How Does Divorce Affect Children? Coping with the After-effects of a Divorce on your Kids

One of the most traumatic experiences any family can go through is a divorce. This is because a divorce not only entails the separation of spouses but the breakdown of the other relationships in the family as well. Children are compelled to live apart from one of the parents while siblings may have to live in different families.

The family is the first place where children learn life skills and get ready to be part of the larger society. Parents are the first resources of unconditional love, emotional support, material security and cultural skills for children. A divorce leads this family unit to fall apart and the consequences are devastating for the children. Consider some statistics on divorce and its impact on children in the United States:

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Half of all children in the country will go through the breakup of their parents’ marriage and of these almost half will also witness the breakup of one parent’s second marriage1.

As much as forty percent of American children are growing up in a family where the father is absent as a consequence of divorce or separation2.

The rising divorce rate in America means that almost 50 percent of all the children born in this year will see their parents get divorced before they turn eighteen3.

The above numbers may seem shocking to some, but the truth is that increasingly children are growing up in broken homes in America as in many other parts of the world. Many studies have documented the effects of divorce on children and almost all of them have concluded that children of divorced parents suffer from both immediate as well as long-term emotional and psychological problems. Added to these are the loss of familiar resources and a certain lowering of economic standards. The result is greater levels of anxiety and grief which may be manifested as psychological, behavioral as well as physical problems. Some of the important ways in which a divorce affects children are:

Emotional impact

As mentioned before, the family is the first and most important emotional support structure for children. When this falls apart, children are bereft emotionally and the initial feelings are of extreme loneliness and abandonment. There is a feeling of great loss with acute sadness and confusion. The loss of a parent makes them feel emotionally as well as physically insecure and afraid of being discarded just like the parent who has gone away. Some children may in fact continue to experience emotional problems several years after their parents’ divorce, according to study by Judith Wallerstein4. It is difficult for children to grasp or appreciate how parents can stop loving each other and go their own ways. The result is increased anxiety on the part of the children over a possibility of their own abandonment.

Feelings of guilt

Almost inevitably children of separated parents feel that somehow the divorce is their fault. They think that the parent who left did so because of them or because he/she does not love them anymore. Girls in fact feel the loss of a father directly and emotionally and often believe that this rejection by their father is because they are not pretty enough or smart enough.

Psychological impact

A divorce has been compared to the death of a parent in the way it damages a child’s psychological stability. Robert Emery in his book5, suggests that children from divorced families have more psychological families as compared to those suffering the death of a parent. After a divorce, most children suffer from a debilitating loss of self-esteem and think that they are worthless or bad. Children are also likely to go into depression, unable to deal with the acute feelings of loss and grief. Studies like Velez-Cohen’s , “Suicidal Behavior and Ideation in a Community Sample of Children” published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 1988 have also shown that broken homes suffer from higher rates of suicide of children than stable families. Often the parent with whom the children are left is too busy coping with his/her own feelings of pain and betrayal. This leads to further feelings of loneliness and abandonment and older children may respond by rebellious and defiant behavior with an increased tendency to break rules and test limits within the family as well as the larger society.

Physical effects

The sense of grief, anxiety and abandonment faced by children when their parents’ divorce may be manifested in certain physical symptoms as well. Regular patterns of sleep and appetite may be disturbed while teenagers may fall prey to destructive food habits like anorexia and bulimia. Many children may complain of headache, nausea and other symptoms of acute stress and anxiety6.

Difficulty in building relationships

Long term studies show that children of divorced parent have a tough time building and maintaining other relationships. They may have trouble getting along with members of the own family or bonding with their peers7. When they grow up, such children may have difficulty in committing to or maintaining long-term relationships. Also children from broken homes have greater chances of succumbing to teenage pregnancy, promiscuity and marital problems than adults who came from stable homes according to findings by researchers8.

Problems at school

The experience of divorce also affects the performance of children at school. Feelings of loss and anxiety caused by the separation of parents many cause younger kids to suffer from exhaustion and lack of concentration while older children may be more prone to absenteeism, falling grades and unruly behavior at school. The results are documented in Andrew Cherlin’s book Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage9(Harvard University Press, 1981). They are also more likely to repeat a grade and drop out from school while in college they may struggle with lower grades and lack of self-discipline.

