FREE ESSAY ON DIVORCE AND CHILDREN, AFFECTS OF

DIVORCE AND CHILDREN, AFFECTS OF

The Affects of Divorce on Children
As a child, there are many things that affect a view, memory, opinion, or attitude.
Children have many of their own daily struggles to cope with, as peer pressures are an
example.
As an adult, we sometimes forget what it is like to be a child dealing with some of the
childhood pressures. Many parents do not realize how something like divorce could
possibly
affect their children as much as it does themselves.
As the case may be, children are strongly affected by divorce. Some react differently
than do others, but all experience some kind of emotional change. Exposure to a highly
stressful major life change event on children, which may overwhelm children's coping
capacity, and thus compromising favorable adjustments (Garmezy, Masten, & Tellegen, 1984;
Gersten, Langner,
Eisenberg, & Simcha-Fagan, 1977; Rutter, 1983). Research has indicated that this is
particularly true for children in the circumstances surrounding parental divorce, and in
the immediate
aftermath (see reviews by Emery, 1982, 1988; Hetherington & Camara, 1984). Compared to
children of intact families, many children of recently divorced families are reported to
demonstrate less
social competence, more behavioral problems, more psychological distress, and more
learning deficits (Amato & Keith, 1991a; Hetherington, 1972; Hetherington, Cox, & Cox,
1979, 1982; Peterson &
Zill, 1983, 1986; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980), and are over-represented in referrals to
clinical services (Guidubaldi, Perry, & Cleminshaw, 1984; Kalter, 1977). Further, an
accumulating body of
evidence from longitudinal studies of divorce supports continuity of negative affects
beyond the 2-year postdivorce crisis period in a substantial minority of children and
adolescents (Guidubaldi
& Perry, 1984, 1985; Hetherington & Anderson, 1987; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992;
Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1985, 1987, 1991), as well as the reemergence or emergence of
problematic behavior
in adolescents who had previously recovered from or adjusted well to parental divorce
(Hetherington, 1991a). Moreover, reports of long-term negative outcomes in offspring
beyond the adolescent
period suggest that the ramifications of parental divorce on adult behavior may be even
more deleterious than those on child behavior (Amato & Keith, 1991b; Zill, Morrison, &
Coiro, 1993). The
evidence appears to be quite convincing that dissolution of two-parent families, though
it may benefit spouses in some respects (Hetherington, 1993), may have farreaching
adverse effects for many
children.
The divorce and family systems literatures indicate that negative family processes may be
more important predictors of poor adjustment in children than family structure
(Baumrind,
1991a. 1991b; O'Leary & Emery, 1984). Interparental conflict, for example, is associated
with adjustment disturbances in children in both divorced and nondivorced families
(Camara & Resnick,
1988; Johnston, Campbell, & Mayes, 1985; Peterson & Zill, 1986; Reid & Crisafulli, 1990),
and is considered to be a critical mediator of divorce effects in children and
adolescents (Atkeson,
Forehand, & Rickard, 1982; Emery, 1982; Forehand, Long, & Brody, 1988; Luepnitz, 1979).
In addition, the stress associated with shifting family roles and relationships in newly
divorce families
contribute to a breakdown in effective parenting practices, which in turn influences
adjustment outcomes in children. Decreased levels of warmth, support, tolerance, control,
and monitoring, and
increased levels of punitive erratic discipline among recently divorced mothers have been
related to problematic adjustment in children (Bray, 1990; Brody & Forehand, 1988;
Maccoby, Buchanan,
Mnookin, & Dornbusch, 1993). Furthermore, long-term studies of divorce suggest that
negative family processes and concomitant stressors may be in operation well after the
divorce has occurred,
and may become exacerbated when offspring enter adolescence (Hetherington, 1993;
Hetherington & Anderson, 1987; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992).
Coping with family stressors of such a demanding nature, particularly over an extended
time period, may easily tax or exceed the cognitive and behavioral resources that are
available to children (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Therefore, it is reasonable to assume
that the capacity to cope with and adjust to a stressful life circumstance such as
divorce may be even
further undermined among those children with difficult temperaments or histories of
behavioral or emotional problems (Caspi, Elder, & Herbener, 1990; Hetherington, 1991b;
Rutter, 1987). To test
this supposition, the role played by preexisting (i.e., predivorce) individual
characteristics such as temperament on children's responses to divorce needs to be
examined, thus advancing a
multiple-risk interaction model of adjustment outcomes in children. This same risk model
may also be applied to investigate whether divorce affects the course of psychopathology
already present
in children from a developmental trajectory perspective.
