Effects of Divorce on Children - Coursework Example

Effects of Divorce on Children The issue of family conflicts and divorces have been growing more and more serious in the modern society, as the number of divorces has increased greatly since the beginning of the 21st century. This sad tendency hasn’t emerged from nothing, of course, but was fueled by the effect of numerous personal, social and psychological factors. Naturally, divorce as a social phenomenon has existed since the invention of the institution of marriage, but, along with a relatively simple procedure, it has become a very frequent thing nowadays. Whereas inviolacy of marriage has been impaired and neglected in the recent decades, people started to feel freer about breaking marital ties in case they have problems of different types, it became typical to escape from problems rather than try to solve them by joint efforts and compromise. In fact, the nature of divorce has evolved through centuries, similar to the nature of marriage itself. Centuries ago, it was common to marry due to benefits this union could provide: this could be financial or social status of a potential partner, family, religious or national preconditions. Moreover, the marriage used to be contracted without love and often at the discretion of parents and relatives. Many European couples of the 17th century were taught that they would learn to love each other once they entered the marriage (Porter). Generally, cultural and moral environment affected the institution of marriage much. So, as cultural and social conditions have changed since those times considerably, the position of marriage has changed as well. Marriage is no longer viewed as a sacred union, hence its dissolution is considered acceptable and is vested in a rather simple procedure. Due to this, people don’t feel enough responsibility when contracting a marriage and see divorce as an easy way out that is always available. This has led to increase in number of divorces in modern societies, with almost half of American couples eventually falling apart. There are plenty of preconditions and reasons that might lead a couple to such a radical decision, but the consequences of it can be rather negative for both sides in many aspects. Although people tend to view divorce as a solution of a problem, it often turns out to be another problem rather than a solution: divorce often multiplies problems and difficulties, and spouses might be not quite ready for them. Backgrounds of divorces are complex and incorporate profound reasons and certain conditions. Most commonly, reasons can be identified as some of the following: lack of responsibility in one or both spouses; priority of personal happiness and comfort; financial problems; or trivial incompatibility of tempers, views or even tastes (in politics, religion, culture or hobby). Reasons are reinforced with social conditions catalyzing increase in divorces – these are, for instance, urbanization, decrease in social control over social units, industrialization and emancipation. Thuswise, inhabitants of rural areas tend to divorce much less than residents of cities. Divorce as a phenomenon isn’t a momentary whim, it is usually resorted to as an outcome of long-lasting tensions and dissatisfactions in the couple. However, this phenomenon is far from being a problem of separate individuals; it is, above all, a social conflict resulting in decreasing birth rates and derogation of the society’s ethical standards. Taking into account seriousness of the issue, we will have a closer look at the effects produced by divorce. Effects of Divorce Probably, the most immediate victims vulnerable to devastating consequences of divorce are families themselves, including men, women and children. First of all, as any dramatic change in life – especially as a negative one – divorce might be a cause of stress. When a family falls apart, lives of both spouses (and of children) changes completely, and the need to adapt oneself to a new way of life arises. Serious stress is triggered by the necessity to get used to a new reality, and this stress might affect health, both physical and mental. Neuroses, insomnia, depression and other unfavorable displays of stress will arise inevitably. Modern researches keep on providing data about effect of divorce produced on health. Particularly, recent researches confirmed negative impact of divorce on men’s health. Divorced men are more vulnerable to substance abuse, hypertension, strokes and cardiovascular diseases which cause preliminary death (HuffPost). Divorced men have 250% higher mortality rates than married ones. Moreover, divorced people are more prone to alcoholism than those who never divorced (Jackson). Furthermore, this effect of divorce can be worsened by the fact that nowadays many couples fail to preserve good relationships and tend to shower each other with accusations and complaints. Thus, psychological condition of both partners is impaired greatly. Kathleen O’Connell Corcoran wrote: “Divorce is associated with an increase in depression--people experience loss of