Fulker 1

Ava Fulker

English Comp. 1201

Debra Blouch

03/28/2021

The Effects of Divorce on Children

Children’s mental health can be drastically affected when they go through parental

divorce, but not all children are affected at the same level of severity and in some cases the

effects are minimal to none. Divorce can be one of the most traumatic events that can occur in a

young child’s life. Having to witness the separation of the two people that you thought were

going to be together forever can be scaring in a child’s mind. Through this negative experience

children can develop mental issues that can be uncontrollable and damaging in their future

education. Having experience this event in my life has helped me see the true effects of divorce

as well as looking into studies of the matter.

When I was very young, I had a firsthand experience with divorce. All I would hear was

yelling and negative words coming out of my parent mouths whenever they were together. Even

after they were officially done and separated there were still fighting over whether my father

would get to see his children or if my mother was going to keep us. I believe that I do have some

issues that had bloomed throughout my younger years leading into my early teens. Now some of

them may be from other traumatic experiences, but it leads me to think that the main source of

my issues are from my mother and father getting divorced. Now I find myself questioning, how

does divorce effects children’s mental health?

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Fig. 1. Two parents fight over their child, while the child wants to be with both of them.

(“Divorce Effects on Children”)

This seems to be a very common occurrence in today’s world. Parents fight for custody

over their children. Some parents may even make their children testify against one parent or the

other. Through this traumatic experience children can develop mental health issues that effect

their day to day life. Things such as depression, loneliness, fear, confusion, and more are present

in their lives post-divorce, and these health issues can be proven by several different studies.

In the Social Indicators Research paper “The Casual Effects of Parental Divorce and

Parental Temporary Separation on Children’s Cognitive Abilities and Psychological Well-Being

According to Parental Relationship Quality” authors Anna Garriga and Fulvia Pennoni write

about their outcome of their studies conducted on the effects of parental divorce on children’s

mental and physical being. The main result of their research is “Children experiencing parental

temporary separation or parental divorce shows lightly more psychological problems and lower
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scores for cognitive development with respect to children with stable family.” (A. Garriga, F.

Pennoni 8) Meaning that children who do experience this event may gain conduct, hyperactive,

internalizing, peer, pro-social, vocabulary, pattern, and picture problems. Similar result were

found in a separate study conducted in South Nigeria.

Authors Anna Garriga and Fulvia Pennoni experiment results in the discovery that the

experience of divorce does raise the stress in a child’s life. They also say that the results of

divorce can be much different based on the environment they lived in pre-divorce. If parents

seem to be happy together and have no conflict with each other while around the child divorce

may come as a surprise to the child. This may result in the child questioning their own happiness

because their parent’s relationship may have appeared as a lie. While in other scenarios children

that have witness their parents in a more hostile state may welcome the divorce and perceive it as

a blessing. “…perceptions of divorce depend on the level of their parents’ pre-divorce

relationship problems, another factor related to children’s adjustment after separation.” (Garriga

and Pennoni 5)

Another reliable source that comes to the conclusion that divorce does effect children’s

mental health. A study that was conducted in South Nigeria, “Analytical Study of Causes and

Effects of Divorce as Perceived by Students in South South Geopolitical Zone of Nigeria” by

authors Ugo C. Okolie, Okwu A. Onyema, and Ugo S. Basey. One of the main ideas of this text

is “Children of divorced couples generally fare worse in terms of emotional, psychological and

educational outcomes, they feel anger, fear, depression, loneliness, and even guilt.” (C. Okolie,

A. Onyema, S. Basey) The authors come to a conclusion that divorce has a negative effect on

children as a whole. Mainly targeting divorce couples with children, the main idea of this paper

is that divorce has an effect on the psychological state of children involve with divorce.
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A result of having been through a parental divorce can bring to table problems with social

interaction with parents, teachers, students, and friends. This could affect the children’s future

relationships such as marriage and being able to keep friends. Thus, there social well being will

be limited and may become even more depressed and angry with themselves, parents, or just the

world in general. These issues have affected me, so I find this research personal and believable,

but not all studies are easily related to.

While I have experience in the field of parental divorce some things a cannot relate to or

agree with completely. Jennie E. Brand, Ravaris Moore, Xi Song, and Yu Xie in “Parental

Divorce in Not Uniformly Disruptive to Children’s Educational Attainment” write about how the

effects of divorce aren’t always the same in every divorce child’s life. “While parental divorce is

generally associated with unfavorable outcomes for children, it does not follow that every

divorce is equally bad for the children affected.” (E. Brand, Moore, Xie) You may get from this

statement that some children go the rest of their lives unaffected by the event and others have to

live with the issues that arose from the splitting of their parents. But Brand, Moore, and Xie

believe that divorce wouldn’t be the source of children’s mental issues. Saying that children that

do live with parents that are constantly negative towards each other should already anticipate that

their parents are going to get a divorce. Therefore, if the child does have mental health issue that

have resided from a different traumatic experience or they were already apparent in the child’s

life pre-divorce.
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Even though there are many studies conducted to learn the outcome of children going

through parental divorce, scientist will never be able to show the true thoughts and feelings of

the children. The only true way to come to a remote understanding of the effects your parents

getting divorce is to truly experience it or learn from someone that has fought that battle in their

childhood. Thousands of people have been through this traumatic event and they can be reliable

source.

