You have to understand Indian culture, not only today, which will often be very similar, but back to the Buddha's days. Indian culture said that it is okay to leave your wife and child and go for spiritual development. That was seen as the highest thing in the world to do and therefore it was culturally okay. However, you don't leave your wife and children destitute - destitute means poor, ill, injured, whatever. You don't do that.
The Buddha left his wife and child with his mother and father in a kingdom with all the pleasures necessary. It wasn't running away from them only for personal happiness, this is important. The Buddha knew before he left, "If I get what I am looking for, I am coming back. I am going to give this to my wife, I am going to give this to my son, I am going to give this to my parents. This is something so important what I am going and trying to do, that it is not just for me."
A lot of people in the world they leave their wife and children, or they leave their husband and children for personal happiness. They run off with another guy or girl, which is often the case, or they just think, "I am sick of having kids. I am sick of this partner" and they run off. That is something very different. We have to take into consideration, why did the Buddha leave, and then in which state did he leave them.
It's also helpful to know according to Buddhism, he and his wife, Yasodhara, had been married 500 times in past lives. This is why they easily fell in love at first sight and why they are married in his final birth and her final birth. After he became enlightened and came back, she became a stream enterer, first level of enlightenment. Later she became an enlightened nun and became the most gifted nun of all with psychic powers. She wasn't just a "little thing" which he left in the woods or a cottage or such, she was destined to become a great leader of Buddhism, a great nun, that was her destiny.
When he left the palace, and when she found out what he was trying to do, she also shaved her hair, put on orange robes and stayed in her special chamber, or part of the palace, and meditated for the whole six years, exactly what he was doing but not out in the woods. This was how close they were together in thoughts.
This is important and this is very, very different to our society when somebody leaves their wife and children. The intention behind his leaving was the highest intention in the whole world. Most people don't leave their wife and children with that intention. Plus the fact that he knew he was coming back as soon as he got the answers to human suffering and the way out of it.
When you think that he knew he would come back as soon as he got the answers, this is not so strange, it is a bit rare today but maybe 150 years ago this was not so strange. People would go off on crusades, go off to the Middle East and fight. They would be gone for three or four years. American cowboys, the original cowboys who actually went to, unfortunately, to kill the buffalo, they would often leave their home for a couple of years, make lots of money and then came back to their wife and kids. This is something that happens from time to time, there is somebody in the retreat right here I think, they are husband and wife but living in different towns because they can't get the same job in the same place. It's not so strange that husband and wife will go away for a while, earn something and then go back to the family.
After the war, Rosemary's father went away for 6 months one time when he was an air force pilot. During the war he was away for three years so these sort of things are not so uncommon. Especially when you look at it as somebody leaving home to achieve something, and when they achieve it they come back and give it to the others.