Effects Of Divorce On Children

These days, people are taking marriage and divorce very lightly not realising the
consequences following those events, especially the impact on children. According to
the Oxford dictionary, divorce means legal dissolution of a marriage. Malaysia has a
high percentage of divorce rates. Based on statistics, the divorce percentage reaches
up to 20% per year. In the United States, it is believed that 40% of all marriages end up
in divorce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce). On the other hand, in the United
Kingdom out of every 1000 marriage, 12 end up in divorce
(http://www.journalism.co.uk). Globally, an average of 1.3 per 1000 people gets a
divorce (www.nationmaster.com).
Ending a marriage is not a one-off event, it is a long process and it affects the entire
family, including children in every aspect of their lives. Divorce has 6 phases
(www.ces.ncsu.edu). The first phase is known as the emotional divorce, which involves
negative feelings like anger and hatred taking over the nice feelings like love and
affection. This is followed by legal divorce, which means that there is certification to
declare that the duo is no longer legally married. Then comes the economic divorce,
which requires the couple to divide their properties and other valuables accumulated
during the marriage equally. The next phase is the co-parental divorce which handles
issues regarding the custody of the child. Subsequently, the community divorce takes
place affecting the social circle as a result of shifting out to a new community. Finally,
the last phase is the psychic divorce, which involves adjustment to being single again.
In the case, where there is a child involved in the divorce, the child has to cope through
all the 6 phases.
Married couples get a divorce even more easily than getting married when they face
conflicts. To add on to their problems, they have children too hastily without proper
planning to set aside a specific period of living together and getting adjusted to each
other before bringing a third person into the relationship.

Hence, there is a need to study the effects of divorce on children because those
innocent beings will have to face the impact of their parents bad decision in marriage
and end up being a victim of divorce. Divorce brings detrimental effects on children, as it
will cause them to go through emotional and behavioural distress, create negative
insights of their own future marriage, and reduce their standard of living and well-being
as well.
As the effect of divorce, children will go through emotional and behavioural distress in
order to adapt to the life after divorce. According to Allison and Furstenberg (1989),
children of divorced parents experience more emotional and behavioural distress
compared to children with intact families. Among the agony that the children will
experience, is a decrease in their academic performance resulting in poor grades in
school. This can be understood by analysing the kind of situation that a child will have to
cope with due to divorce. The child will go through various emotions such as anger
towards themselves and the parent that initiated the divorce, fear, betrayal,
abandonment, loss, sadness, rejection and loneliness. The difficulty in making new
friends and adjusting to the new environment and teachers are some of the factors that
will cause poorer grades compared to his performance in his previous school where
everything was within his comfort zone.
A child especially preschoolers will also live with the feeling of guilt. This usually
happens when a child thinks that he or she had caused the divorce to take place. The
child would think that the fights and arguments that took place in the household is
caused by them and that they have no power to control or stop it, which has led to
divorce. This could be due to the childs limited cognitive abilities causing them to feel
puzzled by their parents divorce (http://cpancf.com). They also found that children do
not have the ability to manage with all the adjustments that are required of them and
these children carry the feeling of guilt that they caused the divorce and they have to
patch their parents marriage (http://cpancf.com).
According to Amato and Keith (1991), divorce will also cause a child to miss out the role
of a parent who usually is the role model, a shoulder to lean on, a helping-hand and a
person who corrects them when they are wrong. In most cases, the father is the one

