Introduction
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, every year more than one million children in the United States experienced the divorce of their parents, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. It was estimated that about 40 percent of all children would experience divorce before they reached eighteen years of age.
Most studies regarding children’s issues in divorce conceptualize the separation and divorce process as a stressful family transition to which children must adapt. These studies focus on the specific factors that children face in divorce, the protective factors that may assist them, and the range of outcomes experienced by all children of divorce. Divorce is not a discrete event but a process that begins with the specific sociological aspects in place in a particular family prior to the marital separation and continues through the divorce to the adjustment period afterward. Children are involved throughout the process and may experience a range of psychological, social, academic, and health issues as a result of the divorce. Children from different ethnic and cultural groups may experience different rates of parental divorce and remarriage and variations in specific effects.
The study of children’s issues before, during, and after separation and divorce is controversial because of the different social and political viewpoints held by family life scholars. Some scholars believe that children need two-parent homes to achieve optimum development and that divorce and single-parent families have a negative impact on the institution of the family, resulting in many social problems. Other scholars believe that it is possible for children to develop well in different family structures, including single-parent families and stepfamilies. These scholars suggest that divorce may resolve home problems and ultimately benefit the development of children by creating more healthy and positive home environments. The differences among scholars can lead to alternative interpretations of research results and very different reports of the implications of research findings for families and society.
Perspectives on Children’s Adjustment
American psychologist E. Mavis Hetherington identified five perspectives that help to explain the relationship between divorce and children’s adjustment to it. The individual risk and vulnerability perspective proposes that some parents may have characteristics or psychological problems that make it more likely that they will experience divorce. These individual factors will also have an impact on the way the parents handle the divorce and the consequences of divorce for their children. On the other hand, children have individual characteristics that may safeguard them from the negative consequences of divorce or increase their vulnerability to negative outcomes.
The family composition perspective predicts that any family structure other than the two-biological-parent family may be related to increased problems for children. Research concerning the father’s absence after divorce is related to this perspective.
The stress and socioeconomic disadvantage viewpoint notes that divorce may lead to an increased number of stressful life events, including new roles, change of residence, loss of social networks, child-care problems, conflict with the former spouse, and decreases in family finances. Children and parents may be affected negatively by these events. Research on the frequent financial problems of former spouses, especially custodial mothers, originates from this viewpoint.
The parental distress perspective indicates that tremendous variability exists in how individual parents handle all the issues and difficulties involved in divorce. Some parents are able to manage the events well and continue to provide consistent parenting to their children; other parents experience a noted deterioration in their parenting skills following divorce.
Finally, the family process viewpoint recognizes that divorced families may demonstrate disruptions in family relationships and interactions, having an impact on such processes as child discipline or child rearing. Hetherington suggests that the five perspectives complement each other and form a transactional model for understanding the impact of divorce on children.
Sociologist Paul R. Amato of Pennsylvania State University proposed a divorce-stress-adjustment model that incorporates the multiple perspectives noted by Hetherington into three factors: mediators, moderators, and adjustment. Amato noted that the divorce process may begin months or years prior to separation with a cycle involving overt conflict between the parents, attempts to renegotiate the relationship, or avoidance and denial of the problems. It is not unusual to note increased behavior problems in children at this early stage that reflect the marital discord.
Individual differences, however, may be noted between children. Some children may experience significant distress as a result of parental conflict prior to separation, so that the level of distress diminishes after marital separation. Other children may be unaware of the marital difficulties until the separation occurs, precipitating significant distress at that point. Children experience mediators or stressors that continue throughout the divorce process. They may include a decline in parental support and effective control, loss of contact with one parent, continuing conflict between parents, and economic decline.
In Amato’s model, moderators or protective factors interact with the stressors throughout the process to determine the ultimate adjustment of the child. Moderators include individual resources (such as coping skills), interpersonal resources (such as extended family support), structural resources (such as school programs and services), and demographic characteristics (age, gender, race, ethnicity, and culture) that combine to determine how a particular child will respond to the stressors of divorce. Adjustment refers to the time and intensity of psychological, behavioral, and health problems for children before they adapt to the new roles required of them by the divorce.
