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Effects On Children

The document summarizes research on the effects of divorce on children. It finds that while many children experience problems immediately following parental divorce, such as behavioral issues and lower school performance, these problems often diminish over time if the family situation becomes more stable. However, divorce can also lead to emerging problems later in life as children take on new challenges of adolescence and adulthood. While divorce has negative impacts, staying together is not always better if it means remaining in a high-conflict environment, as parental conflict itself is a key factor in children's adjustment issues, not just the divorce. Younger and older children seem to be equally affected in the long run. About a third of first marriages in the U.S. and Wisconsin end

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40 views2 pages

Effects On Children

The document summarizes research on the effects of divorce on children. It finds that while many children experience problems immediately following parental divorce, such as behavioral issues and lower school performance, these problems often diminish over time if the family situation becomes more stable. However, divorce can also lead to emerging problems later in life as children take on new challenges of adolescence and adulthood. While divorce has negative impacts, staying together is not always better if it means remaining in a high-conflict environment, as parental conflict itself is a key factor in children's adjustment issues, not just the divorce. Younger and older children seem to be equally affected in the long run. About a third of first marriages in the U.S. and Wisconsin end

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Common questions about the effects of divorce on children.

Dr. Dave Riley, UW-Madison & UW-Extension


2013

How severe and enduring are the effects of divorce on children's adjustment?

Many children experience problems in the months immediately following parental


divorce. The greatest effects are upon aggressive or antisocial behavior, noncompliance
with adults, lack of self-regulation, low social responsibility, and reduced school
performance. Problems tend to diminish with time if the family re-stabilizes.

Even for the children who experience limited problems initially, problems can
emerge later in life as they confront new challenges. The demands of adolescence and
early adulthood for self-regulated, autonomous behavior and the formation of intimate
relationships appear especially difficult for some. Compared to their peers in non-
divorced families, adolescents in divorced families are 2 to 3 times more likely to drop
out of school, to become pregnant, to engage in delinquent behavior, or to be referred for
mental health treatment. As young adults, they are more likely to have difficulty in
forming and maintaining stable relationships including their own marital relationships.
These are the serious and long-lasting effects of divorce.

However, these general trends mask some interesting variations. First, when
children move from a conflict-ridden or neglecting family situation to a more harmonious
one, they actually have better outcomes following the separation and divorce. (In other
words, the problem is the conflict-ridden family interactions, not the divorce itself.)
Second, most children whose parents divorce do well enough, avoiding mental health
problems, drug use, etc. The enduring and serious negative outcomes of divorce cluster
in a subset of 10-30% of the children, who can be identified as having behavioral and
mental health problems well before the divorce. The majority of children are resilient
and cope successfully over time with the stressful conditions of both the conflicted
marriage and the divorce. Most children of divorce do not exhibit severe or enduring
behavior problems.

These differences in outcomes, in fact, are due to identifiable differences in the


children and their situations, and some of these differences have informed the design of
co-parenting curricula.

Should parents stay together for the sake of the children?

The divorce itself can have a negative impact on the child, for example if it leads
to a serious reduction in the household income, or to household disorganization, or to a
depressed parent. But most of the negative effects we attribute to divorce are actually the
effects of parental conflict which has gone on for years, which is the cause of both the
divorce and the adjustment problems of the children. Research finds that children whose
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parents will later divorce already show problems with adjustment many years before the
divorce. Indeed, if children move from a household with high parental conflict to one or
two more harmonious households, they actually have better outcomes following the
separation and divorce. The key to children’s outcomes is family interactions, not family
type.

The real cause of children's problems with adjustment are parental conflict
(whether the parents are still married or not) and the quality of parent-child relationships
(which tend to deteriorate when there is high parental conflict), not the divorce.
Researchers find that children whose parents stay together, but who have high levels of
parental conflict, exhibit many of the same adjustment problems as children whose
parents divorce.

Does divorce have greater impacts on younger children, or on adolescents?

Researchers expected to find that younger children would be more negatively


effected, because they are more likely to blame themselves (their thinking is ego-centric),
can have greater fears of total abandonment, and usually have less access to social
support outside the family, than do older children and adolescents. Children of different
ages do respond differently in the immediate aftermath of divorce. But to our surprise,
most studies have found equally negative effects over time for children regardless of their
age at the time of parental divorce.

Do half of all marriages really end in divorce?

That claim is a bit overstated, because it is based on all marriages and divorces
rather than all first marriages. (In other words, some people get divorced multiple times,
and they raise the overall average.) If we look at just first-marriages, over 1/3 of them
end in divorce.
Of course, that’s still a substantial percentage, which equates to a large number of
families and children. In Wisconsin, for every year’s worth of first-marriages, it equals:
* About 17,500 divorces / year.
* About 10,000 of those divorces involve children (58% of divorces).
* About 4,900 of those divorces involve children under age 6 (28% of divorces).
* All told, about 1/3 of all U.S. and Wisconsin children experience their parents’
divorce before they reach age 18. While this is a traumatic, life changing
event, it is also a fairly normative event for children today.

Key reference:
Hetherington, E.M., & Stanley-Hagan, M. 1999. The adjustment of children with
divorced parents: A risk and resiliency perspective. Journal of Child Psychology
and Psychiatry, 40, 129-140.

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