In the past and recent times, the effects of divorce on victims and other family members such as children have been compound and adverse. From literary circles reviews and personal experiences, divorce has been found to have adverse effects on both men and women and children if any. As a result, this paper focuses on the effects of divorce on individuals or couples and the children involved by utilizing an interview format.
Effects on Children
Children are affected in a number of ways as a result of divorce between their parents. There are increased responsibilities for the children such as cooking and washing of dishes among other household chores. This is a result of one of the parents, who ends up with the children, having to work extra hard to meet the family demands as a single mother or father. This means that there is less time for the parent to meet all the household chores and have to delegate the chores to the children as he or she goes about the family business. As one victim responded,” I had to do extra work and even go for two work shifts in a day in order to accumulate enough cash to meet the family needs. The elder child had to therefore cook and wash her siblings as I could not be there for them all the time”.
In addition, there is less consistent discipline for children since the parent may be away for long periods of work trying to make ends meet. Whereas a couple would work for 8hours a day and allocate other time to meet the family requirements, after divorce, the parent has to work extra hard to maintain the same lifestyle or at least meet the children needs. This leaves little room for the parent to have adequate time with the children, and hence may lose touch with them.
Children also experience lower academic performance after divorce. This is a result of the parent being absent and therefore cannot monitor their progress and insist on them working hard compared to when the parents were together. It may also be due to the lack of consistent discipline being instituted on the children due to lack of time by the parent. Where a victim was solely dependent on the other spouse and divorce leads to non-commitment, children may have to drop out of school due to lack of school fees, impacting their education life negatively. This is illustrated by a victim who stated that,” my children had to drop out of school before I could get the means to meet their educational needs. Grades at the end of the school year indicated low performance since they were not able to cover and revise adequately as their peers in school”.
The children are also affected as a result of an absent parent who they were used to in the family. Their morale to attend to duties such as education needs are greatly hampered and feel that their father or mother should not have left. They therefore tend to complain all the time about their loved being absent and may experience low performance in school and even bring disagreement at home. As one mother indicated,” the children were so used to him that, it was very difficult to live with them without him. They would occasionally ask if he will ever come back and this greatly affected me and them. The children at some point felt that they were not loved since time for taking them for travel and adventure was limited and I had to work extra hours to meet the increased needs in the family”.
Effects on Couples
Divorced partners experience economic hardships in cases where they were dependent on each other. This is because, once divorced, the financial responsibilities increase for the individuals and to meet them with the existing income streams becomes difficult. As one respondent stated,” I had to meet all the household bills alone and they were too much for to meet with the existing income. When he left, he did not care what the children ate or their school fees, and I had to meet all those responsibilities alone. I had to sacrifice some needs in order to meet the basic ones instead”.
Some of the victims also develop a complex where they do not want to engage in future relationships as they feel hurt from the divorce. They tend to snub any individual who try to approach them and are afraid to be intimate and be committed. They feel that future relationships will tend to be the same and the partner may also be like the first one. This was well put by one respondent who argued that,” I do not want commitments with any woman in the near future. I feel that women are all the same and hence cannot trust any in a future relationship. She left me with a lot of responsibilities of looking after the children, something that I was not used to when we were together”.
Other individuals tend to be stressed and ultimately depressed when a divorce occurs. They are not able to handle the consequences of divorce and the feeling of loss especially if they are not the ones who initiated the divorce process. As a result, they feel let down by their partners and live in a state of despair. This was the case with one respondent who had to seek counseling in order to overcome the aftermath of the divorce process. “I felt that the whole process of him leaving me was not fair as I had put all my mind and effort into our marriage. We had tried to seek counseling together in order to avoid separation, but we could not stay together after all. I did not want to interact with anyone and would not even eat at times leading to a lot of weight loss”.
Effect on Work
As a result of divorce interfering with the lives of individuals being involved, the daily activities of the partners who divorced such as work are greatly hampered. There is lack of concentration on work especially if a couple worked in the same company. Frequent meetings bring back a lot of memories and the feelings of betrayal that one felt and an individual is unable to concentrate on work. As one respondent put it,” every time I would see him, I would remember all the wrongs and the mistakes that he made and did not care to apologize. I would imagine how it would have felt for him being there for the children being at home in the evening, though I couldn’t keep up with his infidelity. I would spend so much time thinking about him at work, leading to loss of concentration on my work”.
Divorce also leads to low productivity and low creativity in the workplace. Individuals feel too depressed to contribute and be engaged in the workplace and may end up not offering alternatives that would have been helpful. There is also a lot of time wasted due to the long court battles and summons and individuals have to be away from work for long durations hence unable to meet their workplace responsibilities. Some of the individuals even get fired as a result of not meeting customer deadlines and the management has no alternative if work was on a contract basis. One respondent narrated this where she stated that,” I felt demoralized by the whole process and the feeling of my child losing a father figure in his life. I could not handle it, and even meeting my workplace responsibilities became difficult. I could not deliver on time and since my work was contractual, I got fired”.
There may also be cases of aggressiveness towards workmates since an individual is stressed up and therefore gets and at anybody who offends him or her. An individual will get angry at workmates even on very petty issues, due to the consequences of the divorce process. One respondent stated that,” I would find myself getting angry at my male work mates when I divorced with my husband. I would feel that they all intended to hurt me since they felt that they were superior. If they offended me, I would get angry easily and would not want to reconcile. As a result, my workplace duties were negatively affected as I also could not approach them for assistance.
Questions list
1. How old are you?
2. How long has it been, in terms of years, since you divorced with your partner?
3. For how long had you stayed in the marriage?
4. What was the main reason as to why you divorced?
5. Who initiated the divorce process? You or your partner?
6. Did you seek professional advice or counseling in a bid to save your marriage life?
7. Did you feel that divorce was the right thing for you to do at the time?
8. What was the last thing did he/she do that justified your reason to be divorced?
9. Were you with your partner employed at that time?
10. What is your profession and what position did you hold at your workplace at the time of the divorce?
11. There have many cases on divorce and how they have affected the individuals involved. How did the process affect you as an individual?
12. How did your work mates react upon learning that you had divorced?
13. What about your responsibilities at the workplace? Was your workplace responsibilities affected?
14. How many children did you have at the time of the divorce?
15. Were they old enough to have gotten used to their father/ mother?
16. How were the children affected? Did you have problems managing them at home?
17. How was the performance of the children affected in school?
18. Did you feel hatred towards the other gender after the divorce process?
19. After all the years that you have been divorced, are you willing to commit yourself to another relationship, now or in the future?
20. After the divorce and at your present state, would you reconcile and move in with your earlier partner if given a second chance?
21. What would you tell partners who are having family issues and want to divorce? Any comments?
