Everything might seem perfect within the loving world of marriage, but within the past few decades’ divorce rates have spiked. Today, nearly 40-50% of all US marriages end in divorce (American psychological Association). While divorce is a tragic scenario, it is real and it is happening. That’s when we begin to wonder what exactly are the long-term effects on children stemming from divorce in their childhood and are these prominent in nearly all children coming from divorce? According to Frank Amato in “The Long-Term Effects of Divorce on Children,” I have discovered that there are not only short-term effects but also long-term effects, including mental, emotional and even physical effects in both cases (Amato). Much of the research on divorce focuses singularly on the event, instead he hopes to move that research towards highlighting the effects of separation and divorce. While the warning signs, well-being of those involved and interventions are important, by sampling the population and uses models we can learn more about the transformation of the lives of those involved in divorce. He touches on the adjustment of children post-divorce. He truly gives us a feel for what these effects are and how they effect children today. When compared to children with married parents, children with divorced parents score lower on a variety of emotional, behavioral, social, health, and academic outcomes (Frisco, Muller, & Frank). 

In some cases there are potential benefits to divorce, but majority of the time parents decide that divorce and its negative consequences are worth it even if that means the divorce negatively affecting their children’s well-being. Potential benefits like less fighting around the children, happier separate than together, less tension in the home, and being able to show your children positive relationships are all great benefits that need to be taken into account when deciding to divorce. But we need to understand that the children are what’s most important and you have to attempt to make it the least impactful thing on them as they go through such a tough time coping with the change. While these things are absolutely benefits, parent’s need to understand that divorce is not always the right option, and sometimes the tiny marriage problems can be worked out with a counselor instead of involving your children and altering their lives forever. The beginning stages of divorce are crucial to the outcome and can often times save the marriage if the proper steps are taken.

Leading up to a divorce, children may go through a tough time whilst experiencing the fighting and negative, hostile household environment. This could potentially be a factor in the negative short and long-term effects and they must be accounted for (Gadoua). Many people automatically associate the effects post-divorce to the divorce instead of factoring in the fighting that the child witnessed between their parents. In Gadoua’s article, “Divorce Doesn’t Harm Children – Parents Fighting Harms Child,” he goes into depth explaining this concept, which is very true. This is the first line of his article and is very powerful because it gives us an insight on children and the suffering they endure, “Regardless of whether parents stay together or split, if there is fighting going on between them, the children will suffer. Being a child and witnessing this fighting goes on to show you what an unhealthy relationship looks like. Sadly, according to statistics, if your parent’s divorce then you are even more likely to have a marriage ending in divorce. While many factors come into play when deciding to get divorced involving the age of your children, the timing in their lives, the safety for both you and your children, and the financial stability between both parties, Gadoua believes that you need to look into the child’s needs and from there decide if they would benefit from the parent’s continuing their relationship or following through with a divorce.  

Another aspect of the situation of divorce is the actual timing of the divorce in the child’s life (En-Ling). His article, “Timing of Parental Divorce, Marriage Expectations, and Romance in Taiwan.”, focuses largely on the timing of the divorce. En-Ling does this by dividing the 3 different time periods, analyzing each one separately, and eventually comparing them for the results. The three different time periods consisted of baby, adolescent and teen, and each had varying effects. The younger age group suffered largely because they never had the correct role model. The older group suffered because they feel like the relationship they were surrounded by was not genuine, or the parent’s pushed off divorce further damaging their children’s mindset of a healthy relationship. The different time periods are the ages in which the children witness their parent’s divorce. His results showed that different time periods all had varying effects on the children, some overlapping and some drastically different. En-Ling also touches on the effects of children in the form of intimate relationships in their future. Both parental divorce and parental conflict lead to these issues and as mentioned previously, never having a true positive role model for a healthy relationship can damage these children and their future relationships. By looking futher into the future of these children that went through divorce, more jaw dropping information about their relationship making abilities is discovered (En-Ling). En-Ling’s study focuses largely on young adults and their expectations of marriage. They’re expectations of future romantic relationships give us insight on the direction that future trends in family formation will take.

