Effects of a Divorce on the Social Development of Adolescents - Essay Example

of the Effects of a divorce on the cognitive and social development of adolescents This paper discusses the effects of divorce on the social and cognitive development of adolescents. A study of scholarly journals and online database helps to arrive at a conclusion that while findings may be statistically significant, there is little practical implication. While earlier literature reflected negative impact of divorce, actual studies reveal that there is minimal variation in the development of the children of divorce and those in intact families. Besides, the process of divorce begins much before the actual divorce takes place. The trauma, stress, and tensions that all members in the family undergo before the divorce have more impact than the period after the divorce. Intact families may also be undergoing the same dysfunctional environment, as do the families to be divorced. Introduction A phenomenal rise in divorce rates in the developed countries during the 1960s and 1970s made nations tighten the divorce laws. Studies showed that children of divorced parents experienced more emotional and behavioral problems than children who live with both biological parents. It was a widely accepted perception that marital disruption makes adolescents more vulnerable to problems. This led to the formulation of a series of legal reforms and social policies to increase and enforce child support system. With the help of professional peer reviewed journals and online database, this paper will determine the effects of a divorce on the cognitive and social development of adolescents. Adolescents’ response to parental divorce has been focus of research for many sociologists and psychologists. These responses have significant effect on their behavioral patterns, social development, their moods, and anxieties. There is convincing evidence that children of divorce experience more psychological, social and academic difficulties than the peers from intact families. The old school of thought believed that parental divorce was an event which, affected children after the divorce had actually taken place. Recently, family researchers look at marital disruptions as a continuous process that occurs much before the marriage dissolves and may continue long after the divorce takes place (Sun, n.d.). Research Bogenschneider, Kaplan & Morgan (1993) quote from a review of 92 studies of divorce undertaken by Amato & Keith (1991) which involved 13000 children. According to the review, children of divorce experience lower levels of well-being than children from intact families across several domains. According to Researcher Sun at Ohio State University, ‘divorce is a process, not just a single incident’ and not much attention is paid to how divorce affects children as a continuous process. Longitudinal studies suggest that children exhibit deficits much before the separation of parents actually takes place but the magnitude of pre-disruptions has not been ascertained. Cherlin et al., (1991) are of the opinion that “a substantial portion of what is usually considered the effect of divorce on children is visible before the parents separate”. Chase-Lansdale & Hetherington (1990) state when parental divorce finally occurs, the process transfers into a crisis stage (cited by Sun). Consistent with Sun’s view that divorce is a process, Matthews (n.d.), discusses long-term effects of divorce on adolescents. According to him, divorce occurs in six phases and the entire family experiences a variety of abrupt changes in the process. Matthews calls the predisruption, as referred to by most researchers, as the emotional divorce. This is the period when the effect on the adolescents is the highest, but due to their close association with their peers, they are able to repress their feelings about their parents’ divorce. Later in life, these emerge again and hence there are far reaching effects in the long-term. He says children can experience the ‘sleeper effect’. They may appear to recover quickly after a divorce but the feelings in the sub-conscious level emerge at a point later in life. Study of children of divorce by Wallerstein (1985) after a 5-year and 10-year follow up showed that adolescents suffered from sorrow, anger, and intensity of longing. According to Furstenberg & Teitler (1994), “…children from disrupted families are significantly more likely to express discontent with their lives as measured by an index of life satisfaction.” (cited by Matthews). Even though the youth describe themselves as having emerged stronger and independent following the divorce of their parents, they did reveal fear of betrayal, loss, abandonment, and rejection. Painter & Levine (1999) quote Cherlin and others (1991) who examined the lives of children at the age of seven (in the UK) or 7 to 11 (in the US) and then re-examined these very children after about four years later when their parents had divorced. “For boys, the apparent effect of separation or divorce on behavior problems and achievement at the later point was sharply reduced by considering behavior problems, achievement levels and family difficulties at the earlier time point, before any of the families had broken up.” According to Wallerstein (1991) several previous studies found that boys had more problems preceding a divorce than girls did (cited by Painter & Levine). Most researchers used the data compiled by the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS). This is sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics and carried out by the Bureau of the Census. NELS provides data about critical transitions experienced by young people as they develop, attend school, and embark on their careers (Painter & Levine, 1999). The 1998 survey was a multifaceted study with questionnaires for students, teachers, parents, and the school. Researcher Sun used the samples of National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS), in which 798 or 8% of the students had divorce in their family between the two waves of data collection in 1990 and again 1992. These were all tenth and twelfth grade students. The study by Sun revealed that students from pre-disrupted families showed poorer performance in every area that was measured. According