Rachel,
Things in this world can be good, but that is not God's best necessarily. There are areas where we are gifted, but there are always areas where we fail. My dad was an atheist, and a single father, but I think there were areas that he excelled in as a parent, but other areas where he failed. However, if your parents are believers, then the Scripture should be what they pattern their life after. Scripture teaches that your mother should be submitting to your father. This is God's best. God's picture of Christ and His church is to be patterned by believers. And, if non-believers pattern this, there are natural blessings that will occur in their lives. As far as your parents marriage being a failure because it deviates from God's pattern, well because of sin we ALL deviate from God's pattern. We all fail in comparison to Christ's perfect standard. This is the only comparison that should be made.
I am pointing out, according to God's Word, what God's best is for His children. That is why I furnished the article, because I think it says it well. I believe we submit to God first, and then to our husbands. I made efforts to learn this, and apply it in my own life. My husband did the same with leading. It was a blessing to us then, and continues to bless me, and our children, now. It is not like my husband never did house work, or like I never helped in the yard, or on the home. I started from scratch learning to cook, sew, and keep our home. I did not learn these things from my father. But, when I was pregnant with all of my children, each time it was nine months of sickness, dehydration, and home meds. My husband kept our house spotless, took care of our children, and everything else he was already doing. On top of that, he carried buckets of vomit, bathed me, brushed my hair, cooked for me, etc. He had to use up vacation and sick leave to do these things. He served his family in a leadership capacity, but he also served us with a servants heart that was humble enough to do what needed to be done. He did his best to love, protect, and lead us, as Christ does His church. Not without failure, but always struggling to press on and do better.
The thing is, submission is what is always knocked today. This trend to reverse the roles is evident throughout our society. This coincides with the problems we have in marriages, and with our children, in today's society. As a Christian woman, I try to distinctly be feminine, and to be submissive to my own husband. I trusted my husband to lead us completely during the last four years or so of our marriage, by then God had grown me in such a way that my heart was completely given over to Him in this matter, and it completely belonged to my husband. His heart was very loving, and he was honored by my children, and myself a great deal. It was my pleasure to serve him, and our children, and I know it was his pleasure to serve us in leadership. He worked at an investment firm, then came home to work on our home. He led us in Bible study, trained the boys to work hard, had reading time with our children, spent some evenings helping single mothers in our church family, and then Sundays were for church and fellowship meal. My duties were mostly to keep our home, prepare meals, garden, sew, care for our children, home educate, care for my husband, help renovate our homes, etc, and I loved these things. We discussed everything, doing our best to respect and listen, we encouraged each other to trust in God, we filled in the gaps when needed because of sickness or other things, but the final decisions of our family rested in his capable hands, as did the responsibility. This we agreed was God's plan, and what was our vision for our family. But, guess what, we still failed to be completely true to God's pattern. You just trust God to teach, repent, and do better.
Now, I lead my home, and I emulate him in many areas, though other areas require me to be creative because I am doing it alone. And I fail a great deal. When I remarry it will be to someone who takes God's pattern seriously, and thinks that it is important enough to apply to our family. Someone who finds it a beautiful picture of Christ and His church, and does not succumb to the pressure of the world to conform to it's false teaching. I do believe that if we do not make efforts to do this, then we are wrong, and settling for less than God's best.
I appreciate your question, Rachel. God's Word is the standard for believers, and Christ is who we compare ourselves to. Blessings to you.
Lovely
(I apologize for the length of this post)
: 
: He was like a brother to me. When my boyfriend broke up with me, I asked Steve to take me to the prom. I'll never forget when he first kissed me. It was DISGUSTING! I felt like I was really kissing my brother! I was determined to make it work though and start looking at him more like a boyfriend instead of a "brother/friend". We've been doing remodeling and I ran across my old diary last week. We were dying laughing at some of the stuff I wrote about him! Then he found old cards and notes I wrote to him when I was in high school and those were just as funny. We were so goofy!
: Just taking a short stroll down memory lane!