One of the key negative long term effects in my opinion is the family formation problems and lack in trust in future relationships due to having a bad role model for what a healthy relationship should display (Chase-Landsdale). In Chase-Landsdale’s article, “The Long-Term Effects of Parental Divorce on the Mental Health of Young Adults: A Developmental Perspective,” he examines how divorce occurring in someone’s childhood is associated with problems in family formation down the line. Many children that witness divorce have problems in family formation because they never witnessed the healthy ideals of a family. By coming from a broken family, you aren’t equipped with the knowledge of how a healthy family should go about functioning on a daily basis. Psychological functioning is understudied but explains how some of the highest issues post-divorce is the mental health involving depression in these young adults (Chase-Landsdale). While there are always people that have encountered situations and come out without any damage, divorce rarely ends like this and we begin to understand why in this article. “The first cohort of children who experiences the very high rates of divorce in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s has recently entered adulthood,” meaning that we can finally establish the research needed to be done because of the high rates of divorce from this time period. This study is so accurate because of the immense length of time devoted towards it because of how much information it involves. By studying a group of people from the time of the divorce all the way to their adult life we can establish the true long-term effects. On the other hand there are detrimental short term effects such as depression, academic failure, and rebellion but these, on top of the divorce, just lead to the negatives in the near and far future.  Struggling with family formation and psychological effects such as divorce connect because divorce can lead to those distant future issues. 

Personally I am most intrigued about is learning about these psychosocial effects. We can learn a lot about divorce and how it impacts the young minds of these children eventually forming their lives and changing it forever (Huurre, Hanna, Hillevi). In their article, “Long-term Psychosocial Effects of Parental Divorce,” they discuss these issues in depth from adolescence time but also well into adulthood. Huurre set up this study to “investigate whether 32-year-old adults who had experiences parental divorce before 16 years of age differed in psychosocial well0being or life trajectories from those from non-divorced two-parent families.” These effects are different for males and females and their study spanned over the course of 16 years. By using multiple comparisons including gender to gender and children witnessing divorce to children never witnessing a divorce they can show the variance between the two. “The results showed that females from divorced compared to females from non-divorced families scored higher on tests gauging psychological problems and also had more problems present in their interpersonal relationships, surprisingly, these factors were not present in men in the study. Although, shorter education, unemployment, divorce, negative life events and more risky health behavior were more common among subjects of both genders with a background of parent divorce.”(Huurre, Hanna, Hillevi). Generally, divorce leads to an immense amount of stress and for children that is incredibly tough since they’re going through such a vulnerable time in their lives. The sensitivity in women could be a reason for why these psychosocial effects were largely present among them compared to men but they do share a lot of other effects. 

While I believe that divorce results in nearly all negative effects, from research I found one prominent positive effect; strong father-child contacts. It leads to positive effects on the children’s adjustment post-divorce (Viry, Gil.) While researching this subject over the course of this semester, this is the first positive article I’ve found on divorce and after searching for more positive effects, my results were inconclusive. Whilst trying to understand the opposing side, I do see the valid points of post-divorce being a more ideal situation but the distress that a child goes through during the entire process overall outweighs those few positives. 

“Co-parenting and Children’s Adjustment to Divorce: The Role of Geographical Distance from Fathers.”, written by Viry, summarizes the positive effects of divorce on children. She emphasizes on having strong co-parenting practices for example, “after divorce, shorter distances between parents’ homes are often seen as facilitating nonresident fathers’ involvement with their children.” She continually strikes the point of how important good co-parenting is, and the value of it. Co-parenting involves how parents cooperate together and make decisions as a team instead of individual which happens often times during divorce. Many don’t even realize how much value it holds but when she shows the effects when there is a good co-parenting versus bad co-parenting, the differences are jaw-dropping. When parents are going through a divorce they will have incredible separation from their spouse, and this strain will be present on the children. Many children express feelings of confusion and sadness because they often times have to “choose” between a side. Both parents want to “win” over their child but when parent’s come to their senses and realize that it is not a competition, then they will maturely co-parent together and make the best decisions for their children. While they no longer are a couple and can’t co-parent in the typical “married couple way”, they are still a team and still the role-models, guardians and most important parents of these children and the adults should never let their differences get in the way of their children’s best interests

