Effects of a Non-Traditional Family on Children

Family helps mold every person into who they eventually will become. The family is a guide for the success of a child's future. The stability of family creates a building block for how the child will progress throughout life. When parents divorce, the children are left with no stability causing them to lose basic concepts of childhood that may carry with them throughout life. Children of divorced parents have less success and happiness creating less productive citizens in our nation. Watching parents take a home from a traditional family lifestyle to a "broken" home by getting a divorce is very devastating to a child's mental well-being. As Judith Seltzer notes, "Recent reviews summarize evidence that children are emotionally distressed by parents' separation. Young children, especially, are depressed and anxious, and they feel torn by loyalties to both parents" (283). While some researchers believe "[p]arental divorce is associated with substantial short-term elevations in children's emotional distress…, [t]here is a great deal of evidence…that for some youths divorce remains problematic throughout adolescence" (Aseltine 133). In my personal experience with parental divorce, depression was a major distress. My parents divorced when I was a junior in high school living in a small town. One month after the divorce I moved to a new city by myself for two months, and then my mother moved. I was very much without parental supervision for the rest of my life. My mother was there for me when I asked, but I took care of myself. I did not start experiencing depression until I was in college and dealing with the normal stresses of working too much, taking fifteen hours of classes, and involved in a serious relationship. These are normal stresses for the average college student, but due to built up anger and issues with asking for help, I fell into depression. The actual separation of my parents was not the exact reason I became depressed, the actual reason being that