The Effect of Divorce on Children
The Effect of Divorce on Children
According to Berk (2008), 45% of American marriages end in divorce and half of those involve children. The effect divorce has on children is critical knowledge that people need to understand to be able to help these children overcome the behavioral, emotional, and social problems that they acquire during this time. There are four studies in particular that I have found that have quite fascinating results. The first article that I discovered was from Andreas Schick’s study (2002) in which he found ways that children show behavioral and emotional differences depending on if they came from a divorced or intact family. There have been previous studies regarding the effects that divorce has on children from a parent or teacher perspective but never from the child himself. From recognizing this, the researcher decided to focus on the child’s perspective in his own study. Schick (2002) evaluated several factors such as fearfulness, self esteem, behavior issues, gender, amount of time since the divorce and inter-parental conflict by comparing children from intact families versus children with divorced parents. His sample consisted of 241 9 to 13 year old children and their parents with 66 of those kids from separated or divorced homes and 175 kids from intact homes. At the time of the separation or divorce, the children were on average about 7.2 years old. Most of the data that he found came from the children’s perspective besides the data on behavioral problems which were received from the parents. To conduct this study, he gave questionnaires to both the children and parents and used several different scales and checklists to gather the data. From his research he found several things such as the kids of divorce were not more fearful than kids who hadn’t experienced a divorce. In comparison to children from intact families, children of divorce, “were less consistent in their academic performance, more often socially
According to Berk (2008), 45% of American marriages end in divorce and half of those involve children. The effect divorce has on children is critical knowledge that people need to understand to be able to help these children overcome the behavioral, emotional, and social problems that they acquire during this time. There are four studies in particular that I have found that have quite fascinating results. The first article that I discovered was from Andreas Schick’s study (2002) in which he found ways that children show behavioral and emotional differences depending on if they came from a divorced or intact family. There have been previous studies regarding the effects that divorce has on children from a parent or teacher perspective but never from the child himself. From recognizing this, the researcher decided to focus on the child’s perspective in his own study. Schick (2002) evaluated several factors such as fearfulness, self esteem, behavior issues, gender, amount of time since the divorce and inter-parental conflict by comparing children from intact families versus children with divorced parents. His sample consisted of 241 9 to 13 year old children and their parents with 66 of those kids from separated or divorced homes and 175 kids from intact homes. At the time of the separation or divorce, the children were on average about 7.2 years old. Most of the data that he found came from the children’s perspective besides the data on behavioral problems which were received from the parents. To conduct this study, he gave questionnaires to both the children and parents and used several different scales and checklists to gather the data. From his research he found several things such as the kids of divorce were not more fearful than kids who hadn’t experienced a divorce. In comparison to children from intact families, children of divorce, “were less consistent in their academic performance, more often socially
Cited: Berk, L. (2008). Divorce. Infants, children, and adolescents, 6, 509-512. Lansford, J. E., Malone, P. S., Castellino, D. R., Dodge, K. A., Pettit, G. S., & Bates, J. E. (2006). Trajectories of internalizing, externalizing, and grades for children who have and have not experienced their parents’ divorce or separation. Journal of Family Psychology, 20 (2), 292-301. Pruett, M. K., Williams, T. Y., Insabella, G., & Little, T. D. (2003). Family and legal indicators of child adjustment to divorce among families with young children. Journal of Family Psychology, 17 (2), 169-180. Schick, A. (2002). Behavioral and emotional differences between children of divorce and children from intact families: Clinical significance and mediating processes. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 61 (1), 5-14. Wallerstein, J. S. & Lewis, J. M. (2004). The unexpected legacy of divorce report of a 25 year study. Psychoanalytic Psychology 21(3), 353-370.