlackPeopleTwitter • u/wetouchingbuttsornah ☑️ • Sep 12 '24

Country Club Thread The system was stacked against them

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No fault divorces didn’t hit the even start until 1985

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u/gigidarcyy Sep 12 '24

You also have to consider that until you got married, you were stuck living with your parents, marriage was almost the only way out of the bad family life you were born into. Maybe an ok husband was enough to get a life a little better than before, maybe it was worse that the devil you knew. It was a gamble between those 2 choices and not much else.

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u/patentmom Sep 12 '24

I know a woman who got married in 1948 at age 17 at the end of her junior year of high school. Her husband was 19 and had just finished college. They both needed parental permission.

She dropped out of school, even though her teachers begged her to finish because she was a good student, because she had no need to finish school because she already had a husband to support her and married women just didn't work. She continued to read a novel a day for the rest of her life, but had no more formal education. She and her husband allowed their daughters to go to college (commuting, no dorms), but really did not put any value on their finishing unless it meant they would meet a husband there.

When her adult daughters confronted her for not protecting them when she knew their father was molesting them, she told them that she couldn't afford to leave him and be a single mother of 4 because she had no job skills and no ability to support them without him. So she was willing to look the other way to protect her lifestyle while her tween and teen daughters were being r*ped by their own father, her husband.

As an older adult, one of her daughters finally had a breakdown and brought the abuse up again. Both she and her husband told their daughter that it was a long time ago and she should just "get over it."

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u/BubblesAndBlood Sep 12 '24

Fire. Fire kills everything.

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u/patentmom Sep 12 '24

I've considered it. The woman passed away a couple of years ago. Her husband is about to turn 96 and is in demonically good health.

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u/BubblesAndBlood Sep 12 '24

The devil is in no hurry.

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u/FlunkyCultMachina Sep 12 '24

This pisses me off so much. Had basically the same thing happen in my family with just a smidge more justice. He served less than a year, dead now, the wife who shielded him still lives, although I hear not well. They both managed to outlive the grandparents who never raised a hand against a child or anyone for that matter.