Divorce Harm Children by Judith S Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee - Essay Example

In the article, the authors conducted a specific type of study in which they tracked about 60 families and their hundred children. They inquired about the effects the divorce had produced on them. They found out that the boys of divorced families do not have any goals; they do not want to grow in life, while the girls of divorced families do not trust other men in their lives. They suffer from a special type of fear in which they fear bounding themselves in a family with a man. This fear is known as the Sleeper's effect. In short with the data the authors tried to prove the negative effects of divorce on children. They declared that divorce is traumatizing and it produces severe effects on the lives of the affected families.

Disagreement:
I disagree with both the authors and their statistics. It is just that they wanted to show the negative side of the issue. The data was not neutrally collected. Only the negative theme was extracted.

Children's Emotional Graph:
The authors presented a graph in their study in which they tried to show that most children suffer emotional and behavioral problems after the marriage of their parents. According to the data presented it shows that about 25% of children of such families suffer from mental disorders. They did not show in the graph the prior state of the children of such families. It must be possible that the children were under great stress due to the constant family conflicts of marriage and after divorce, their mental state was improved due to living alone or with a single parent.

The Sleeper Effect:
The authors also showed by statistics that approx 66% of the women from the age of 9 to 23 suffered from the sleeper effect. They were too afraid to bind themselves in any relation. Also, the memories of the divorce of their parents never helped them to make a stable relationship. The greater flaw in the study is that these women might be afraid of poor marriages, not divorces. They never trust any men due to the image of their father. Or it can also be the reason that all women normally do not trust marriages, it is not due to the issue of divorce.

Insecure Children:
The authors also argued over the fact that children after the divorce of their parents become emotionally insecure. They feel a burden on their shoulders like they were the reason behind the divorce of their parents. This is not the case, it is proved that some children become more and more responsible at an early age after the divorce.
So it can be rightly said that the author’s argument and the data are completely invalid and unjustified. Read More