Impact of Divorce on Children

The Effects of Divorce on Children

I. Introduction

There is much controversy regarding divorce and the impact that it has on children, given that while some consider that it does not affect them negatively, others believe that it has a particularly harmful impact on their upbringing and on their later lives. Divorce traumatizes children and is very likely to be responsible for a great deal of negative outcomes experienced by children. However, while children are recognized as being victims of divorce procedures, most of them gradually recover from this trauma and develop into individuals that are perfectly able to integrate society from a psychological, social, and academic perspective. The masses are probable to consider that this makes it difficult for them to be against divorce simply because it affects a limited number of children, but the truth is that conditions are critical when considering these respective children and the way that they evolve.

II. The history and significance of Divorce

Research regarding the effects of divorce on children has traditionally focused on the first two years of the child’s life consequent to the divorce. This prevented researchers from understanding matters from a more general point of view, given that the first years after a divorce are likely to put across great distress, both for the child and for his or her parents. In order for people to be able to get a better understanding of the effects of divorce on children, they need to study individuals for a prolonged period of time and to compare them with children who live normal lives in families that were not separated. This can be done through analyzing people in the contemporary society who went through a divorce in their early lives several decades ago, as such a study is likely to generate important results concerning the actual long-term effects that divorce has on children.

The number of divorces today by far exceeds the number of divorces in the nineteenth century. This is possible because of several factors such as the fact that women are no longer financially dependent on men and the fact that individuals started to get married with the intention to experience personal fulfillment while being part of a couple. Divorce has come to be one of the principal elements damaging society, considering the effects that it had on adults and on children. This is especially worrying because “adults and children from divorced families, as a group, score lower than their counterparts in married-couple families on a variety of indicators of well-being” (Amato).

It is difficult to determine whether divorce is beneficial in someone’s life because it is possible for the respective person to experience distress as a consequence of conflicts or abuse happening within the family during the time when his or her parents