partner, hopes and dreams, and lifestyle” (O’Connell Corcoran). These words confirm the previous statements about the devastating effect of divorce of the partners’ psyche. In general, the overall satisfaction with life is believed to be much lower in divorced people. Another important aspect of divorce-related problems is, obviously, financial difficulties. As partners split, there isn’t joint family budget anymore and “same resources must now support almost twice the expenses” (O’Connell Corcoran). Mainly, as women leave children under their custody, there are many additional financial difficulties for them in raising children alone. Despite all the graveness of the impact on adults, the most vulnerable party suffering the biggest problems because of divorce is children. Divorce always hurts them the most as they love both mothers and fathers equally and find it hard to survive parting with one of the parents. Due to peculiarities of children’s psyche and development, divorce produces the widest range of impacts (obviously, negative) on them, and this topic has been a subject of numerous researches – this isn’t surprising as psychological trauma originating from childhood leaves deep “scars” in entire life of an individual. Impacts of Divorce on Children As family is the “prism” through which a child learns the world, seeks his/her place in it, learns to love, understand, forgive and enjoy life, relationships of parents are usually perceived as a role model. Looking at parents, children absorb models of behavior in certain situations, which are expected to help them in building their own relationships in future. In this way, parting of a family inevitably affects psychological condition of a child after divorce. According to specialists’ observations, stress and trauma caused to children may vary in seriousness and intensity depending on such aspects as age and sex. Although child reactions to divorce might vary, there is a set of general responses to this event in children. First of all, it is fear that a child feels, especially when being a witness of parents’ quarrels. Displays of hostilities and violence cause severe trauma. Secondly, children tend to blame themselves as they often act as a “center” of confrontation: parents often struggle for their child’s love (“who do you love most?”). Whereas confrontation and quarrels are trivial for parents on the verge of divorce, children might consider these quarrels to be their fault. Third response is self-depreciation and problems with self-esteem caused by the child’s belief that parents don’t love him/her. When one parent leaves the family, it is typical for the child to think that he/she was abandoned and doomed for loneliness. Moreover, as a parent who stays with the child after divorce – typically the mother – suffers difficulties him/herself, there can be lack of attention for the child, which may hurt his/her self-respect. One more psychological response is depression, as children see divorce as a loss. In contrast to other sad events, e.g. death of one of the parents, feelings related to divorce are likely to come to the surface for many years. For example, if a father cannot spend the weekend with his son or daughter due to some rush job, feeling of loss flares up again. This reaction is common both for adults and for children in case of divorce. Excessive sensibility and negativism are also likely to emerge in response to parents’ divorce. Seeing divorce as a disruption of the usual way of life and chaos, children may feel anger. For them, divorce is soreness and parents’ refusal to love them, hence there may be displays of excessive susceptibility and denial of reality. Next, due to family conflicts, children feel themselves as the fifth wheel and see themselves less “precious” and loved in comparison to others. Sense of guilt, related to divorce; shame for parents’ quarrels; examples of their hostility reinforce the child’s perception of him/herself as an outsider. Furthermore, devotion to the family limits possibility to share emotions with other people and thus strengthens the child’s isolation. Effect on Children’s Development in Accordance with Age It is quite natural that effect produced on children in connection to parents’ confrontation and divorce isn’t the same at every age: generally, effects and their scales differ in various stages of children’s development. Depending on age, divorce as a conflict between parents leads to certain changes in children’s behavior (The Divorce Help Clinic LLC). Whereas one could think that divorce is more likely to affect children in more conscious age, it was proved by researches that even infants experience grave consequences of it. If a child is an infant depending on breast feeding, close connection to his mother will leave its imprints on his condition. If the mother has no milk due to stress caused by divorce, the baby is also affected by this stress: due to interruption of breast feeding, it doesn’t get enough nutrients for development. Besides, facing financial difficulties caused by divorce, new mothers often have to work