I never had children. I know nothing about them, except for having been one, back in the Stone Age.
My dad went to work every day and retired with a good pension. He invested money wisely. He went to church every Sunday and did under-paid handyman work for the widows and infirm once he retired. He attended all the school spring concerts, stupid drama club performances, dance recitals, and taxied younger sib to orthodontist appointments. He felt responsible to help my siblings and tried his damnedest - paying for college if /when we attended, being there with a pickup truck when we moved from one place to another. Helped my older sibling build a house.
Dad was also a very functional alcoholic. It wasn't something that was always in the background - or maybe it was. I remember a couple times he was really drunk, or was off someplace and Mom was worried because he'd forgotten to tell her where he was. I remember well (because I was an adult when it happened) that Mom broke her leg at one point. I called one night to see how she was doing. She was asleep in the couch (I guess, the bedroom was upstairs) and Dad was drunk. I wondered how much help he was being if that was his state early in the evening. Years later, I wondered how much he and Mom shielded us from his drinking.
When I met my husband, I knew he drank a lot. Owing partly to my experience with my Dad, it didn't seem so bad or unusual. We married, and the 25 years I spent with him were certainly not all bad. In retrospect, I should have waited - should have had the self esteem to sit out that dance and look for a man who wasn't an addict. But I didn't think of my Dad as an addict, either. Well, I didn't then. In widowhood, I had the maturity to say to myself, "Don't settle. Better no partner than one with a problem like this."
This is my long-winded way of saying you are doing your children a favor that may pay off 20 years from now.