One of the pathways to later disturbance has been linked to earlier temperament
difficulties and/or problematic adjustments in childhood (Cohen & Brook, 1987;
Farrington, Loeber, &
Van Kammen, 1990; Mannuzza et al., 1991; Olweus, 1980), suggesting a vulnerability for
future disorders among already troubled children. For example, it has been found that a
childhood diagnosis
of attention deficit disorder persisted in 40% of probands at age 18, and increased the
risk of antisocial and conduct disorder diagnosis by almost five times. However, while
childhood disorder
was clearly a risk for later disturbance, the alternative perspective is that stability
of diagnosis was not observed in over half the probands. Further, findings from other
studies
investigating the persistence of childhood hyperactivity and deficits in attention span
and impulse control are more equivocal, and indicate more modest relationships in
adolescence and adulthood
(see review by Klein & Mannuzza, 1991). Thomas and Chess (1980) found that the continuity
of childhood behavioral adjustment difficulties may be altered by the family's response
to the
developing child, and suggested that earlier problems per se are not sufficient to
predict later maladjustments. Such observations reflect an interactionalist model of
human development whereby
individual characteristics interact with psychosocial features of the environment, and as
a result are modified (Plomin, 1993; Thomas & Chess, 1980). From a developmental
trajectory framework,
it is the moderating role played by divorce on the risk of disturbance among already
vulnerable children that is at issue.
There is some evidence that children whose parents eventually divorce exhibit higher
levels of problematic behavior prior to divorce than children whose families remain
intact
(Block, Block, & Gjerde, 1986). The implication is that, in marriages which eventually
dissolve, adverse family processes such as parental conflict or disrupted childrearing
(most likely due to
preoccupation with marital problems) are in evidence before marital dissolution and
precipitate predivorce adjustment problems in children. In order to rule out the possible
contaminating
effects of divorce-related family processes on children's adjustment prior to divorce (as
demonstrated by Block and colleagues), predivorce differences in child
temperament-adjustment between
children of families who remained intact versus children of families who divorced were
examined.
Almost one-third of divorced custodial mothers remarries, and because the transition into
a stepfamily is a major life change with its own complex set of stressors to which
children of divorce are often exposed, the outcomes as a function of the independent and
moderating effects of both single custodial mother family status and stepfamily status
are examined. Also
considered are the outcomes to be long-term in that they were measured 8 years after
temperament was observed in 100% of the samples, and 4 or more years postdivorce in 68%
of the samples (and 2
or more years postdivorce in 82% of the samples). As time since divorce could not be kept
constant for an entire sample, it was included as a control variable in all analyses
where family status
effects were tested (Bray, 1988; Hetherington, 1987).
Of 976 families interviewed in 1975, 805 had biological mothers and fathers and were
maritally intact. These families comprised the eligible sample for a current study. In
1983
when the children were ages 9 to 18, 699 or 86.8% of the 1975 eligible families were
reinterviewed. Youngest children from poor urban families were slightly more likely to be
lost; otherwise,
demographic characteristics closely matched those of the 1975 eligible sample as tested
by chi-square analyses. Of those reinterviewed, 648 (92.7%) of the 699 families fulfilled
study criteria
for retention in the current study; 508 families had remained married (intact families),
99 had divorced or separated with single mothers retaining custody of the study children
(single custodial
mother or SCM families), and 41 had divorced with custodial mothers remarrying
(stepfamilies). The remaining 51 families were eliminated because the mothers were no
longer living with the
children (21), the mothers had been widowed (13), the mothers had obtained more than one
divorce (6), the fathers were institutionalized (6), or data were incomplete (5). Of the
140 divorced
families, 11 separated or divorced within 1 year after the 1975 assessment and 129 (92%)
separated or divorced 1 or more years after the 1975 assessment. Average interval between
the 1975
assessment and separation or divorce was 3 1/2 years.
By mapping the nature of stresses that divorce creates for children, we can attempts to
fill the gap left by the absence of societal expectations in this area. The division of
stresses into those stemming from environmental versus internal sources not only makes
the divorce experience for children more understandable, but also provides specific
strategies for
alleviating the pain divorce brings for so many youngsters.
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