and thus leave infants under their grandparents’ wing. This often leads children to loss of appetite, stomach problems and anxiety (DeBord). High level of vulnerability at this age is preconditioned by close connection and symbiosis between the mother and the child: the child is still virtually a part of mother’s organism. However, it has been constantly proved that as children grow older, it gets all the more difficult to cope with divorce of parents. Keeping this in mind, one could conclude that pre-school-age children suffer even more from the split in the family. Children find it difficult to understand why their fathers leave the family and why their mother cry. As this stage of psychological development presupposes egocentric thinking, children perceive themselves as a reason of divorce (American Board of Family Medicine). At the age of 3 to 6 years, children tend to suffer from intense sense of guilt. Between 10 and 11, the dominating feelings are offence, anger towards parents – children of this age feel abandoned and ashamed of their family problems. However, by the age of 15-18 years, they are expected to develop more mature perception of the conflict. Though teenagers also feel loss and offence, they are capable of evaluating the situation adequately and understanding reasons and consequences of divorce as well as their relations with each of parents. Children’s adaptability to divorce depends on the extent to which they are ready for possible conflicts; hostilities between parents before divorce; amount of time and attention they used to get from each of their parents when the latter were married. Gender-related issues It has been proved that girls and boys react to divorce in different ways, and seriousness of arising problems varies depending on sex of the child. In general, studies show that both male and female participants of researches express dissatisfaction with absence of their fathers (as children typically live with mothers after divorce) (Bojuwoye & Akpan). At the same time, perception of divorce differs first of all because of differences in perception of fathers’ role in their families. Firstly, male children turn out to be more vulnerable to divorce effects and have more difficulties in adaptation to the new lifestyle. Becoming more aggressive and fretful, they prefer working it off on their peers; start smoking, using obscene words etc. If a mother scolds a boy for bad behavior or underperformance at school, he is likely to be rude with her, to become virtually uncontrollable or even to run away. Except that, many boys display reluctance to keep in touch with fathers or give cheek when meet them. In general, boys’ response and divorce’s effect on their behavior are characterized by increase in aggression. Secondly, male children experience greater difficulties because of their perception of fathers in the context of the family: fathers are mainly perceived as a same sex parent who can be used as a model of behavior and example of what a man should be like. Fathers are expected to teach boys their gender roles and all important lessons about life, viewed from the male standpoint. So, when male parents leave, mothers find it hard to develop “male” interests in boys and form right image about men’s role of in the family in their minds. Girls, in their turn, have their own specific reactions to divorce. Becoming more susceptible and weepy, they often complain of head or stomachaches to attract more attention. On the other hand, peculiar feature of divorce effect on females is that daughters of divorcees might develop distorted image of men and have negative opinion of them. The main reason of this reaction lies in the mother’s bare contempt towards the father and her personal unhappy experience. Moreover, deprived of the complete model of social roles, girls and boys are prone to form distorted types of behavior. Boys, who were raised by mothers only, often adopt “feminine” model of behavior or have distorted image of what a man should do in society and in family life. As a result, it is more difficult for them to perform their paternal duties in the adult life. Girls raised in single-parent families have less chances to understand their future husbands and sons, i.e. to play the role of a wife and a mother in the way that is traditional and expectable for men. In fact, divorce as a social phenomenon produces continuous effect that it carried by children in their adult lives and transmitted to the society as a whole. Children brought up in single-parent families avoid marriage and are much more prone to divorces. This means that there is a never-ending cycle, and divorce becomes both reason and consequence. Absolute majority of children wants to have both parents, and many of them live with the hope for their reconciliation. However, this variant is rather unlikely as it happens not do often. Impact on Social Skills and Health Effects divorces produce on children are not limited by poor psychological condition: various aspects of social life and health are also affected greatly. One of the problems connected