The Effects of Divorce on Children - Essay Example

Prof’s Divorce and Children Divorce has been something of an alarmist’s dream in recent decades – the rates of divorce are spiraling upwards, all while public consciousness seems to coalesce around the idea that children of divorced parents do more poorly, an idea that is actually backed up by some scientific research. It has all the perfect elements of a moral panic, and in many ways everyone is obliging. The fact remains, however, that divorce can be an incredibly traumatizing event for a child, and that they have little control over how to deal with it, how their lives will change as a result of it, and so on. There is a significant consensus among academic publications that divorce as an event has a net negative effect on children’s experience of wellbeing, but different authors differ significantly as to the reasons why such differences might exist and the long term psychological impact on children of divorce. Public opinion, however, is nearly unanimous in believing that divorce is damaging for children, though some argue that the long term impact might be better. In interviews, people generally state ideas that they have consumed from media (both news and popular) about divorce – essentially saying that the odds are that divorce will be harmful, but significant steps can be taken to reduce or mitigate that harm. Overall, the sources are in remarkable agreement about the effect of divorce on children of divorce. After a brief survey of available literature, I found three articles pertinent to the discussion: Amato’s “Consequences of divorce for adults and children” (2000), McGuinness’s “Marriage, divorce and children” (2006), and Hetherington’s “Divorce: A child’s perspective” (1979), which, while being significantly older than the other sources, provides unique insights into why negative consequences of divorce occur, as well as having been a long-term study that tracked children into adulthood to understand the impact of divorce. There is widespread consensus among all of the sources that divorce has a net negative effect on children. Amato (2000, pg. 1282) sums up the consensus remarkable well, which should be unsurprising as his research was secondary research that largely tried to make sense out of former research: “we know that adults and children from divorced families, as a group, score lower than their counterparts in married-couple families on a variety of indicators of wellbeing.” This essentially mirrors statements made in each of the other articles; in fact, the other two articles treat the idea that damage is done during the process of divorce as a known fact, for instance McGuiness simply quipping that “obviously, divorce reverberates in a child’s life for many years,” (2006, 20), and stating that the fundamental “truth” is that “marriage offers substantial benefits to children” (McGuiness, 2006, pg. 17). Hetherington’s research also largely concurred, indicating that almost any measure of wellbeing was worse amongst children of divorce than children who were not from divorced households. These researchers differed significantly, however, in their interpretation of why children of divorce performed worse than ones who marry. Though each researcher made reference to the tempting notion that there was some sort of selection bias in play (IE that children of divorce were less happy because the family situation of parents who decide to get divorced is likely to have problems that filter down to affecting the child), none of the researches were convinced that this process amounted to the primary reason for the apparent negative impact of divorce. Amato (2000, pg. 1287) even, in his survey of recent research, found that when largely controlling for variables such as family situation and so forth, divorce itself seemed to be problematic, that is that two children in exactly the same circumstance would have differing levels of success based on whether or not their parents were married. Given that selection bias does not seem viable, each researcher had their own focus on why they thought children of divorce score lower on metrics of happiness. Amato largely believes that it is impossible to pinpoint, in the current research ecology, exactly why these children of divorce tend to be less successful, and that more could be discerned by evaluating children of domestic but unmarried partnerships that dissolve, along with analysis of people who have always had a single parent or who had a parent die (2000, pg. 2182). Hetherington, on the other hands, focuses on the psychology of divorce, especially the fact that it highlights a child’s lack of power, and creates an atmosphere of victimization that removes children from actualization. Essentially, children are unhappy because they are passengers in the divorce process, and cannot defend their own aims. McGuiness has an interesting though sadly unsupported theory that divorce itself is not necessarily a problem, it simply allows for more chances of error. Essentially, this argument argues that divorce is one of the few circumstances in which so many different aspects of a child’s life change simultaneously: living arrangements, schools, possibly inserting new people into life and so on (McGuiness, 2005, 20). In this theory, each life change includes a chance of “human error” – an adjustment that is either not handled by the child or the child’s support properly. Thus, divorce is traumatic not because of what it is, but the consequences that surround it: if a child had all the life changes of divorce without an actual divorce, their success rates would be quite similar to that of divorced children. According to McGuiness, this idea holds a great deal of “hope” for children of divorce, because it suggests that process can play an important role: if each symptom of divorce is dealt with properly, the overall experience can be much less damaging. Media seems to have filtered much of the scientific dialogue surrounding the process of divorce, though they have also simplified the arguments somewhat. In three articles, one from the New York Times, one from the Globe and Mail and one from Fox News, each article shows an understanding of the idea that divorce is harmful to children. Ablow of Fox News puts it the most bluntly in his analysis of the recent divorce of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes – he says that divorce will “severely impact children in negative ways” and that this process is likely to occur with their child as well. The New York Times article, which is structured as a debate between disagreeing