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Divorced parents' children vs. Married parents children Each year, more than 1 million children experience the divorce of their parents. In 1995, less than 60 % of US children were living with both biologic parents, almost 25 % were living with their mother only, approximately 4 % were living with their father only, and the rest were living with step - families, adoptive families, or foster families (including other relatives). It is estimated that there are 500 000 new divorced fathers each year. Divorce rates peaked in 1979 - 1981 at 5. 3 per 1000 persons and decreased by 2002 to 4. 4 per 1000 persons (Emery, 115).
Approximately 50 % of first marriages and 60 % of second marriages end in divorce. Divorce and separation may be solutions to a discordant marriage, and any decrease in intra family hostility may be constructive; however, for many children and their parents, tensions continue and the entire divorce process is a long, searing experience. Divorce is the termination of the family unit, and thus, it is often characterized by painful losses. Approximately half of all children do not see their fathers after divorce, and relatively few have spent a night in their fathers' homes in the past month. Numerous sociological and psychological studies indicate significant psychological, social and even economic differences between children from intact and disrupted families, which extend far beyond the period of childhood, having long-term effects. The divorce itself is usually not the first major change in the affected child's life.
Parental conflict before the separation often leads to internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, even in preschoolers. Children's sense of loss is ongoing and may increase, especially on holidays, birthdays, and special school events and when trying to integrate new family relationships. Other losses for the child or adolescent relate to changes in home, extended family, school, playmates, financial status, and parental work schedules. Up to half of children show a symptomatic response during the first year after their parents divorce. Risk factors for continuing childhood difficulty include ongoing parental discord, maternal depression, psychiatric disorders in either parent, and poverty.
Long-term follow-up studies indicate that divorce may limit or delay children's capacity for intimacy and commitment as young adults. The clinical manifestations of divorce in children depend on many variables, including the child's age; the pre-divorce level of the family's psychosocial functioning; the parents' ability in the midst of their own anger, loss, and discomfort to focus on their child's feelings and needs; and the child's temperament and temperamental fit of parents with their children. Infants and children younger than 3 years may reflect their caregivers' distress, grief, and preoccupation; they often show irritability, increased crying, fearfulness, separation anxiety, sleep and gastrointestinal problems, aggression, and developmental regression. At 4 to 5 years of age, children often blame themselves for the breakup and parental unhappiness, become more clingy, show externalizing behavior (acting out), misperceive the events of the divorce situation, fear that they will be abandoned, and have more nightmares and fantasies. School-aged children may be moody or preoccupied, show more aggression, temper, and acting out behavior. They seem uncomfortable with gender identity and feel rejected and deceived by the absent parent.
School performance may decrease, and they may agonize about their divided loyalties and feel that they should be punished. Simultaneously, adolescents may feel decreased self-esteem and may develop premature emotional autonomy to deal with negative feelings about the divorce and their de idealization of each parent. Their anger and confusion often lead to relationship problems, substance abuse, decreased school performance, inappropriate sexual behavior, depression, and aggressive and delinquent behavior (Never, 156). The age at the time of parental divorce has been found to affect the child's short-term reactions to the separation (Wallerstein & Blakeslee, 29 - 30). The impact of a child's age and developmental phase at the time of divorce on later adaptation has received less attention than the impact on short-term reactions. Most studies have been designed to explore the impact on adolescents' adaptation.
It has been shown that during the transitional phase of adolescence, problems caused by previous family stress may be revealed. In particular, this delayed effect has been reported by Wallerstein and Corbin, who showed that girls, who initially adapted well, developed feelings of anxiety during adolescence in relationships with men (Wallerstein & Corbin, 596). Empirical studies of children from divorced and non-divorced families have reported ambiguous results. In 1991 Amato and Keith conducted extensive analysis of 92 studies, using different education, relational and psychological variables. Particularly, the analysis indicated poorer adjustment for children from divorced families in more than two thirds.
Simultaneously, the studies conducted by Hetherington and Buchanan examined differences between adolescents of intact and disrupted families, considering those cases, when the divorce took place in earlier adulthood. In 1993, Zill analyzed data obtained from a large national probability sample on the subject of adjustment according to family structure. Thus, Zill indicated strong association between nature of child-parent relationships and divorce adjustment (Zill, 98). Practically, Zill reported poorer relationships among 11 - 17 -year-olds with divorced fathers compared with intact families (Zill, 98). However, in the year range of 18 - 22 relationships were poorer for both divorced parents. Zill's conclusions also supported some implications of the studies conducted by Amato, which reported poorer relationships with each parents, however with a greater effect in father-child relations (Amato, 31).