to health is high risk of picking up such habit as smoking. Teenagers might be vulnerable to the stereotype that smoking calms nerves and thus resort to this habit in case of family crisis. Particularly, women raised in divorced families resort to this habit 39% more often (Hansen). Another concern rises in connection to increased susceptibility to illnesses: children of divorcees are more vulnerable to health issues. Scientists tend to connect it to increased level of stress and trauma experienced by them. Moreover, this risk is caused by the possible neglect on the side of parent during the period following the divorce – as parents themselves suffer from consequences of conflict, they might simply forget to ensure children’s “safety”, i.e. keep children under supervision or create safe environment (Hansen). To add more, children of divorce are more vulnerable to strokes and are characterized by shorter life expectancy. The studies that traced children of divorce throughout their further lives discovered that children of single-parent families tend to die five years earlier that those whose parents never divorced (Hansen). Men raised by divorcees die of unnatural causes like violence ad accidents more often. Social domain of children’s life is impaired by consequences of divorce, too. Suffering from stress, anxiety and extremely low self-esteem, children experience hardships in communication with their classmates and peers. At the same time, academic underachievements pose considerable problem as children, especially those of early school age, often need their parents’ help and control in their academic activity: parents are to help them with homework and explain rules that are too complicated for handling them alone. But when parents are affected by divorce, busy with its process and suffer from its consequences, little time is devoted to children. Particular problem, according to studies, is poor math skills in children of divorce: as learning mathematics has cumulative nature, children are unlikely to catch up with the class, once they missed or didn’t understand a topic. Beyond that, there is a higher risk of dropping out of school and committing crimes (Hansen). Positive Consequences Despite the grave fact that divorce is mainly a negative phenomenon having only negative effects on families, society and especially children, there also positive aspects of divorces’ influence of lives of children, that sugar the bitter pill. The first argument is that sometimes divorce is really a necessary measure that has to be taken to improve life of a child: unfortunately, cases of child abuse and improper treatment on the part of one parent are getting more and more popular. If a father applies violence and aggression or is alcohol addict, life with such a parent might become not only psychologically harmful, but also simply dangerous both for mother and child. In this case, divorce is a measure of defense that has to be taken in order to ensure the child’s safety. Another positive (or at least not so grave) effect of divorce on children that is observed on some cases is that psychological trauma of childhood act on the reverse. For instance, if a boy is raised by a single mother who works hard to earn their living and devotes herself to him, the image of a father who betrayed and left them might help the boy to develop right attitude towards women, as he sees that his mother is worth care and love, and forms right model of treatment through his gratitude. At the same time, in some cases, negative experience and mistakes of parents may serve an example of “how it shouldn’t be” to children in their adult lives. Works Cited: American Board of Family Medicine. “Children of Divorce”, Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 2001, from: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/405852_6 Bojuwoye, Olaniyi & Akpan, Orok. “Children’s Reactions to Divorce of Parents”, The Open Family Studies Journal, 2009, 2, from: http://benthamopen.com/tofamsj/articles/V002/75TOFAMSJ.pdf DeBord, Karen. The Effects of Divorce on Children, from: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/pdfs/fcs471.pdf Hansen, Lauren. “9 negative effects divorce reportedly has on children”, The Week, 2013, from: http://theweek.com/article/index/242059/9-negative-effects-divorce-reportedly-has-on-children Huff Post. Divorce Can Have Serious Impact On Mens Health, New Research Finds, 2013, from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/30/mens-health-divorce_n_4018432.html Jackson, Wayne. “The Devastating Effects of Divorce”, Christian Courier, from: https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/81-devastating-effects-of-divorce-the OConnell Corcoran, Kathleen. Psychological and Emotional Aspects of Divorce, 1997, from: http://www.mediate.com/articles/psych.cfm Porter, Brandi. Divorce as a Social Problem, 2009, from: http://ww2.valdosta.edu/~blporter/Research%20paper.html The Divorce Help Clinic LLC. Child Development and the Effects of Divorce, from: http://www.thedivorcehelpclinic.com/articles/developmental.html Read More