to Sun, divorce reduces the face-to-face confrontations, which the children have to encounter. Emotional stress is further reduced as a result. Their study clearly demonstrated that psychological well-being and behavioral problems was evident in both male and female students from pre-disrupted families. Substance abuse indicates additional problems for male students. They found dysfunction in every family environment. Sun cites Amato (1993) and Hines (1997) who pinpoint that “parental discord and the consequential deterioration in parent-child relationships as the major cause for predisruption problems”. Apart from the parent-child relationships, deteriorating interpersonal relationships in predisrupted families may increase the chances of children’s psychological and behavioral problems. Children in such families exhibit fear and anger according to Cummings (1987) and Amato et al., (1995) believe that they model parents’ aggressive behavior (cited by Sun). Sun’s analyses indicate that predisruption factors are responsible for most of the negative impacts of marital disruption. Sun does not agree that boys are more affected than girls are; he finds the girls equally vulnerable. This is especially evident in the children of 16 years old and had experienced predisruption. Marital disruption places stress and tension equally on both genders. Amato (2001) summarized the effects of divorce based on the research conducted in 1990s (cited by Brown, Young & Allen, 2003). Amato included 67 studies, which included sample of children living in single-parent family due to divorce and children living with continuously married parents. The five different categories that were measured included academic achievement, conduct, psychological and emotional adjustment, self-concept, and social relations. Findings revealed that children of divorced parents performed poorly on most of the categories measured. Effect sizes ranged from -0.22 to -0.15, which were small and implied that the overall impact of divorce had little practical importance. Amato further compared these results to findings in a previous meta-analysis. The report stated that the negative effects of divorce on delinquency, aggression, and psychological adjustment continually diminished from the 1950s to the 1980s. This could possible be due the decreased social stigma connected with divorce and increased availability of child-focused interventions. The trend now seems to be reversing possibly due to economic condition of the children of divorce or due to many low-discord marriages ending in divorce. When discords between parents are not apparent, divorce comes as a rude shock to the children and may create additional trauma for the children. Reifman, Villa, Amans, Rethinam, & Telesca (2001), conducted further meta-analysis of 35 studies including seven outcome variables: school achievement, conduct, psychological adjustment, self-concept, social adjustment, mother-child relations and father-child relations (cited by Brown et al.,). This report too exhibited weak effect sizes indicating that there was similarity in outcomes between the children of divorce and those living with married parents. This again supports the view that children of divorce do not actually demonstrate significantly different outcomes than those living with married parents although pre-disruption outcomes were significantly negative. Brown et al further explain that though the outcomes in the two groups of children is statistically significant, the practical impact is insignificant. In quoting Hetherington & Stanley-Hagan (1999), they state that most children adapt to their parents divorce and demonstrate resiliency. Extensive documents are available which demonstrate negative association between the social and cognitive developments in adolescents with divorce. This negative relationship may be reflecting some unobserved family differences between children of divorce and intact families. Vuri & Sanz De Galdeano (2004) analyzed the data of NELS of 1988 to investigate whether divorce reduced cognitive ability. Test scores of adolescents are associated with future wages. Various literatures related to negative impact on children’s outcomes were reviewed by Amato & Keith in 1991. The main findings by Vuri & Sanz De Galdeano was that parental divorce does not adversely affect cognitive development. They too arrive at the same conclusion as Sun, that adverse effects are more prominent before the divorce actually takes place. All their findings suggest that impact of divorce does not significantly differ across different adolescent groups. All these results relate to short term effects, which means effect of divorce on children last between six months to a year after divorce. However, even though Vuri & Sanz De Galdeano were skeptical, study of data revealed that both the readings were very modest and that effects are equal. Painter & Levine selected 25000 eighth grade students at random for study. Three follow-up visits to the same sample of students were given in 1990, 1992, and 1994, which effectively means when the sample students were in the tenth grade, twelfth grade and roughly two years after high school graduation. They restricted their study to white non-Hispanics because family structures across white and non-whites and again between Hispanics and others. Their study was across different parameters but as far as families that would soon divorce were considered, evidence stated that the test scores were slightly higher. Incidence of smoking and drugs was slightly higher in these families but not statistically significant. Their study did not bring out evidence of boys having more problems than girls, as was stated by Wallerstein. They also found that parental characteristics and behavior in families to be divorced and in intact families were same but there were some reports about behavioral and emotional problems reported by the teachers and parents. These could possibly be due to the tensions that their parents’ marriage would end soon. Their study had limitations because they do not know how many family transitions would have taken place before the students reached the eight grades. Cherlin et al., (1991), trace the differences between the two groups of children to three distinct family situations