They were both horrible parents

We all see things differently, but I see Daniel as a truly horrible parent. Loving kids is not enough. A buddy for a parent is an enabler who teaches the kids to ignore authority and do what they want while worry about the consequences tomorrow if at all. Most women would have left Daniel or any husband who never grew up.

Miranda was not only the sole breadwinner (reliable breadwinner anyway), but she also had to do all the housework, shopping, cooking, and most likely help the kids with their homework. I think she would have been happy if Daniel only stayed out of her way and not add crap to her already ridiculous schedule.

Sure, by the end of the film, Daniel learned his lesson and finally grew up. He got a steady job, maintained a nice apartment, and finally became a real father to his kids and not just a buddy. If he had done that before, he'd still be married to Miranda, but then, we'd have no movie either.

I kind of take the trashing of the other parent as a given, as wrong as I believe it to be. My prob with the mom was she calls it quits. We hear her spout all the examples of things the dad does that piss her off but the movie doesn’t really convince me the marriage needs to end. Daniel obviously wants to save the marriage with counseling, vacation trip, moving, anything he can think of to keep the family together and all that bitch has to say is ”it’s too late for that”. We didn’t have cable growing up and we had this movie play on vhs repeatedly at our house and I think that it caused me to despise divorce or at least despise the instances involving kids and one parent wants out simply because they are “not happy”.