I was thinking about this again today at work (even when I'm not here I feel like I should be - lol!) and I couldn't help but think that in comparison to some of the dysfunctional families that are commonplace these days, okay they weren't perfect, and they made mistakes, but they did as well as they knew how to for their kids, and at least they were around for their kids. It would have been easy in some ways (ignoring the whole huge thing about Ennis's fears etc. for a moment) for them to decide they'd had enough of living a lie and either go off together, or just to leave their wives so that at least they were "single" and would have had more freedom to meet up periodically. Admittedly Ennis probably used his kids as an excuse for not leaving Alma and going with Jack a lot of the time, especially in the later years, but in that era the idea of family and of marriage, and family life was still entrenched in the views of society, and it wasn't thought proper that unmarried women would rear children alone, and the idea of "waiting until you were married" before having sex, or children was still the norm.
I'm not saying that we should return to that, and I'm not wanting to make a moralistic judgement - I know everyone's circumstances are different, and I personally don't have a problem with single mothers, single fathers, etc. etc., but in today's society the whole idea of "family" often breaks down, and where kids are involved, it's often the kids that suffer.
There's a case not too far from where I live recently where a 9 year old girl was abducted, and was missing for 24 days before the police found her. When she was found it turned out she'd been abducted by the uncle of her mother's partner. The mother has something like 8 kids by 5 different fathers - some of them live with her, some live with their father, and some have no contact with their fathers. When the girl was found, rather than being reunited with her mother and taken home, the police got an emergency care order to take her into foster care. Neighbours have been reported as saying that she was "lost" long before she was abducted. Even her grandparents are now saying that she shouldn't be returned to her mother.
Obviously I know only what's reported by the media, and it's easy for me to judge the situation, but working as I do in social housing, all the time I see kids caught up in the middle of disputes between their parents, who may or may not live together, kids who are moved from pillar to post and lack any stability in their lives, and that's very common, and more and more common these days.
Should parents always stay together for the sake of the children? No. That's not always the best situation for either the kids or the parents, but day in day out when you see kids with no stability in their lives, no sense of belonging, no firm discipline or guiding force, no male role model in their lives, you start to wonder if maybe the old ways were better.
At least Bobby and Francine/Jenny, and Alma Jnr had their fathers in their lives and that stability. Undoubtedly the girls at least knew there were problems between their parents, but they had two parents who loved them, and who were there for them. Their fathers weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they they weren't abusive to their kids, and they were present in their lives, which is a hell of a lot more than a lot of kids these days get.