The Effects of Divorce on Parent-Child Relationships in Future

THE EFFECT OF DIVORCED PARENTS ON A CHILD FUTURE RELATIONSHIP

INTRODUCTION One instructive means of thinking about divorce is to consider divorce not as a single event that influences people's lives, but rather as a process. Over a period of time, one or both of the marital partners becomes convinced that the relationship is intolerable, or at least is not working. The divorcing couple, as well as the entire family, experiences a variety of abrupt changes which impact nearly every aspect of their lives. Divorce is most often seeing as an extremely painful series of events. This conceptualization of divorce suggests that the manner in which divorce ultimately affects children involves a confluence of factors and processes that occur early in the divorce, as well as processes occurring after the divorce. According to the Webster’s Dictionary, divorce is "the legal dissolution of marriage or the termination of an existing relationship or union". This definition makes the word seem formal and does not accurately display the feeling that sweeps over a person when the word is mentioned. Usually, a series of events and behaviours on the part of one or both spouses erodes the negative feelings toward one or the other or both. A better definition of the depth of the word comes from Whitney, holding a child’s point of view, "Divorce is like a thousand knives being thrown at one’s heart or a slow, painful ride through Horror Mountain". Her definition more accurately describes the feelings and emotions that go along with the mention of divorce. Most children would agree with Whitney’s summary of divorce. To them, divorce is much more than a legal dissolution; it is their whole world being torn apart and thrown on the ground in pieces. Therefore, this line of reasoning suggests that there are many negative effects for children in divorced families.

MAIN POINT Adult children of divorce, in fact, showed significantly less trust in relationship measures. The researcher hypothesized that adult children of divorce would have less trust in their close intimate relationships than their intact family counterparts. Hence, if an individual’s parents were divorced then he or she would have less perceived trust towards relationship partners. This is believed to be the result of having dysfunctional relationship examples set for them. Adult children of divorce, according to available literature, generally seem have lower optimism about having successful relationships and also tend to be more likely to divorce. Parental divorce, for many individuals, still has lingering effect in adulthood that adversely affects opposite sex relationships. Evidence is present to demonstrate children who were younger at the time of their parents’ divorce or from families with higher parental conflict were more likely to score lower on measurements of trust and to have high marital conflict themselves (Westervelt & Vandenberg, 1997). Childhood is a key developmental period, thus when parents’ divorce early in a child’s life the child is likely to miss out on important development models. Furthermore, the younger a child was at the time of his or her parents’ divorce, the more vulnerable a child may be to form distorted beliefs about the nature of his or her parent’s divorce. Many children may tend to manifest feelings of guilt and responsibility for the absence of a parent due to divorce.