Delinquent behavior

Divorce causes the loss of a stable and secure family structure which may lead children to feel rudderless. Also they no longer find role models in their parents. This may lead kids in their teens to experiment with drugs, gangs and engage in other kinds of delinquent behavior. A study found that seventy percent of long-term prison inmates grew up in broken homes.10

Different perspectives

In recent times, sociologists and psychologists have been looking anew at some of the conventional wisdom on the impact of divorce on children. In 1991 researchers Amato and Keith11 examined the results of 92 studies involving 13,000 children who ranged from preschoolers to young adults. They found that children from divorced families were on an “average” worse off than children from intact marriages. These children showed many of the classic problems of broken families like negative self-image, problems with peers as well trouble getting along in their own families. However Keith and Amato found substantial differences to long-held opinions. For instance they concluded that the actual differences between the two groups were relatively small and in fact there were more similarities than differences between the two kinds of families. Also the researchers pointed out that “average” differences did not mean that all children of divorced parents suffer more than all children from intact families. The implications of such findings are significant. Most importantly it shows that a majority of children from divorced families do not suffer from problems serious enough to require professional intervention even though more children from divorced homes than those from intact homes may have problems . Yet another important study in this area has been done by Mavis Hetherington.  E.Mavis Hetherington’s 2002 book, For Better or Worse: Divorce Reconsidered points out that the negative impact of divorce has been so exaggerated that now they work like a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. Hetherington and her co-author John Kelly found out that while many children of divorced parents, in their adult years, looked back on their parents’ divorce as a painful experience, most of them had been able to have careers and intimate relationships with a degree of success. In fact, Hetherington12 suggests that a small percentage of children of divorced parents, very often girls, may even emerge stronger from the experience as compared to kids of intact families.

Any Positive impact? 

Children of families wracked by domestic abuse, family violence may find a more stable and secure family environment after the divorce of their parents. Other positive effects in the long run include more emotional maturity on the part of children who have gone through the painful experience as well as greater commitment to maintaining relationships.  Studies like those carried out by  P. R. Amato and A. Booth in "A Prospective Study of Divorce and Parent-child Relationships."13(1996) show that older children often prefer the environment after a divorce to the one immediately before a divorce if the latter has been riddled with conflict and violence.

According to the US National Center for Health Statistics, divorcing families have included at least one million children every year from 1972 to 1990, the most recent statistics show. Thus the stakes are high when such a large percentage of young population is concerned. However contemporary sociologists and psychologists feel that rather than asking whether the children of divorced parents have problems, a more relevant question would be what particular factors cause them to feel differently from the children of two-parent families. That children from broken homes suffer from both immediate and long-term effects is well-documented. What needs further evaluation is how to lessen the distress felt by children of divorced families by addressing the factors which cause the pain. Recent research sees divorce more as a process than as a traumatic event.  Thus some parenting resource centers feel that when the risk factors attendant on divorce like loss of contact with supportive parent, fewer economic resources and conflict between parents are reduced, the children may fare better. It is crucial that divorced parents don’t add to the emotional burden of their children by relying on them for emotional support. Worse than that is to lie to them, manipulate or pressurize them into taking sides in the conflict between the spouses.

Michael Goldberg, an instructor with Harvard Medical School and the director of Child and Family Psychological Services in Massachusetts, believes that the debate has moved beyond whether divorce is good or bad for children. According to him recent research has shown conclusively that factors like economic support, handling of conflict, post-divorce relation between the spouses as well the relation of the parents with the children are much more important in determining the psychological health of children. Thus even though children of divorced parents are likely to go through great emotional and behavioral problems, it is important to understand there are ways and means to equip them to face such challenges in life.

Sources Cited:

1.    Furstenberg, Peterson, Nord, and Zill, “Life Course”.
2.    Wade, Horn and Busy, “Fathers, Marriage and Welfare Reform” Hudson Institute Executive Briefing, 1997.
3.    Fagan, Fitzgerald, Rector, “The Effects of Divorce on America”.
4.    Wallerstein, “The Long-Term Effects of Divorce on Children” in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 1991.
5.    Emery, Robert,  Marriage, Divorce and Children’s Adjustment (Sage Publications, 1988)
6.    Dawson, “Family Structure and Children’s Health and Well Being” National Health Interview Survey on Child Health, Journal of Marriage and the Family.
7.    Tysse, Burnett, “Moral Dilemmas of Early Adolescents of Divorced and Intact Families”. Journal of Early Adolescence 1993.
8.    Paul R. Amato and Danelle D. DeBoer, "The Transmission of Marital Instability across Generations: Relationship Skills or Commitment to Marriage?", Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (November 2001).
9.    Cherlin, Andrew, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Harvard University Press, 1981).
10.    Horn, Bush, “Fathers, Marriage and Welfare Reform”.
11.    Amato, P. R., & Keith, B. (1991). “Parental divorce and the well-being of children: A meta-analysis”. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 26-46.
12.    Hetherington, E. Mavis, Divorce Reconsidered: For Better or Worse , 2002.
13.    P. R. Amato and A. Booth, "A Prospective Study of Divorce and Parent-child Relationships." (1996),  Journal of Marriage and the Family 58.