Impacts of divorce on children
The relevance of Topic.
Introduction
Divorce is the dissolution or the permanent termination of a marriage union. In the United States, the divorce rate as it stands now, thirty-two people out of a thousand people are either divorced or undergoing a divorce. In fact, in 2012, the divorce rate stood at an all-time high of fifty per cent of marriages ending in divorces. The court and the judicial system in the United States have made it easier for people to dissolve their marriage. In some states, they grant a divorce if a couple has been separated for a few months. In other states, a person who intends to end their marriage need only to file divorce paper on the grounds of either fault or no-fault. However, after divorce, children of such families suffer from mental, emotional, spiritual and sometimes emotional trauma. Most of the times, the traumas go unnoticed. Therefore, this paper is going to discuss the impact of divorce on children.
Review of Literature
Weakened Parent-Child Relationships.
According to Fagan and Churchill, divorces lead to weakened parent-child relationships. In instances of divorce, the first decline in connection is between the parent and the child. For starters, parents have to relocate and find a location suitable to them. This leads to the breakage of the child’s routine. The child’s plan is at loggerheads with their two parents. Divorced parents feel that they are free to do what they want with their lives and therefore, make plans that suit them and later on fit in their children. For instance, a parent may move out of state and then on force the child to move around when it is their time to be with the child. In instances of divorce, Fagan and Churchill argue that the support that the children receive from home is rated much lower by children of divorced parents than by children from intact homes.
Moreover, children from divorced families receive less emotional support from their parents. Children from divorced families, in most instances, get split custody. The split custody implies that each parent gets their chance or time to be with the child and not with both parents at the same time. As such, they get varying emotional support from their two parents. In some instances, one parent may replace emotional support with financial backing. This is where the child gets to spend a lot of time with employed workers, vacations with a friend, or shopping alone rather than having quality time with their parents.
With a divorce, a child suffers from a decline in the ability to trust their parents. In cases of bad divorces, both parents manipulate and speak ill of their partners to their children. The child is then left split between the two parents. They do not know who is telling the truth or who is lying. In doing so, Fagan and Churchill argue that they lose trust not only in their parents but also their friends. The drop in confidence continues even into their adulthood where they cannot trust their partners.
Weakened mother-child bond
Fagan and Churchill argue that children suffer from weakened mother-child bond. Divorced mothers have more impoverished and less stimulating home environments. Divorced mothers are unable to give the much needed emotional support to their children, considering they are doubling up as primary breadwinners. There is also a decline in the level of trust between the mother and the child, thanks to the divorce process. Kaye argues that male children from divorce who live with their mothers were significantly more troubled at school and in the playground. Kaye argues that boys in divorced households exhibited more adverse effects in terms of inappropriate behaviour, work effort, and happiness.
Drop in educational level.
Children from divorced families experience a drop in education performance. According to Marco Albertini and Jaap Dronkers, educational level of children from divorced families is at per with children of widowed parents. In divorced families where the mother has full custody, there is an almost instant slight drop in the child’s performance. Albertini and Dronkers argue that the education level of the mother varies considerably according to the family type. In instances where the mother is uneducated, the child will receive a massive drop in performance. The same is compounded by the fact that the mother abandons her role as the new head of the family and starts to work to run the family.
Mental health.
According to Haimi and Lerner, the divorce process has a robust mental impact on the children. They continue to present a study done by Amato and Keith, where the two showed that children from divorced parents were more mentally unstable compared to children from regular families. They attribute the breakdown in communication, tradition, and family norms as the contributing factors to the decline in the mental health of the children. The introduced financial constraints on running two households make the parents distant and thereby reduce the level of commitment and emotion they offer to their children.
Moreover, the two argue that parent loss through a divorce brings about the loss of contact with one of the parents. The loss of parents is accompanied by the loss of skills, knowledge, and resources that were essential for the emotional support of the children. Such losses lead to children suffering from emotional loss and lead to massive mental instability. The problem is compounded by reduced parental adaptation, where the children’s coping is dependent on the psychological mood of their parents. In instances where the parent experiences mood swings and unpredictable mental stability, the children’s mental health is in jeopardy.
According to Dr Joan Kelly, kids from divorced parents experience internal conflicts which intensify the likelihood of the child suffering from behavioural problems and later on depression. The same is evident even in adulthood, where adult from divorced families reports marital conflict. Dr Joan traces the root of the marriage conflict to their parents’ divorce, which left them scarred and mentally unstable. Compared to children who came from “regular” families, children from divorced families suffer from abandonment and thereby become controlling. The controlling nature leads to their relationship breaking down.