Most Common Issues for Children
Research on the effects of divorce on children between 1960 and 2000 consistently showed that children whose parents had divorced scored lower than children whose parents remained married on several outcome measures. Amato analyzed the research several times and noted small but statistically significant differences on measures such as conduct, academic achievement, psychological adjustment, self-concept, social competence, and long-term health. These effects continue even though more children are experiencing family divorce, the social stigma of divorce appears to have diminished, and support services for children of divorce have increased. A few studies indicate that divorce has positive results for some children, especially when divorce ends chronic high-conflict marriages that had created negative home environments, but the number of children in this type of situation is relatively low.
Research conducted by sociologist Yongmin Sun at Ohio State University confirmed that divorce is a multistage process, beginning before separation. Sun studied 10,088 students and compared the results of 798 students (8 percent) whose parents divorced over a two-year period to students whose parents did not divorce. He found that families in the predisruption phase, the period when the family is still intact before disruption of the marriage, show evidence of different family processes than do families that remain intact. The families that eventually divorced experienced deterioration in relationships between the parents and the children at least one year before the divorce. These parents did fewer things with their children, had lower expectations for the children, and were not as involved in school issues and events. The children had lower school math and reading scores and exhibited more behavior problems than did children in families that did not experience divorce.
After divorce, children may experience a variety of effects. One major problem for children of divorce is the continuation of preseparation conflict between the parents into the postdivorce period. By the second year after separation, one-third of parent relationships are still conflicted, one-fourth have achieved a cooperative coparenting relationship, and one-third are disconnected and do not interact about parenting. Continuing conflict is a problem because exposure to angry exchanges and fighting is itself a stressor for children. Conflict may also result in decreases in the quality of the parent-child relationship, including less consistent discipline, less demonstration of affection toward the child, emotional dependence on the child, less ability to control parental anger, and using the child as a cocombatant in disputes with the former spouse. Conflict that involves the child directly (such as fights in the child’s presence or arguments that focus on the child or child rearing or include the child in the dispute) is most harmful to the child. In general, the greater the degree of conflict between the parents, the more likely it is that the child will experience psychological distress. Interventions that diminish conflict are likely to have beneficial results for children of divorce.
Many children have diminished contact with their fathers following the divorce. Studies indicate that when the mother has primary physical custody, more than one-fourth of all children report that they did not see their father in the last year and only about one-fourth saw their father at least weekly. More than half of fathers are not involved at all in making decisions about their children, and half did not pay any child support during the previous year. Fathers who have joint custody, live near their children, or had stronger emotional relations with their children prior to the divorce are more likely to have regular contact after the divorce.
The effects of divorce on children often continue over time, although the immediate emotional disruption and behavioral problems may be resolved within the first two years. Interview research by Judith Wallerstein with children of divorce over a twenty-five-year period suggested that even as children grow into adulthood, there is a continuing impact of divorce on their attitudes and behaviors toward relationships and marriage. Other researchers note a variety of effects later in life, including an increased probability of divorce for the children of divorce.
Bibliography
Amato, Paul R. “The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and Children.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (2000): 1269–87. Print.
Baker, Amy J. L., and Paul R. Fine. Surviving Parental Alienation: A Journey of Hope and Healing. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. Print.
Emery, Robert E. Marriage, Divorce, and Children’s Adjustment. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1999. Print.
Hetherington, E. Mavis, ed. Coping with Divorce, Single Parenting, and Remarriage: A Risk and Resiliency Perspective. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999. Print.
O'Hagan, Kieran. Filicide-Suicide: The Killing of Children in the Context of Separations, Divorce and Custody Disputes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print.
Teyber, Edward. Helping Children Cope with Divorce. Rev. ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001. Print.
Thompson, Ross A., and Paul R. Amato, eds. The Postdivorce Family: Children, Parenting, and Society. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1999. Print.
Wallerstein, Judith S., and Joan B. Kelly. Surviving the Breakup. 1980. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Print.
Wallerstein, Judith S., Julia Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee. The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A Twenty-five Year Landmark Study. New York: Hyperion, 2002. Print.
Wallerstein, Judith, Julia Lewis, and Sherrin Packer Rosenthal. "Mothers and Their Children after Divorce: Report from a 25-Year Longitudinal Study." Psychoanalytic Psychology 30.2 (2013): 167–84. Print.
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