impacts of divorce on children

In their research points out that divorce primarily impacts children in the short term, and takes sequential recovery rapidly after this initial blow of divorce. In their study they find out that the majority of children go through unpleasant experiences in the short run which dramatically fades with time, they may feel grief, worries, anxiety disbelief, and shock.
Divorce is traumatic for teenagers. Although the marriage is full of adverse tension and arguments, no child will wish for their parent’s breakup. It’s overwhelming because for many reasons; it leads to strenuous relationship between the children and their parents, the affected child loses contact with one of the parent since divorce means that children have to endure living with one of the parents. Also the child loses contact with one parent resulting to economic strain especially if both parents were not financially stable, the lifestyle changes. It as well results into more conflicts especially if the divorce takes a legal course. All these factors result to stressful life for the children and the parents with the child’s custody should strive to create a good environment for the child’s adjustments.

Divorce leads to increased chances of children suffering from psychological and behavior stress and problems. Children who are victims of divorce develop issues, for example, victims become quick to anger, are disobedient and violent, as well as poor academic performances. Some of the children remain sad for long periods of time, develop depressions and anxiety, they may develop overly care towards their parents taking up the roles of their parents. (Emery 72)

Divorce if properly managed by the parents’ results into resilience in children. When this is the case such parents have little or no difference with the children in a marriage set up. They don’t develop the feeling that they are children of divorce. (Emery, The Truth about Children and Divorce 81). Resilient children are not children of divorce rather they are children of parents, communities and families, they are deemed to be children experiencing life traumas just like any other facing a different challenge and life stress. The parents thus have a great role to play is shaping the direction their children takes once divorce strikes. Children’s resilience to divorce is majorly determined by the parent’s behavior after the divorce. The relationship resulting after the divorce and how the parent who assumes custody works with the other parent is equally important. (Emery, Divorce 2-3)

However, children affected by divorce even if resilient will still show painful memories and ongoing worries. They still cling to the memories of their parents before divorce/ and still concern themselves with the current relationship between their divorced parents. (Laumann-Billings 14, 671-687)

Divorce as well results in a feeling of relief to the children, especially in cases where the parent’s relationship before the divorce was torturous and subjected them to pain. This results when the effects of the their parents poor relationship are too conspicuous to be hid, in such cases, the children can settle on hatred towards one parent and keep wishing that parent disappears, thus when divorce finally sets in the children feel relieved that their worries are finally over.

By shifting the attention from the negative effects ,there as well exist quite a number of positive impacts of divorce on children, for instance, children performances in school might improve, this results in cases where the parents relationship was full of conflicts and there was no peace in the family, upon divorce the children experiences relief, they get ample time to relate with the single parent left and there is more time for this in the peaceful environment created after the divorce. The child feels free to consult the parent in their homework.

Divorce affects older children differently, the effects being different from those of younger children; they get the fear of getting into relationships, fearing that the same thing that happened to their parents will happen to them as well. At their age they may not feel unwanted like the young children feel but they develop a feeling that they were never a good reason to hold their parents together. On the other side the divorce impacts positively in that such child will be cautious not to land on the same ground as their parents, thus take precautions in choosing their spouses, in the long run this leads to a slight decline in the number of failed marriages. (Dickson 472-491)

Children of divorce experiences problems in sexual identity, this is because the distance between them and their parents results into failed parental attention. This affects the boy child than the girl child, since boys spending more time with their mothers makes it hard to identify with their peers, they may feel rejected by their fathers and as a result may experience difficulties identifying with their masculinity. (Amato and Keith. 43-58) The girl child on the other hand develop sexuality problems, relating to intimacy and self-control, due to the lack of a father figure during their early life they long for a man in their lives, to give her the love and attention they never got. Research indicates that the number of victims of substance abuse, pre marital sex, and cohabiting are on the rise for the girls who are victims of divorce.

In conclusion it’s evident that divorce has both positive and negative effects on children, from the discussion the bad effects supersedes the good ones. Effects of divorce have short term as well as long term effects on children, even though the grief, anxiety, anger, depression and withdrawal disappears with time the feeling will dwell in them forever.

Works Cited

Amato, P. R. and B. Keith. “Parental divorce and adult wellbeing: A meta-analysis.” Journal of Marriage (2001): 43-48.

Dickson, L. “The Future of Marriage and Family in Black America.” Journal of Black Studies (2003): 472-491.

Emery, Robert E. Divorce. The Truth about Children and Divorce. 2006.

Hetherington, E. Mavis, Cox Martha and Roger Cox. “Long Effects of Divorce and Remarriage on the Adjustment of Children.” Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry (2005): 518-530.

Laumann-Billings, L. &. Emery, R. E. “Distress among young adults from divorced families.” Journal of Family Psycology (2000): 14, 671-687.