Divorce cannot but influence children on the part of their psychological and thus physical state. It has harmful effects on young children, as well as on adolescents. These effects the person feels the whole life. However, there are short-time and long-time effects of parental divorce. This paper is a literature review, which observes some articles concerning the divorce effects on children.
Becoming Stronger at Broken Places
The article Becoming Stronger at Broken Places: A Model for Group Work with Young Adults from Divorced Families written by Sally M. Hage and Mia Nosanow particularly deals with long-term effects that divorce have on children. These effects mainly manifest themselves in children’s poor quality of life. This article details a model of psychoeducational intervention for children from divorced families. The intervention consists of eight sessions and is aimed at reducing isolation (Hage & Nosanow, 2000, p. 50).
The group consists of children whose parents are in divorce. They meet once a week. The session’s duration is 90 minutes. The group members meet for eight weeks. Each day has its topic, which group discusses at the end of the session (Hage & Nosanow, 2000, p. 54).
During the first session, which is called Picture of Your Family, the participants are to learn how to distinguish their family structure, the type of interaction between family members and their unique bonds. The main goal of the second session is to explore the problem of loyalty in families. The third session is dedicated to losses in divorce that can be either financial or social, or the loss of family unit. The week four session recognizes the effects of divorce on children’s self-esteem. The fifth session deals with understanding the need for positive intimate relationships. The theme of the session six is effective communication. The seventh session discovers the importance of having purpose in one’s life. The final session sums up all the previous ones and identifies the ways of building strong relationships (Hage & Nosanow, 2000, p. 55-62).
Attitudes toward Divorce
The article Attitudes toward Divorce and their Relationship with Psychological Factors among Social Work Students discusses attitudes toward divorce and how these attitudes are connected with life satisfaction, spiritual beliefs and parental bonds. The study was conducted basing on 210 students from two Florida universities. The results showed that most of the students had positive attitudes toward divorce, as saw in it a solution to the problem of unhappy marriage. The participants associated these attitudes with spiritual beliefs as well as with parental bonds (Diaz, Molina, MacMillan, Duran, & Swart, 2013, p. 505).
The study involved undergraduate, as well graduate social work students of two Florida public universities. The number of students was 210: 140 students from one university, and 70 students from the other. To measure the attitudes toward divorce, Attitudes toward Divorce Scale, which included 12 items, was used. To discover the satisfaction with life, five statements were used and the participants’ role was to identify the extent to which they agree with those statements. To measure the spiritual experience, 23 items were used that reviled the participants’ perception of their spirituality. The depressive symptomatology was also measured by means of the 20-item scale. The bonding between parents and children were accorded using 25 items of the Parental Bonding Instrument. Participants were also asked questions containing personal information such as age, gender and other details (Diaz, Molina, MacMillan, Duran, & Swart, 2013, p. 508-509).
The study was carried out with the help of descriptive analyses and the exploratory factor analysis (Diaz, Molina, MacMillan, Duran, & Swart, 2013, p. 510).
Married and Divorced Parents Perspective
The article the Effects of Divorce on Children: Married and Divorced Parents’ Perspective deals with three hypotheses, which try to explain how both married and divorced parents perceive the possible separation and divorce of their own children.
Conducting the study, 232 participants were involved, among them 70 married mothers, 48 married fathers, 57 divorced mothers and 57 divorced fathers. All the participants were also classified according to the occupation criteria. The participants were asked to give some personal information such as their own marital status and their parents’ one. To assess their attitudes toward the effect of parents’ divorce on children, the participants were given a questionnaire, which contained 18 items. These items were taken from special divorce literature (Moon, 2011, p. 346).
The results of the study suggest that parents’ divorce has influence on their children’s future family life, namely on the children’s perception of divorce. The majority of the participants think so, irrespective of personal information mentioned in the course of the study. Those participants whose parents remained married demonstrated more negative attitudes and supposed the possible future consequences than those participants whose parents were divorced. Speaking about the divorced parents, those who were initiators of the divorce process also believed that the effects of the divorce is less negative than those parents who did not initiate it (Moon, 2011, p. 347).
Children of Separation and Divorce
Children of Separation and Divorce: Effects of a Social Role-Taking Group Intervention on Fourth and Fifth Graders is the article, which discusses two intervention groups. The participants of these groups are fifty-seven children, aged from nine to eleven. Parents of those children were either separated or in divorce. The aim of the first group intervention was to train children social role-taking skills, while the second group focused on discussing feelings caused by the divorce. The results showed that the training of the first group prove more important than the mere discussion and identification of feelings of the second group members (Roseby & Deutsch, 1985, p.55).
The group interventions continued for 10 weeks. To be able to begin training, the parents’ permission was obtained. In choosing the participants, preference was given to those children, who experienced parental separation or divorce not later than 3 years before then. School psychologists, as well as social workers and interns led two groups. The duration of the training session was 2 hours. Four schools participated in the study. The number of children in the school varied from 4 to 8. In the first group, training was performed at the two levels. The first level is identification of children’s thoughts and feelings with the help of different activities, and the second level is identification and understanding not only one’s own feelings but also those of others with the help of the role-playing activities. As opposed to the first group, the second one just discussed the thoughts and feelings about the divorce. This group did not learn any specific skills (Roseby & Deutsch, 1985, p.56-57).
Literature Review Including Turkish Studies
Impacts of Divorce on the Behavior and Adjustment Problems, Parenting Styles, and Attachment Styles of Children: Literature Review Including Turkish Studies is the articles written by Dilek Sirvanli-Ozen. It examines both short-term and long-term effects the divorce may have on children. It also casts light on the best ways of coping with those effects. The results of the conducted research suggest that divorce has negative effects on children’s behavior as well as create problems of adjustment (Sirvanli-Ozen, 2005, p. 127-128).