under which the adolescents are likely to be affected. The first instance is when there is discord between parents, which could perhaps lead to divorce. The second is close to the first instance, when divorce due to marital conflict seems imminent. The third is after the divorce has actually taken place. This situation leads to emotional trauma, reduced income, and continued conflict. Most researches and studies have focused on the outcome in adolescents after the divorce takes place. Cherlin et al., observed the details of family interaction. They made a comparative study of the effects on children both in Britain and the US over a period of four years. They considered single-factor scales for the adolescents which included items like changes in mood, feels no one loves him or her, high strung, tells lies, too fearful, argues too much, difficulty concentrating, easily confused, cruel to others, disobedient at home, disobedient at school, impulsive, feels inferior, not liked by other children, has obsessions, restless, stubborn or irritable, has strong temper, sad or depressed, withdrawn, feels others are out to get him or her, hangs around with kids who get into trouble, secretive, and worries too much. They restricted their studies to children who lived with both parents in the first wave of studies and whose parents were divorced four years later. They found that effects on US boys were similar to the British boys. Their study evidenced that the effect of divorce on children can be predicted because the conditions exist much before the actual divorce. Their findings also suggest that attention needs to be paid to the troubled atmosphere in intact families and not merely the families to undergo divorce. According to Hetherington (1993), a recent study indicates that the absence of father or presence of stepfather in divorced or remarried families lead to early physical maturity (cited by Bogenschneider et al.,). Girls in divorced families menstruated four months earlier and those in remarried families eight months earlier than girls in intact families. Early maturity in girls in linked to problem behavior in several studies. Zill et al., (1993) report that youth between 18 and 22 years old were twice as likely to have poor relationships with their mothers and fathers when their parents had divorced (cited by Bogenschneider et al.). Hetherington further reports that as children enter adolescence, those who had been previously functioning well, start showing behavior problems. Based on several researches that have explored the impact of parental divorce on adolescents, according to (Hines, 1999), disruption through divorce may produce negative effects. Adolescents experience the same trauma as the younger children in divorce. They need to find ways to accept the changes in their family relationships (cited by Lewis, n.d.). Conclusion This paper has examined the effects of divorce on the social and cognitive developments in adolescents. The negative reporting from various literatures differs from the actual findings. No generalizations can be made on the effects of divorce. Most researches have limitations. Individual outcomes based on gender, ethnicity, race, and other demographic variables have not been considered. Differences in the family structure, background, and socio-economic conditions, can affect the adolescents in addition to the process of separation of his or her parents. Many researchers are of the opinion that dysfunctional family environment in intact families may have the same effect when there is continued trouble between parents and when divorce is postponed. In such cases, divorce is a better option, which may perhaps improve the lives of the youth. Nevertheless, most researchers are consistent in several findings. Firstly, the actual divorce or the period after divorce is not as important as the trauma during the predisruption period, before the divorce actually happens. The adolescents may exhibit adverse effects before the divorce than those from the intact families. Secondly, the process of divorce begins much before the actual divorce takes place. This is termed as emotional divorce or the predisruption period. Thirdly, divorce does not lead to negative effect on the social and cognitive development in the adolescents. Fourthly, boys do not demonstrate more delinquent behavior than girls do under similar circumstances. The findings of all studies may be statistically significant but practical implication has been minimal as reported by most researchers. During adolescence, individuals may suppress their emotions or feelings but chances of these emotions emerging in their adult life are high. This of course calls for study that is more intensive and the same sample needs to be tested after a gap of ten years. References: Bogenschneider, K., Kaplan, T. & Morgan, K. (1993). Single parenthood and childrens well-being. (Wisconsin Family Impact Seminar Briefing Report No. 2, 50 pages). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Center for Excellence in Family Studies, accessed 13 May 2006 Brown, A., Young, E, & Allen, M, (2003), The Effects of Divorce on children, NASP Communiqué, Vol. 32, #3 accessed 13 May 2006 Cherlin, A. J., Frank F. F Jr., P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Kathleen E. K, Philip K. R, Donna R,. M, and Julien O. T, et al, (1991), "Longitudinal studies on effects of divorce on children in Great Britain and the United States." Science 252.n5011 (June 7, 1991): 1386(4). British Council Journals Database. Thomson Gale. 11 May 2006 Lewis., S, (n.d.), Adult Children of Divorce, Family and Consumer Sciences, Ohio State University Extension Factsheet, accessed 13 May 2006 Matthews., D. W., (n.d.), Long-term effects of divorce on children, North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, accessed 13 May 2006 Painter, G., & Levine, D. I, (1999), Family Structure and Youths’ Outcomes: Which Correlations are Causal?, accessed 13 May 2006 Sanz De Galdeano., A & Vuri, D. (2004), Does Parental Divorce Affect Adolescents’ Cognitive Development?, accessed 13 May 2006 Sun., Y, (n.d.), Family Environment and Adolescents Well-Being Before and After Parents Marital Disruption: A Longitudinal Analysis, Journal of Marriage and Family, accessed 13 May 2006 Read More