My parents divorced when I was about seven years old, and my mom became the custodial parent. As my younger sister and brother, and I could adapt to always going back and forth between our parent’s. The challenging thing about having divorced parents is meeting their new significant other, which I have met multiple of them. Another thing is meeting my parent’s significant other’s children. Each person I met was nice, and if I was meeting a toddler, they were energetic. Although, each time I did meet these people, I was usually very distant and dramatic.
I feel like a personal challenge I’ve faced in my life was my parents getting a divorce. This affecting me by not having one parent but the other is rough throughout my childhood while seeing others growing up with both parents and seeing your lifestyle different from other children. But throughout time I’ve gain to know how even though not growing up with one parent was hard you began to gain more responsibilities and be more helpful with siblings as well with other future endeavors I tend to overcome with my success in the future of my life. Growing up with divorced parents wasn’t as easy as you would think it would be. For example I have faced plenty of obstacles such as seeing other children having spending time with their father and not
7th grade was the year I woke up. My mom called me into her bedroom late one afternoon and was still sitting on her bed, wearing her pajamas. The bright and cheerful sunshine that lit up the room gave a false ambiance of the tension that clouded the air. I already knew what she was going to say, but I did not want to believe it as the truth. I had noticed that my mom and dad's relationship with one another was growing apart just by the way they acted around each other. The conversations between them became shorter and their affection for one another began to fade. My dad spent his nights falling asleep watching TV on the couch, while my mom slowly disappeared back into her bedroom, alone. This had been happening for a while now, so I do not know why I was even surprised when my mom said to me that, “Your dad and I are getting a divorce”. I should have seen it coming. The clues were all in front of me, but I was too afraid to put them together. I was scared because, for the first time in my life, the image of my "perfect" family was crumbling before me. I knew inside that my family was falling apart, but I was desperately holding onto the fibers that I thought were keeping us together. It is hard to believe that one encounter can change the course of one's life forever. In this instance, I was awoken from the dream that I had been living in for so long.
Subject A was the only person to talk about their parents and their plans for their parents when they become older and may possibly need help.
They devised a ‘love quiz’ in a local newspaper, asking readers to describe their feelings and experiences about romantic relationships and their childhood relationships with parents. They found a strong correlation between childhood and adult relationship patterns: for example, insecure-avoidant types doubted the existence of love, feared closeness and found it hard to forgive; insecure-resistant types were intensely emotional, jealous and untrusting; and secure types believed in love, were very trusting and liked being close to others.
I was born from a family, in which it was just my sister and I. At a tender age
Even though situations seem averse they might become positive in the end. To me and probably most people in my situation would say that their parents being divorced would be a negative situation. Although at the time I was distraught, I learned that my parents divorce might have not been helpful at first, but later on it affected my life dramatically.
(a) I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others, and I find it difficult to trust them completely. It is difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often love partners want to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being.
The psychosocial crisis during early adulthood is intimacy vs. isolation. Intimacy is defined as the ability to experience an open, supportive, tender relationship with another person without fear of losing one’s own identity in the process (Newman & Newman p. 468). Intimacy shares a bond between two people displaying confidence, respectful affection and shared goals. It is two people respecting each other’s differences and spiritual beliefs. Intimacy accepts each other’s flaws and experience a love outside of family.
Much emphasis has been placed in the field of child development and the role that early providers possess when it comes to the needs of children at the early stages of life. Whether conceptualizing socialization and priming with Locke’s “tabula rosa/blank slate” or Rousseau’s “preassembled moral schema” approach to child development, this “window of opportunity” is both fleeting and permanent. Every interaction molds the individual into the person they are to become, and the bond that the dependent child forms with the caregiver is a precedent to the numerous relationships and attachments they will create as an adult. Granted that the provider/nurturer fulfills the needs of attachment and attentiveness for the offspring, this will determine the success of progressing through child developmental stages, and leads to a higher propensity of social adaptiveness. Inversely, if the aforementioned things are absent in a child’s early years, detrimental effects could occur, including stints in physical, social, and mental development. This is dependent upon the severity and duration of neglect, and has been seen in clinical cases that appears as psychological phenomena to both the general public, and researchers alike.
The reason I picked these two individuals to interview is because I knew that they were both in a relationship and I knew them well enough personally that they would be comfortable talking about personal moments in their lives that would allow me to fully examine and evaluate their responses. My underlying fear was that both of the interviews would bring about very similar data with no room for comparisons, but thankfully my fears proved unwarranted. Both of the interviewees had a vested interest in happiness and relationships. To code my two interviewees, I will first regard what characteristics or backgrounds each person had that could have influenced their thoughts on happiness or relationships. Such traits could be their demographics, as both of them were Hispanic and were born in a different country before moving to the United States when they were very young. Both are bilingual in English and Spanish. Both have a younger sibling and a strong maternal figure. Employment status, another coding variable, was different between them. Interviewee 1 had had jobs, but was no longer working, but interviewee 2 continues to work his job during the graveyard shift. Both are in intimate relationships, but the happiness from each relationship varies between the two, along with the thoughts of their partners. Interviewee 1 rarely spoke of problems she had with her significant other while interviewee 2 listed several traits that he found damaging in his significant other.
First, the secure relationship style shows few problems with developing satisfying friendships and relationships, such as trusting others and developing the bond with others (Larson & Buss, 2014). Second, the avoidant relationship style portrays by having difficulty in making commitments, relying on others, and trusting others because they are afraid of being disappointed (Larson & Buss, 2014). Lastly, the ambivalent relationship style is characterized as having high levels of neediness, reassurance, and attention in their relationships as they are overly dependent (Larson & Buss, 2014). Shieh shows few characteristics that describe avoidant relationship style, such as, avoidance of intimacy, afraid of commitment, and fear of being abandoned. He did not realize his problems with dating until he was in a serious relationship with Donna.
Growing up with divorced parents is something I would not wish on anyone. Having to live in fear is not something a child should ever have to do. Worrying if you are going to get berated for everything you do does not make for an easy childhood. Counting down the days you have in hell is not something I will ever have to do again.
Hardships are a somewhat unavoidable fate waiting to throw unpredictable circumstances your way, thankfully it is in these moments that we reflect on the past to better our future.
Divorce is a plague that is destroying numerous families across the United States of America. Sadly, when husbands and wives divorce, the children are often caught directly in the middle. Throughout the years divorce has been becoming more and more common. In the 1920's it was a rare find to know a person whom had been divorced, today it is a rarity not to know of one who has been, or will be divorced. Divorce has numerous effects on the structures of families, and many devastating effects on the children that must experience it, although sometimes necessary, divorce radically changes the lives of adolescents and adults alike.