The Impact Divorce Has on Children

Have You Come From, or Do You Know Someone From a Divorced Family?

Divorce is a very stressful time for everyone within the family. Divorce introduces a massive lifetime change for children, no matter what age. Witnessing the loss of the love seen between parents, having parents break their marriage commitments, adjusting to going back and forth between two different households, and the daily absence of one of the parents while living with the other. This all creates a challenging new family circumstance in a child’s life. All children are going to respond differently to this painful turn of events. This is also going to affect each child differently depending whether they are still in childhood or has entered adolescence. Divorce tends to intensify the child’s dependence and accelerates the adolescences independence, which results in a more regressive response in child and more aggressive in adolescence (Woltmann, 1954).

The Impact Divorce Has on Children:            

According to this study from Mustonen (2011) article Long-Term Impact of Parental Divorce on Intimate Relationship Quality in Adulthood and the Mediating Role of Psychosocial Resources, results were shown that women and men from divorced families were often divorced or separated by the age of 32, compared to those from a not divorced families. Also the association with poorer intimate relationship quality was viewed among women and looked at parental divorce. Women from divorced families also had poorer relationships with their parents in adolescence years. It was also shown that they had lower self-esteem and satisfaction with social support in adulthood than women from a more intact family structure. 

A Letter to Parents on How Children Actually Feel During Divorce:

According to Woltmann (1954) It was stated that about 350,000 couples were divorced last year in the United States. There are approximately about 13 million children of divorce under 18 years of age in the US today. It has been estimated that 300,000 children will be added to this number per year. 

Better Ways to Look at Divorce, With Support! 

Divorce is not always a bad thing for children in the long run once they are stable. In the beginning it’s going to be hard of everyone. This is just like any stressful change in anyone’s life. Down the road when children really understand their parents, they will be able to understand why it didn't work. Within this time, it is important that parents are able to help guide the child to help them cope and talk about their feelings, and knowing that their parents love them. Its going to be up to the parents to force themselves to get along and be positive in front of the children. Also, to talk with the other parent to form a schedule and who the child will be living with. If the child is old enough to make their own decision ask the child so they have a say in where they stay more often. It may also help to try to make it 50/50 so the child sees each parent the same amount of time. This will help children transition better and hopefully be able to settle in easier with the adjustments.

My Story:

When I was 6 my parents got a divorce and this was extremely hard on my three siblings and me. It took many months to years to finally feel settled in at both places. My father was living in an apartment and then bought a house. My father made the effort of bringing us kids with to the house showing to get our input so it felt like home to us as well. Throughout the years, especially when us kids were younger both my parents got along, stayed in contact and communicated well about us kids for our sake. This definitely helped out a lot with the support and emotions that went on amongst us. This made big life events easier such as graduations, birthday parties and communions to have both parents their and then both at the celebration afterwards.

References: 

Mustonen, U., Huurre, T., Kiviruusu, O., Haukkala, A., & Aro, H. (2011). Long-term impact of parental divorce on intimate relationship quality in adulthood and the mediating role of psychosocial resources. Journal Of Family Psychology, 25(4), 615-619. doi:10.1037/a0023996

Woltmann, A. G. (1954). Review of Children of divorce. American Journal Of Orthopsychiatry, 24(4), 841-842. doi:10.1037/h0097519