III.

Related Literature / Studies /Researches

Effects/ Impact of Divorce
Each child and each family are obviously unique, with different strengths and
weaknesses, different personalities and temperaments, and varying degrees of social,
emotional, and economic resources, as well as differing family situations prior to divorce.
Despite these differences, divorce has been shown to diminish a child's future
competence in all areas of life, including family relationships, education, emotional well-
being, and future earning power.

Marriage, Divorce, and Children's Adjustment

Divorce as a source of stress
Divorce causes a number of important, often intense and prolonged, stressors for
children. When parents divorce each other, another sort of divorce occurs
between the parents and their children. The process of separation, or learning to
alternate between to households, is extremely difficult for children, especially
when they are attached to both parents. Moreover, the relationship of children
between parents decreases or decline, at least for a time. The primary effect of
divorce is a decline in the relationship between parent and child. Immediately
after a divorce, most parents have two sets of problems: their adjustment to their
own intrapsychic conflicts and to their role as a divorced parent. The stress of
divorce tends to weaken and even damage the parent-child relationship.
Furthermore, divorce does not necessarily bring an end to parental conflict. In
fact, conflict may escalate and focus more directly on the children after the
separation. Parents may also suffer from depression after the divorce or
otherwise they are preoccupied with their own feelings during a divorce, this
might be another potential factor source of stress for children. Though some
studies show that parental divorce itself may not affect parenting, it often leads to
worry, exhaustion, and stress for parents. These factors affect both parenting
and parental control. Thus, divorce and separation result in less caring and
more overprotective parenting during the adolescent years.
Divorce as a source of financial problem
Divorce inevitably has a negative financial impact on the family. For the children,
money troubles may necessitate changes in residence, schools, and peer groups
or increased and perhaps lower-quality child care. Children of divorced parents
rated the support they received from home much lower than children of intact
homes, and these negative ratings become more pronounced by the time
children are in high school and college. Children in divorced families receive less
emotional support, financial assistance, and practical help from their parents.
Divorced homes show a decrease in language stimulation, pride, affection,
stimulation of academic behavior, encouragement of social maturity, and warmth
directed towards the children.
Divorce as a source of mistrust
Child’s ability to trust their parents, close friends, and others “is strongly linked to
positive parent-teen relationships regardless of parental divorce,” parental
divorce makes it more difficult for children to trust their parents, while a “decline
in the closeness of the parent-child relationship mediates much of the association
between parental divorce, marital discord, and offspring’s psychological
wellbeing in adulthood.” Divorce leads to a decline in the frequency and quality of
parent-child contact and relationships, and it becomes difficult for nonresidential
parents to maintain close ties with their children. For example, children spend
significantly more nights with their mother than their father.

Divorce as a source of Emotional Closeness and Well-Being/Relationship

Children’s relationships with their parents worsen after a divorce. Marital
disruption creates distance between parents and children, even compared to
children living in married but unhappy families. Divorced parents also report
significantly diminished satisfaction with their former spouse’s relationships with
their children, though parental divorce tends to affect the relationship of the child
and the opposite-sex parent more than the child and their parent of the same
sex. Children of divorce are more likely to have hostile relationships with their
siblings than children from married families. This can last even into adulthood.
Divorce negatively affects grandparent/grandchild relationships. Paternal
grandparents frequently cease to see their grandchildren as their grandchildren’s
contact with their own father, the grandparents’ son, diminishes. Furthermore,
compared to never-divorced grandparents, grandparents who were themselves
divorced had less contact with their adolescent grandchildren, engaged in fewer
shared activities with them, and are less likely to believe that their grandchildren
are a valuable part of their lives. Divorced paternal grandparents were less likely
to play a mentoring role in the life of their grandchildren than divorced maternal
grandparents.

Conclusions
Parental separation/divorce is associated with increased risk for numerous
psychological, academic and social problems throughout the life-course.
Experiencing parental separation is associated with roughly a two-fold increase
on average, but an overwhelming majority of children and adolescents do not
exhibit impairing problems after parental separations. In other words, recent
research highlights an increased risk for negative outcomes but parental divorce
separation does not necessarily doom a child to have major, impairing problems.
Children and adolescents who experience parental divorce, however, frequently
experience great emotional distress during the separation and afterward. Recent
research that uses numerous designs to test the underlying causal mechanisms
suggests that the increased risk for impairing problems is not due solely to
 selection factors (risks that increase both parental separation and problems in
the offspring). Rather, ongoing conflicts between the co-parents after the
separation, problems with poor parenting, financial difficulties resulting from the
separation, and loss of contact with the non-residential parent help explain the
association between parental divorce and offspring functioning.

References
Amato, P.R. , Loomis, L.S. and Alan Booth. (March 1995). “Parental Divorce, Marital
Conflict and Offspring Well-being during Early Adulthood”.
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/fl-lf/divorce/wd98_2-dt98_2/wd98_2.pdf
Emery, R. (2000) Marriage, Divorce, and Children's Adjustment. Retrieved from
https://books.google.com.ph/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=S_O6ZReudfQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=related+studies+about+divorce&ot
s=XekTPp_rRF&sig=bFA27iuNjoGEEdJEYux_KB8Cxyk&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=
false
D’Onofrio BM. Consequences of Separation/Divorce for Children. In: Tremblay RE,
Boivin M, Peters RDeV, eds. Emery RE, topic ed. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood
Development [online]. http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/divorce-and-
separation/according-experts/consequences-separationdivorce-children. Published
June 2011. Accessed July 10, 2020.
Elizabeth Meneghan and Toby L. Parcel, “Social Sources of Change in Children’s Home
Environments: The Effects of Parental Occupational Experiences and Family
Conditions,” Journal of Marriage and Family 57, (1995)