Is Divorcing a Partner Better than Fighting in Front of the Kids

The breakup of a marriage, no matter how short or long, is never an easy matter for the spouses involved. But where kids come into the picture, the scenario takes on entirely different colors and parents are left to come to a tortured decision of whether it is better to remain in a conflicted marriage or go for a divorce with its fearful finality.

Emotional impact

One reason why social scientists and policymakers are alarmed at the high rates of divorce is that its effects on children are usually traumatic and always far-reaching. Children of all ages are affected by the breakup of their parents’ marriage. While a baby or toddler is too young to understand what is going on, he/she will still pick up on a parents’ distress. This may result in the young ones regressing back to an earlier development stage such as bed wetting, going back to the bottle or afraid of sleeping alone. Younger kids between five and eight may be easier to comfort in words but they will be more vulnerable to the pain of losing a parent. Children between nine and twelve are more likely to respond to their parents’ divorce with anger at the injustice of the situation that is being thrust on them. Even though the teens may be more understanding of the imperfections of human relationships, the fact that they are going through emotional and physical changes of their own complicates things further.

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Psychological impact

Apart from the immediate emotional impact, the psychological consequences of divorce on kids can be immense too. 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 book, Marriage, Divorce and Children’s Adjustment, suggests that children from divorced families have more psychological issues 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 anxiety.

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 peers. 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 researchers like Paul R. Amato and Danelle D. Deboer, who wrote of such consequences in "The Transmission of Marital Instability across Generations: Relationship Skills or Commitment to Marriage?" in Journal of
Marriage and Family 63.

Material changes

Apart from the emotional and psychological upheaval, the practical changes that kids have to bear as a consequence of their parents splitting up further contribute to their distress. For many families there is less money after a divorce. Also staying in a new home, going to a new school and juggling a new timetable of two parents and two homes can be extremely difficult for kids to cope with.

Such negative and far-reaching impact of divorce on kids may force warring parents to rethink divorce. But what of the incessant fighting that kids may be exposed to in a high-conflict marriage? In recent times, sociologists and psychologists have been looking anew at some of the conventional wisdom on the impact of divorce on children. Researchers have found that though children from divorced families were on an “average” worse off than children from intact marriages, not all children of divorced parents suffer more than all children from intact families.  In fact some suggest 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.

Also one of the most common symptoms of distress of children in unhappy marriages is that they tend to blame themselves for their parents’ conflict. If kids are exposed day and day out to yelling and quarrelling between their parents, the environment could be little worse than the actual divorce. In fact evidence shows that it is the conflict surrounding divorce and the quality of contact with both parents that makes the difference between kids’ unhappiness and ability to cope and not the actual event of divorce itself.

Above all 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." 1996) in  Journal of Marriage and the Family 58 (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.

A divorce is something that will affect children’s lives forever. It is not an isolated event that can be got over with. It is best to recognize that a divorce will always entail a permanent change in the family structure but how they will be affected by it – negatively or positively - depends on various other factors like economic support, handling of conflict, post-divorce relation between the spouses as well the relation of the parents with the children.