How Divorce Affects Children

If two people love each other enough to get married, and together choose to form a lifelong commitment, why are so many of these marriages ending? What does marriage mean to people nowadays and why do people decide to get married? Records show us that people have been getting married for as long as the earliest recorded history. There are many benefits for couples who have a successful marriage. When a marriage begins to fail it is usually due to a couple's inability to communicate, lack of a common goal, or a trust vs. mistrust issue; therefore, more so than not, these types of situations will ultimately result in a divorce. The most frequently asked question over the last two decades has been, “Does divorce effect children and how

The rate of divorced parents is growing daily according to divorcestatistic.org, the divorce rate in America for the first marriage is between 41 and 50 percent. Divorce does not only happen between the spouses, especially when there are children involved. Marriages might end with divorce due to conflicts. Divorce can also occur due to loss of connection and intimacy in a ten to twelve year marriage (Psych page, Gottman Research). Communication problems between spouses can cause one of the spouses to be very abusive. An abusive parent can harm the child and lead to psychological problems in the future. In addition, criticism plays a vast role in the relationship; one spouse might say, “What kind of person are you?” (Psych page, Gottman Research). In my experience, this question allows the problem or fight to escalate.

How children are affected by divorce is a question of vast significance to your children and, of course, to you. Divorce delivers many losses for parents and for minors. Divorce means you want to abolish your marriage with your significant other. Divorce can make you believe that you are losing your whole family. Divorce could possibly mean losing your home, associates, and the loss of social status. For kids divorcing may mean losing their school, losing frequent contact with one of their parents, and sometimes losing some affection, attention, and needed discipline from both of the parents. Divorce is the ending point of your position as a husband or wife, and it can sometimes make you feel like you are not a good parent. In addition, divorce means the sacrifice of your plans and imageries for yourself, for your family, and for your children. So how are children affected by divorce? The answer is not simple, which is one reason why numerous people are confused.

Divorce has enormous obstacles in child’s life As mentioned in the book that 50% of marriages end in divorce, with just over 60% of American children living in married couple-household (Casey foundation, 2008).these problems Start from trust, aggressive behavior, crying, short-term anxiety. We do need to do more to help those children and assess them to the right direction.

However, even the parents themselves do not seems to take into consideration the devastation that can impact their children. Some researchers argue that people do not terminate their marriages for reasons of escaping a disruptive relationship or abuse but only for a quest for personal growth, (Amato, Sep. 2001), then the issue should be the concern for the well being of the child and what that separation and subsequent divorce would affect the children. That same research also included a longitudinal study and incorporated evidence that indicated that a majority of recent divorces were not preceded by an extended period of

Divorce is defined as the legal end of a marriage. But, it is more intricate than just the completion of a relationship. A common belief regarding divorce is that it entirely involves two parents. However, when a marriage ends in divorce, all individuals associated to the relationship, including children, are affected. As the number of divorces each year continues to increase, researchers have become more concerned with the effects divorce has on children.

Divorce is a touchy subject for some people to discuss, although it is an issue that is occurring very often in people’s lives today. A divorce can affect everyone involved, including the children, unfortunately. Divorce and its effects set a bad example to children and their future lives as young adults, along with having life-long effects from the divorce because of things that they experienced during it. The different causes of a divorce have multiple effects on the children who are experiencing it, including problems that lead to psychological and emotional effects, behavioral issues, problems with school, and problems with future relationships.

The occurrence on divorce in our society today has left children emotionally and mentally hurt by this. More and more studies have been done on to see if divorce has an effect on children. I personally have had no effect of divorce, but I have had several friends who have been affected. I had little knowledge about how impactful divorce can have an affect on someone until I started doing research on this topic. Divorce is very hard on people who have to deal with this. The articles I have found to do research on all have something new and exciting to bring to the table. Of the ones I have found, I believe they will help me to understand more of the struggles young children have to cope with during such a difficult time. I also found an interesting article about the fathers’ perspectives on divorce. It talked about how they still want to be apart of their children’s lives and how hard it is to keep a strong relationship with their children. I felt like it would be good to include this article into my paper because it will help me to learn from the fathers’ side how they handle the situation. Throughout this paper, I disused the different effects divorce has on children, the various programs and coping strategies for the children, and fathers’ perspectives and mother-child relationships. All of these topics are very important to divorce and the articles from the researchers did a great job of talking about these topics.