Increase in the suicide rate.
There is a higher chance of children from divorced families to committing suicide. Haimi and Lerner argue that mental instability brought about by divorce contribute to high suicide rates among children from divorced families. Stress and depression from the divorce process also play a significant role in children committing suicide. They continue to argue that girls from divorced parents are likely to commit suicide compared to boys of divorced parents. Additionally, boys of divorced parents are at a higher rate of suicide ideation compared to girls of divorced parents.
Physical Illness,
Although divorce affects the mental, behavioural, and emotional aspect of the children, Haimi and Lerner submit that there is an increase in Chronic Daily Headache among children of divorced parents. The two continue to state that there is a prevalence of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) among children from divorced parents. In some instances, abuse among children of divorce contributes to this phenomenon. The situation is worse among younger children and teenagers. The lose in communication lead to children become self-reliant and, therefore, children suffer from physical illness without seeking help from their parents. In other instances, they fear retribution from their parents, thanks to the trauma their face during the divorce process.
Takeaway
From the information obtained from the research, although parents and society hold the view that children will cope with divorce, it is evident they do not deal properly. From research, there is a significant physical impact of divorce in children than discussed before. The physical effect of divorce is easily overlooked because children, especially those who are old enough, can mask the physical damage that they experience. The quality of life also drops among children from divorce due to emotional and financial constraint. Where money is sufficient, it is used to replace the lacking emotional support that the children need to cope with the divorce.
The relevance of the literature.
The new data obtained from the research and literature review, one can now understand the impact of divorce not only to the parent but most importantly, to the children. In most cases of divorce, people tend to consider the parents needs more than that of children. From the parents’ when they come up with a working schedule amongst themselves, they consider their divorce amicable and good for their children. They ignore the untold consequences of divorce to their children. They trust what their children tell them not believing that their children are also going through a new phenomenon.
From the literature, although a parent gets custody of the child, the child relationship with the child is never the same. The children lose confidence in them, for they cannot trust them. The problem is compounded in ugly divorces where the parents are out to paint each other in a bad light. After the divorce is over, most parents do not work to redeem the trust and confidence that their children had bestowed on them. They continue from where they stopped, not considering the changes that have happened to them have also happened to the children.
Thanks to the literature, a person can now understand that through a divorce, children lose resources that previously were coming in freely. Resources such as knowledge and skills, for example, the assistance of the child to do homework, being taught how to do plumbing or cooking disappear in a jiffy. In most divorce cases, the parents do not consider such loses. In doing so, they disadvantage their children leaving them to suffer internally. They end up resenting their parents and the institution of marriage. Parents should always consider such resources when filing for divorce and finding a way to fulfil them the same way their partners did.
After the divorce, we understand that children go through mental and emotional changes. In some instances, the changes manifest themselves physically where children start to perform poorly in school or begin to act out. In the cases where children’s emotions become physical, the parents notice them and start a plan on how to handle them. They schedule meetings with psychologists and children’s behavioural experts who help them manage the divorce process properly. As we have noticed, the process aids to rectify the underlying problem and thereby to improve the children’s behaviour.
However, from the research we have done, we can see that there are instances where the effects of divorce run deep. Children cover them up and do not act out reducing the probability of the parents noticing any changes. However, the damage made in them is transferred to their future relationships where they suffer from the fear of abandonment. As such, parents who are divorcing should encourage their children, the old and the young, to talk to a counsellor to help them solve the effects of divorce even if they do not feel the changes.
Lastly, from the literature reviewed, it is wise to conclude that despite the much effort put in place, there is still communication breakdown which has a significant impact on the children. Although the parents encourage communication with their children, they should consider both parents, even after divorce, communicating with their children together. In doing this, there will be an assured and reliable line of communication which the children can use at any given point in time. The open line of communication plays a role in reducing the stress and depression level among children.
Critique of the Literature
The quality of research and studies done by the writers of the articles used in this paper was excellent. They narrowed in on the child and dug out the major and the minor issues that affect children after divorce. They analyzed them and even gave numbers and figures to support their claim. However, one limitation that was noticeable from all the articles; there was no correlation of the impacts of the children on the effects of the parents. One of the primary question that a person would like answered is the impact of divorce on children and their parents.
Conclusion.
In a nutshell, divorce has an impact on children. The literature review and relevance of the literature have clearly shown the effects of divorce on children. The critique of the research has played a significant role in demonstrating a significant issue that the researchers left out. The subject left out by the researcher, hence, becomes the suggestion for where scholars should go next.