Many children today go through parental divorce. Every situation is different, some

children may find the divorce a blessing, but some may find it to be tragic. In an article written

by Stephanie Martinez she shares her story and the effects it had on her throughout her early

years. She explains that she had been through two parental divorces in her life. One with her

biological mother and father and one with her mother and step-father. She proceeds to say that

she was affected by this event from age three to her early twenties. How she had to go back and

forth from her mother’s to her father’s house, until her father stopped showing up and moved on

to a new family. She believed that the divorce was her fault and her father left because she

wasn’t good enough anymore.

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Fig. 2. A little girl covers her ears and cries while her parents fight with each other.

(“How Parents Fighting Affects Kids’ Mental Health”)

This is a perfect example of how everyone’s situation is different. Some children

continue to have both their parents in their lives while others may only get one or even none.

Even though there were more factors that effected Stephanie Martinez in a negative way, divorce

of her biological parents was the main source. If her parents would have never gotten divorced,

she would not have gone through more traumatic experiences. Like going through another

divorce with her Mother and Step-Father or her father getting married to another women and

starting a new family.

Divorce can have a domino effect on children’s lives creating more of a negative

environment for them to grow up in. When children are put in these situations they tend to get

confused because they don’t quite understand why their mother and father stopped loving each

other. Younger children might come to the conclusion that if they can stop loving each other

sooner or later they will stop loving them. Or they may believe that they are the cause of the

divorce. When they think this, they lose confidence in themselves as well as other people making

it hard for them to continue to give trust to people that may not be in their lives completely or

may betray their trust.

Personality is a major factor in the effects of divorce. While divorce is a common thing in

today’s world, not every child’s situation is the same. The article “The Impact of Family

Structure on the Health of Children: Effects of Divorce” by Jane Anderson, shares a similar idea

as the article “Parental Divorce in Not Uniformly Disruptive to Children’s Educational

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Attainment”, but Anderson has a different view on how not everyone’s situation is different.

“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 divorce.” (Anderson) Anderson

believes that despite the differences it is obvious that divorce diminishes children’s future as a

whole.
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Work Cited

Anderson, Jane. “The Impact of Family Structure on the Health of Children: Effects of Divorce.”

The Linacre Quarterly, Maney Publishing, Nov. 2014,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/. Accessed on 7 March 2021.

Brand, Jennie E., et al. “Parental Divorce Is Not Uniformly Disruptive to Children's Educational

Attainment.” PNAS, National Academy of Sciences, 9 Apr. 2019

www.pnas.org/content/116/15/7266. Accessed on 7 March 2021.

Don’t Divorce Me! Kids’ Rules for Parents on Divorce. Directed by Amy Schatz,

HBO, 2012.

“Divorce Effects on Children”. Sodoma Law’s, 30 November 2015

https://www.sodomalaw.com/divorce-effects-on-children/. Accessed on 10 April

2021.

Garriga, Anna, and Fulvia Pennoni. “The Casual Effects of Parental Divorce and Parental

Temporary Separation on Children’s Cognitive Abilities and Psychological Well-Being

According to Parental Relationship Quality.” Social Indicators Research: An

International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2020, p.

1. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11205-020-02428-2.

“How Parents Fighting Affects Kids’ Mental Health”. Alta Behavioral Healthcare, 19 July 2019

https://www.altabehavioralhealthcare.org/2019/07/16/how-parents-fighting-

affects-kids-mental-health/. Accessed on 28 April 2021.

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OKOLIE, Ugo C., et al. “Analytical Study of Causes and Effects of Divorce as Perceived by

Students in South Geopolitical Zone of Nigeria.” Balkan Social Science Review, vol. 15,

no. 15. Jan 2020, pp. 25-46 EBSCOhost, Accessed on 3 March 2021

Root, Andrew. The Children of Divorce: The loss of family as the loss of being. Brazos, 2010

Martinez, Stephanie. “A Personal Story: How My Parents Divorce Wrecked My Childhood.”

Blended and Black, 12 Mar. 2019, www.blendedandblack.com/personal-story-parents

divorce-wrecked-childhood/.