Simultaneously, Buchanan indicated that childrens middle position between two parents was interconnected with higher anxiety and depression reported in adolescents. According to Buchanan's study, children describe their position as caught in the middle (Buchanan, 1009). Numerous studies of the divorce effects on children have indicated inconsistent conclusions in regard to gender differences. Thus, reports conducted in 1980 s suggested that boys usually react more negatively than girls. However, Hetherington asserted that practical gender differences were difficult to unravel, because of confounded results in population shift from significant boy vulnerability during childhood and girl disorder in later years (Hetherington, 52). According to other studies, young children reported better adjustment in the case of same sex parent residence.
From the critical point of view, the majority of contemporary research on divorce effects on children is of a comparative nature, based upon a comparison of children from intact and divorced households. Honess takes the position that the emphasis on the comparison between children from divorced and intact families is largely unhelpful because it tends to be used to address questions which are too general in nature (Honess, 117). Therefore, it is necessary additionally to focus on process, in particular the process of children's post-divorce adjustment than it is to examine outcomes. However, the concept of adjustment in children can be problematic to define. In attempting to create a working definition for the term, it is useful to establish the basic needs of a child in order to comprehend what adjustment involves. Honess outlines the four main needs of a child as being: 1.
A stable, warm and intimate family relationship; 2. Good role models; 3. Consistent discipline; 4. The freedom to love both parents. Although the term post-divorce adjustment is in common usage in the research literature associated with divorce, it may be a misnomer. It has been argued that the critical event for the child is not the divorce itself but rather the initial parental separation.
This is not to say, however, that the event of the divorce is not important to children. Although Honess argues that divorce is only a legal marker and in some situations can be seen as the setting up of a new relationship rather than the ending of the old, psychologists and researchers must not forget that for children the formation of a new and imposed relationship brings new stresses and requires further adjustments. Practically, during Honess study evidence from interviews with the custodial mothers revealed that four times as many of the counseled children had experienced multiple stressors (i. e. the loss of a family member) at the time of separation when compared with the non-counseled children.
It is possible that these additional stressors result in an overloading of the counseled children's capacity to cope, leading to developmental disruption and a lower level of adjustment (Honess, 119). The accumulation of multiple stressors or concurrent stresses has been shown to have an adverse effect on children's adjustment. The presence of these stressors may be the most significant factor leading to the poor post-divorce adjustment of the counseled children. Wallerstein and her coworkers emphasized the importance of love relationships, working life, and young adults own parenthood in assessing long-term adverse reactions associated with the timing of parental divorce. Frost and Pakiz have suggested that many adversities associated with parental divorce tend to diminish over time (Frost & Pakiz, 547). In their follow-up study they found more antisocial behavior among adolescent boys from recently disrupted homes.
This finding is supported by studies on the outcome of antisocial behavior, including heavy alcohol consumption and truancy, and criminality among adolescent boys (Mednick, Baker & Carothers, 201 - 220). However, when sexual development was chosen as a measure of outcome in girls, early separation from father was shown to have more adverse effects. Feelings of anger along with aggressive behavior were more common among adolescent girls who had experienced parental divorce in the Oedipal phase than among younger and older girls and also among boys in general. According to Wallerstein and Blakeslee sadness and depression were common symptoms in young adults who experienced parental divorce in latency (Wallerstein & Blakeslee, 44). They found that girls who had experienced parental divorce at the age of 6 to 13 years were less well adapted than the younger or older group.
In the 6 -to 8 -year-old group, 40 % were doing well, and in the 9 to 13 group, less than one-third were doing well. Depression was common among those who were doing poorly, both at the 5 -and 10 -year follow-up (Wallerstein & Blakeslee, 47). Suicide attempts during adolescence were common in this age group. The boys internal functioning in the 9 to 13 group was poor more often than among girls. Half of the boys were characterized as unhappy about current relationships and concerned about the future. Their internal functioning was characterized by a profound unhappiness about current relationships and concerns about the future (Wallerstein, 120).
Thus, earlier studies suggest that the nature of problems associated with earlier parental divorce may be dependent upon the childs developmental stage at the time. In this population, both males and females from divorced families showed more signs of psychosomatic symptoms at the age of 16 (Aro & Rantanen, 1992). They were depressive at the age of 22 compared to young people from non divorced families (Aro & Rantanen, 329). Further, the life trajectories of these young people differed from each other in many respects. In the 1997 study conducted by Kiernan and Hobcraft population about one percent experienced parental divorce every year. In the group whose parents had divorced before school age the majority, which constituted about 80 % had experienced divorce at the age of three to six.
In the latency group the frequency distribution was more or less even throughout the period, and in the adolescent group it declined with age. Persons in different time-of-divorce groups did not differ from each other in terms of socioeconomic background (Kiernan & Hobcraft, 423). Among males at the age of 22, depression...
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Research essay sample on Divorced Children Vs Married Parents Part 1
