Divorce: How Its Effects on Children Affect Society

The divorce process begins in marital disharmony or emotional divorce and ends after a series of crises in the final dissolution of the marriage, according to Pfeffer (1981), and her studies have shown that another part of the divorce process includes the children of divorce suffering a period of grief which may not be different from bereavement after the loss of a parent through death. Although divorce is a long drawn out process most of the time, Pfeffer (1981) suggested that there are many developmental issues faced by children suffering from this new stress placed on them. She and other researchers have noted that there are many elements involved in a child's learning to cope with the new arrangements and tensions of the divorce process (Kelly, 1981; Hirsch, 1983; Wong, 1995; Walczak, 1994; Doob, 1994; Doob, 1995; Forgatch, Patterson, & Skinner, 1988).

The Impact of
Divorce on Children

According to a ten year study of twenty-one children between two and a half and six years old, now between 12 and nearly 18, done by Wallerstein, Corbin, and Lewis (1988), a significant number of children felt that they were deprived of the nurture of a more protected life that they saw and wished for in intact families even though these children had experienced divorce first hand for two-thirds of their lives.

The anxiety of adolescents, Wong (1995) has discovered, is increased by their worry about the money available for their future needs and school-age children and adolescents both have a lowered self-esteem, poorer academic performance, and greater depression than their peers in non-divorced families. She also noted that divorce causes school-age children and adolescents alike to be different from peers of non-divorced families because their sexual identity is affected, their view of both parents is less than perfect, and they are concerned about their future as a marital partner. Adolescents are highly resentful and find the divorce of their parents very painful, but they are able to comprehend the divorce without blaming themselves in the middle of all the difficult and stressful things that adolescents already go through (Wong, 1995). Pfeffer (1981) suggested that adolescents want the re-establishment of generation boundaries making parents authority figures not friends, and parents can do this if they work together to provide loving support and firm limits, even if they are divorced.

Adjustment of Boys and Girls

Children of divorced mothers, especially boys, tend to harass their mothers, nagging and whining, in the first year, claimed Roman and Haddad (1978), and are more disobedient and neglectful toward her than children of intact families. Wong (1995) also agreed from her studies that boys have more behavior problems than girls after the divorce. The studies of Berry (1981) showed that there are more boys than girls in single-parent families and that few boys stayed with their fathers while more girls stayed with their mothers. His studies revealed that difficulties arise in the development of children regardless of their sex in the absence of fathers. Doob (1994, p. 322) said "Boys tend to have more difficulty adjusting to divorce than girls" because boys are less likely to have role models than girls for learning gender related behavior resulting in limited social skills. He added that these limited social skills may be why it is more difficult for boys to adjust, while the studies of Pfeffer (1981) showed that there were indications that adolescent girls of stepparents had higher incidences of aggression, sexual behavior, drug involvement, and school difficulties than girls of intact families. Berry (1981) also explained that the courts seem to assume that fathers appear to perform better raising boys yet the numbers of boys and girls are equally divided and most single parent families have two children. According to Roman and Haddad (1978, p. 4), a caring father is willing to cook, sew, "wash clothes," clean and "tend to minor cuts and bruises, fevers, colds, and rashes" in order to preserve a family structure. They continued to explain that one father and his daughters, before and after the divorce, built rockets, "electric motors, doll houses," "baked bread and sewed dresses, played touch football and softball," wrote and staged plays, and, without much success, he tried to teach his daughters how to fish.