academics, also notes that psychological studies have indicated that divorce has a negative impact on children, with one participant even arguing that this should be enough reason to put severe restrictions on divorce law. Hampson of the Globe and Mail note that divorce can have impact even on children who have left the home, and who have somewhat more settled lives that are less directly impacted by divorces. All in all, the media seems to feature a somewhat simpler understanding than the scientific consensus, but one that comes to essentially the same result: that divorce is harmful for children to varying degrees depending on the particular circumstances of individual divorces. There is an undercurrent that is more prominent in popular than scientific media, however, which is that of the abused family fleeing an abusive family member, which offers a defense of divorce and indicates that there are situations in which children are much better off from having been through a divorce. This idea is stated explicitly by Stevens of the New York Times, who indicate that there are often many situations in which women are attempting to flee domestic abuse through divorce, and that states in which divorce is more freely available have lower rates of abuse both of children and of adults, along with lower suicide rates. In interviews, members of the public largely concurred with the media’s analysis. I interviewed three people in writing this paper: a white female classmate in their early 20s, a male owner of a Chinese restaurant who was willing and in their late 50s, and a black female acquaintance in their early 30s. Each interviewee was asked three questions: do you think children of divorce are less happy than people in marriages? Do you think that is because of the divorce or the facts of the marriage before the divorce? And what percentage of children do you think would be better or worse as a consequence of a divorce? Despite the wide demographic differences, each interviewee had largely the same answer as each other. These answers also seemed to mirror media portrayals of the divorce. Interestingly, while each person gave an affirmative answer to the first question, indicating that they believed children of divorce to be largely less happy than their counterparts, each of the female participants also brought up at this point that this would not be the case of families fleeing domestic abuse. Each participant also agreed that the divorce itself is likely to be traumatic regardless of circumstance. The biggest difference was in the third question, where the classmate indicated that probably only about half of children are worse off due to a divorce (indicating that half were probably leaving family situations that were originally worse), the Chinese restaurant owner indicated that children would almost be universally be worse off due to a divorce, while the acquaintance gave a number of only about 10% of children being better off for a divorce. So though there seems to be a strong idea of a narrative of families using divorce to flee abuse, only one participant thought this was a common tactic. I largely agreed with their answers, because these answers largely mirrored media presentations, which largely mirror scientific research on the subject. It did show, however, that younger people tend to be less fearful of the effects of divorce than older people. All of these findings are easily integrated into the Ecological systems theory. One thing that becomes apparent in almost every stage, from interviews all the way to scientific journals, is that divorce seems to cause incredibly strong distortions in a person’s microsystem. Fundamentally one of the facts of divorce is that the a person’s microsystem will be changed by it – the family relation one has might be change, as might place of living, peer experiences, and family structure will certainly change. This causes significant disruption to a person’s life. Furthermore, these changes sprinkle upwards through the higher-level systems. Exosystemic settings change because of changes in microsystemic settings – a parent’s experience at work, for instance, is unlikely to have a great impact on a child if the child does not live with them anymore. A child’s chronosystem might also be the source of much of the disturbance caused by divorce, and once more recognizable patterns are established it may become easier for children to cope. What is remarkable is that very little seems to change based on the original ecological system a person inhabits: divorce seems to almost universally have a negative effect, regardless of factors such as income, background culture, family and so forth. The degree to the negativity could differ significantly, however, but more research needs to be done to find if this is the case. Research, media and interviewees all show remarkable consensus on the subject of the effects of divorce on children. While scientific research indicates that these effects tend to be largely negative, they disagree on exactly why this negative impact occurs. Popular media, however, has somewhat more simplistic views, seeming to believe that divorce is almost always negative, and not really concerning itself as to why. The only exception is in the cases of violence, when popular media seems to laud the victims of violence who get divorce, and assume that children of such situations will be more rather than less successful in their new divorced state. Interviews largely conformed with media portrayals, which is unsurprising given the important fact that media plays such a large role in shaping expectations of major life events, including a divorce. Finally, when integrated into Bronfenbrenner’s ecosystemic approach, many of the findings make a great deal of sense, considering the fact that the basic underlying structures of a child’s ecosystems suffer upheaval through the course of a divorce. Works Cited Ablow, Keith (July 5, 2012). The Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes divorce: Psychiatry vs. Scientology? Foxnews.com. Amato, P. R. (2000). The consequences of divorce for adults and children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(4), 1269-1287.  Hampson, Sarah (August 07, 2009). “Adult Children carry the Burden of Divorce too” Globe and Mail. Hetherington, E. M. (1979). Divorce: A child's perspective.American Psychologist, 34(10), 851-858. McGuinness, T. M. (2006). Marriage, divorce, and children.Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services,44(2), 17. Stevenson, B (June 15 2012). Divorce and Domestic Violence. New York Times. Read More