The purpose of the quantitative research design is to show that divorce does affect children in their academic performance, causes negative socially development skills, and a change in image of self. The research is done by a questionnaire taking by teachers and their students at an elementary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The population for this questionnaire were African-American, Caucasian, Native American, Asia and others. This questionnaire was a random selection sampling based of which teachers agreed to participate in the study. The questionnaire was used to prove that previous studies were accurate on the impact of divorce not only academically but socially and imaging. The research will prove that further investigation is needed for

Social scientists are becoming more concerned about how divorce effects children. Today, more than one out of four U.S families is a single-parent family and half of all children will become stepchildren. Our textbook states that 60 percent of divorces involve children but couples with children divorce less than couples without children. Children from a divorced family can suffer from interpersonal and psychological problems as well as emotional distress. Research by Heather Westberg, Thorana Nelson and Kathleen Piercy indicates that children’s reaction to divorce is influenced by how the news is delivered and is shaped by the perception that life at home will be better or worse afterward. Data collected over a 12 year period studied parent-child relationships before and after divorce showing that marital conflict may intensify children’s behavior problems making them

Divorce is part of our everyday lives. What happened “till death do us part” it is more of “till hard times do us part”. Divorce affects children in many different ways. It is something that many couples want because they are not happy, they are bored, or they just grow apart. Adults believe that this will do no harm to a child, they are wrong. In many cases, a child or a teen has many problems to face as poor relationships with parents, emotional trauma, and rushed into adulthood.

Divorce has become an unquestionable remedy for the miserably married. Currently, the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world. Every year in the US approximately one million children experience divorce which, is about one in every three children (Amato 21). The effects of divorce can be tremendously painful for both children

Divorce not only affects the parents, but it also affects the child/children. The child whom is now part of a divorced family has to face a change in their life. It can undermine their child’s sense of security and stability, because the two people whom the child was the most dependent on are now being split up and are no longer living with one another and thus leading to separation of time spent with the child from each parent, regardless of the custody settlement that is reached. The foundation of the child’s world is damaged and changed. The best thing for a child who has divorced parents would be for the parents to not be hostile with one another and for both parents to spend shared and equal amount of time with the child. Also that both parents stay active in the child’s day-to-day life and routine. This means that there has to be good communication amongst the parents. If the child is raised in these conditions, then a divorce will not have a heavy effect on them and it can increase the potential for the child to develop a strong relationship with both parents. However, these conditions are extremely hard to meet if one of the parents decides to relocate. Relocation can be seen as a distance between the noncustodial/nonresidential parent and the custodial parent and child. When a divorced parent relocates, it makes it a lot harder for the non-relocating parent to see the child, if the child moves with the relocating parent. Not only does moving effect the

[It is generally know that the divorce rate in the United States hovers around fifty percent, including forty percent under the age of 21. In that fifty percent one of every six adults is likely to go through a divorce twice. Not only does divorce affect the adults involved, but forty percent of children in the United States will experience parental divorce (Portnoy, 2008). Children with divorced parents struggle with negative consequences emotionally, mentally, and academically compared to those children from intact families.]

Children coping with parent’s dissolution have more problem adjusting to life events: “Research on interparental conflict and child adjustment” has shown that parental conflicts that are overt, intense, and child related are more strongly associated with child maladjustment than conflicts that are less evident (covert), intense, and not child related” (Davies & Cummings, 2006; Grych & Fincham, 1990). In a long term consequence, there are chances that they, when growing up, do not believe in marriage, and the risk of them getting divorced is higher than children from an intact family. Children from a divorced family witness interparental conflicts frequently, which shapes their pessimism that marriage problem is unsolvable as well as divorce is easier and acceptable (Cui, Fincham, & Pasley, 2008; Segrin, Taylor, & Altman, 2005). As a relationship is not always about love but it is also about frustration, disappointments and arguments, without patience and efforts from both partners, the connection will not stay strong and healthy. This motivates them to give up a relationship easily, rather than putting effort to work it out. They tend to commit less to their partner. This pattern in adolescent/ young adulthood can predict their rough marriage in the future.