that is usually not in the picture, thus will make a child feel unimportant, and deserted.
As mentioned in (http://cpancf.com), boys and girls have different ways of expressing
their emotions towards divorce. Boys generally tend to be more violent and rebellious
while girls on the other hand, tend to be more active sexually at a very early age
compared to those who come from intact families.
Other than that, children of divorce will have negative perception on their own future
marriage because they will lose marital trust in a spouse, thus causing instability in their
marriage. They will lose trust in their spouse because of their experience with their
parents being dishonest in their marriage. Children of divorce generally will have no
idea on what a sustainable marriage is all about. This is because they had not
experienced or seen a good marriage in close up. Therefore, when small problems arise
in their marriage they come to a dead end because they do not know how to overcome
those problems to save a marriage, thus, leading their marriage to divorce too. They will
fear obligation and closeness among the couple that a marriage expects of them.
According to Franklin, Janoff-Bulman & Roberts (1990), children of divorce parents
have questionable trust on their spouse and they display negative perception on their
own marriage. According to Wilson (2009), another effect of divorce on children is
sleeper effect, which is the child carrying the thoughts of what the parents had
experienced in their marriage and later this affects the childs own marriage in the
future.
In addition to the effects of divorce mentioned above, the standard of living and wellbeing of the child will be affected due to the lost of joint-income as the single parent now
has to cope with the living expenses single-handedly. It is not an easy task especially
with a child because raising a child can be very demanding. A child will go through
deprivation in comforts received prior to the divorce as the child would have lived in a
comfortable life out of both the parents income. In most cases of divorce, the mothers
are usually the custodian of the child who generally has lesser earning capacity than the
fathers. As mentioned in (www.ces.ncsu.edu), custody given to the opposite gender
parent will cause more problems to the child. As in most cases the mothers are usually
the custodian, the boys will face more issues as the father who is the same gender

parent is not dominantly present in their life to guide and support them. As mentioned in
(http://cpancf.com), children of divorced parents will have a decreased level in their
living standards and the parent who has custody over the child may be psychologically
or physically not able to meet the demands in raising a child. In addition to that,
according to Amato and Keith (1991), a child whose parents have obtained a divorce
are more likely inclined towards experiencing lower education achievement, obtain
lesser salary, be more dependent on a welfare, obtain a child out of marriage vows and
get a divorce in the future.
On the other hand, children whose parents divorce without obvious conflicts and
problematic behaviour are likely to lose confidence in marriage too as they will have
doubts in the success of their marriage, as their parents who did not appear to have any
conflict are still not able to sustain their marriage. At the same time, children whose
parents divorce due to severe conflicts are equally affected as the impact of divorce
such as living with a single parent and going through the trials and tribulations of being
raised by a single parent exists under both circumstances. In most cases children
certainly benefitted from the parents staying together. According to Wilson (2009), there
is only a slight reduction in the negative effects of a parental divorce between having a
good divorce and a bad divorce as the absence of a parent in their lives makes a
lasting impact.
Under certain circumstances where there are constant arguments and abuse in troubled
marriages, children will experience relief when their parents get divorced. They would
feel much safer, happier and more secure especially in the event there is physical
abuse in the family. The constant arguments will cause distress to children. Therefore,
divorce is an answer to a more peaceful life. However, the relief is only short-term. The
long-term effect of divorce on children could not be denied because of loss of parental
touch from both mother and father as well as all the other effects of divorce. Children
can be excluded from the parental conflict to minimise the effects of the marital
problems by parents separating their role as spouse and parent. Findings from
Wallersteins 10 years research (as cited in www.ces.ncsu.edu) on the effects of divorce
on children suggest that the effects of divorce are long lasting, with children carrying

memories of the break up with continuous feeling of bitterness and tend to experience
withdrawal symptoms.
In conclusion, divorce certainly brings detrimental effect on children emotionally,
psychologically and financially, and the effects are long-term. Couples with troubled
marriages, especially those who already have children should try all means to make the
relationship work. In circumstances where divorce could not be avoided, parents should
consider keeping the child out of the conflicts that takes place between them. A positive
adult role model should surround the child at all times if possible during the divorce and
the period right after the divorce to provide the child with good vibrations and support
(www.ces.ncsu.edu). The child should be constantly comforted that he or she is always
loved despite the divorce in order to avoid the child from developing a feeling of guilt
that they had caused the divorce. As such, parents should put their conflicts aside and
spend time with the child by doing enjoyable activities together
(http://foreverfamilies.byu.edu). The non-custodial parents support is essential. To help
the child further during the process of divorce, its best for the child to meet a
psychologist to discuss his or her anxieties, rage, and puzzlement due to the divorce as
this will help ease the childs emotional distress (www.ces.ncsu.edu).