These short term effects can be present from the very beginning stages even before the separation/divorce while these long-term effects take some time to surface but are detrimental to children’s lives and the choices they will make in their future after witnessing their parent’s divorce. (Amrit). Amrit’s article, “Effect of Divorce on Children”, shows both long and short term effects on children. These effects are negative and have a huge range from devastating social, mental, and emotional problems to disorders, bad choices, negative futures and tough situations. The entire process of a divorce from the beginning stages of unhappiness to years down the road all add up and cause these detrimental problems in the futures of these children. Over the past few decades divorce rates have continued to rise and this is only causing more problems. Amrit also touches on the fact that pre-divorce phase is just as detrimental to children’s well-being as the post-divorce phase is. For those that don’t understand divorce they might not understand this concept but throughout this article you gain clarity. 

Divorce can affect not only the children , but can affect the parents during the divorce and Wallerstein really zooms in on that. Throughout many interviews he gains extensive knowledge from the research and insight he’s gained through his participants (Wallerstein). Throughout his book, “What are the Possible Consequences of Divorce for Children?”, he talks about the harmful effects of divorce. Throughout many interviews and over many years, he stays in touch with these people to see how they have changed or been affected. 

I believe that parents should be aware of the potential consequences and attempt to minimize these consequences through the decisions they make. By understanding the potential short and long term effects, you can identify a solution to avoid these from occurring. Whether that involves giving your children access to coping mechanisms, protecting them from the conflict between the parents, being cooperative when it comes to parenting, and also the stability and structure being positive within the household. By strengthening these factors for your children in this time of drastic change, you can minimize or even completely avoid the long list of negative effects that majority of children from divorce incur. By finding the correct way to cope with the situation’s that divorce presents, you can be proactive about your child’s health and well-being. Sadly, during the tragic times of divorce, sometimes parents sacrifice their child’s well-being without even being aware of it, which is exactly what leads to these negative effects that will be present in those who witness divorce’s lives forever. 

So why are the consequences of divorce so detrimental on children exactly? Overall the immense research points to many different factors but mainly points to mental health. The long term effects involve psychosocial effects, depression, and negative future relationship formation problems among other things. This research just proves to us how negative divorce can be but we’re trying to find a solution. Ending divorce would be impossible but the best thing we can do is educate parents on what these effects are so that they can do their very best to avoid these consequences. Divorce effects not only the parents going through it but also their children, and also the family and friends of both parties. These consequences can lead to a change in behavior which could be observed by peers and even teachers, so divorce truly effects so many people. 

Personally, I was a child that went through divorce at the tender age of eight years old. At first it started with confusion and eventually lead to isolation. It is hard to comprehend exactly what is happening. Now that I have thoroughly researched it, I understand why it can be so detrimental to children. Parents are role models and when they no longer live in a healthy relationship then children’s view on what is normal versus not normal can be confused. Fighting and an unhappy, unhealthy marriage is not normal but it’s difficult for children to understand and recognize that which further clouds future relationship expectations as well. 

Overall, these statistics, factual information and studies have lead us to believe that there are absolutely more negative effects for children stemming from divorce than positive but we will learn exactly what these effects are and whether or not the long-term ones are persistent and present in majority of these cases. While the range of divorces can go from very nasty to very civil and this can contribute to the long-term effects, theses consequences are present in almost all children post-divorce. It’s hard to gauge the percentage of children effected but I still found information throughout this research. Amato himself has proven research that shows how parental divorce can be a key predictor to marriage instability in the children. Post-divorce can be very tough on children especially with the long list of short and long-term consequences, but many of these children prevail and still go on to live a successful life, they just didn’t have as easy of a start as some others did. They negative consequences can really make or break a child’s life and parents need to understand that their children are affected by every decision they make. 