Parents’ divorce most frequently is reflected in the children’s behavior and in adjustment problems. The child’s behavior changes for the worse. It is because after the divorce the family consists of smaller units; the relationships between a parent and a child changes as well. The family also faces financial changes, as after divorce, the financial status of the family decreases. Emotionally family members suffer a lot (Sirvanli-Ozen, 2005, p. 130).
The article also indicates the existence of many studies, which establish the relationship between the divorce and sexual behavior. These studies prove that sexual behavior is initiated later in those families, where parents live together (Sirvanli-Ozen, 2005, p. 131).
Divorce also has other effects on the person’s life, for example interaction effects. Divorce surely affects the parenting and attachment styles (Sirvanli-Ozen, 2005, p. 133-136).
The Effects of Parental Divorce and Death
Estimating the Effects of Parental Divorce and Death with Fixed Effects Models is the article that deals with negative outcomes resulted in by the parental divorce.
The ECLS-K questionnaire responds showed that for children the parents’ separation is more substantial than the divorce. According to the ECLS-K analyses, such issues as the deterioration of learning, the loss of interpersonal skills, problems with self-control are directly linked with parents’ divorce. It is also assumed that the parents’ divorce affects children as much as the parent’s death (Amato & Anthony, 2014, p. 377).
In the article, it is also stated that the deterioration of learning at school may also be caused by the migration of one of the parents. The authors’ analyses of the change in children’s perception of parents’ divorce also showed that with time children become more adapted to such notion as parents’ divorce (Amato & Anthony, 2014, p. 383).
Amato and Anthony also add that the tendency to divorce may depend on the social and demographic variables. Thus, families with high economic status are more likely to cope with negative effects of the divorce (2014, p. 383).
Challenges of Examining the Effects of Divorce on Children
Methodological Challenges Facing Researchers in Examining the Effects of Divorce on Children is the article written by William H. Jeynes. It examines some problems that researchers face when evaluating the effects of divorce on children. These problems appear at different levels and refer to different aspects of the research. The contemporary research is a basis for the article (Jeynes, 2006, p. 107).
The article pays attention to the fact that assessing the effects of divorce on children should be started before the divorce is completed, as there should be the evidence, the facts to be compared. Moreover, the effects may occur before the divorce itself. Recent researches show that these effects may begin months or even years before the divorce process (Jeynes, 2006, p. 108).
Every good researcher has to control socioeconomic status of his researches. Socioeconomic status assesses three components; they are the income of the family, the educational background and occupation. It is very important to keep the record of these components, because every divorce lowers the economic status of the family, which in its turn affects other components (Jeynes, 2006, p. 112).
Mothers’ Perspectives in UAE
Another article dealing with parents’ divorce and its influence on children is the Effects of Divorce on Children: Mothers’ Perspectives in UAE. It discusses particularly the United Arab Emirates. 1742 divorced women participated in the study. The data was processed with the help of quantitative analyses in order to assess different types of effects, which divorces may have on children. They include social, health, schooling effects and others. The conducted study proved that parents’ divorce has detrimental effects on children. It was associated in the United Arab Emirates with other arising problems, including psychological ones. It should be mentioned that it was the only study carried out in the UAE to discover various types of effects that parents’ divorce has on children (Al Gharaibeh, 2015, p. 347).
Conclusion
Many children associate divorces with poor living conditions, as they really become worse. Many of them are afraid of parents’ separating more than of legal divorce itself. Studies also show that those children whose parents are divorced treat marriages and family life with prejudices. However, they cannot be blamed for this, because it is not their fault. It is not even their parents’ fault. There is no one to be blamed.
Although many studies are conducted in order to cast more light on the topic of parents’ divorce and its impact on children and their future life, much problems remain unsolved that require further investigation.
References
Al Gharaibeh, F. (2015). The Effects of Divorce on Children: Mothers’ Perspectives in UAE. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 56(5), 347-368. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10502556.2015.1046800
Amato, P. & Anthony, C. (2014). Estimating the Effects of Parental Divorce and Death with Fixed Effects Models. Fam Relat, 76(2), 370-386. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12100
Diaz, N., Molina, O., MacMillan, T., Duran, L., & Swart, E. (2013). Attitudes toward Divorce and their Relationship with Psychosocial Factors among Social Work Students. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 54(6), 505-518. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10502556.2013.810983
Hage, S. & Nosanow, M. (2000). Becoming stronger at broken places: A model for group work with young adults from divorced families. The Journal For Specialists In Group Work, 25(1), 50-66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01933920008411451
Jeynes, W. (2006). Methodological Challenges Facing Researchers in Examining the Effects of Divorce on Children. Marriage & Family Review, 40(2-3), 107-130. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/j002v40n02_06
Moon, M. (2011). The Effects of Divorce on Children: Married and Divorced Parents' Perspectives. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 52(5), 344-349. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10502556.2011.585093
Roseby, V. & Deutsch, R. (1985). Children of Separation and Divorce: Effects of a Social Role-Taking Group Intervention on Fourth and Fifth Graders. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 14(1), 55-60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15374424jccp1401_9
Sirvanli-Ozen, D. (2005). Impacts of Divorce on the Behavior and Adjustment Problems, Parenting Styles, and Attachment Styles of Children. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 42(3-4), 127-151. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/j087v42n03_08
