Each year in the United States over a million children are the innocent parties to the divorce of their parents. While divorce also hurts the parents it is the children who particularly suffer, according to recent research.
The findings come in a study published in January by the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, “The Effects of Divorce on Children,” by Patrick F. Fagan and Aaron Churchill.
Drawing on a large amount of published research on the effects of divorce, their paper goes through a series of areas where divorce harms children. The first one regards parent-child relationships. As would be expected, divorce affects the ability of parents to relate to their children….
I think the more applicable comparison would have to include “Children of divorce†compared to “children from broken (But legally intact) homes.
Obviously, a reconcilled home is best. But what if that is no to be? Yes, I know all the pious answers. But some marriages turn into a constant low-intensity combat for decades. I am NOT an advocate for divorce! But I have sometimes wondered how much of a favor I (and their mother) did my children by hangin in their for two decades.
I still think we chose best (or rather, chose less badly), but my opinion is not proof. It is barely evidence.
#1, R. Eric Sawyer,
It may not be objective “evidence,” but experience is valid. I grew up in a tension-filled, often explosive home with parents intact. Most days I wished they’d divorce; the other days, I wished that somehow everything would magically change into sweetness and light.
So it’s probably not surprising to report that none of us kids married. That’s a good thing because we have a damaged view of the “institution” and it would take partners with a ton of patience for us to relax and trust.
The solution is not to guilt people into staying together “for the kids’ sake” because that’s rubbish and puts the reason for the continued unhappiness on the kids’ very existence. No, the solution is not to pressure people into marrying in the first place, particularly by a “certain age.” There is nothing wrong with being single and there’s no magical marriage threshold. Articles and studies such as this one don’t go out of their way to address that or to recommend singlehood.
Too many people have married because they were expected to do so and they married the best available specimen, figuring they could change him/her into what they really wanted. It doesn’t work that way. Or it shouldn’t.
Has anyone else noticed the really mean-spirited commercials on these days with women being nasty and disrespectful to their husbands? I can think of three immediately — the truly horrible woman who snaps at her husband when he tells her he got a good deal on a cellphone plan. She belittles him and then laments not marrying some other bloke. The second is the young couple with triplets folding clothes in a Tide commercial. He’s helping her fold the clothes and she’s insulting the way he does it. Uncomfortable to watch. Another is about pizza and the woman, sitting next to her husband on the couch, says for the first time, she doesn’t have to settle. He qualifies that as being just about pizza and she says, unconvincingly, “yes, of course.”
This stuff makes me cringe, and I’m not even married! I guess it’s because I’ve seen this exact thing play out in real life, even from solid citizens and churchgoers. I don’t get it — do they think it’s funny? And can’t they see the look of embarrassment and sadness on their husbands’ faces when they say things like this? And don’t they realize that their daughters (and sons) are watching and believing this behavior to be normal?
Anyone who has dated seriously knows how damaged people can become by how they grow up and what they see/hear/experience. My ex’s parents never divorced and their dysfunction severely affected their children. So, neither of us came into our relationship with many ideas or much experience about how healthy relationships work. It is, indeed, a cycle but it’s not necessarily about divorce.
And of course, my real complaint was about the study itself. If we were talking about, say, back pain, the comparison would not be between back pain and health (health is better!) It might be between exersize, surgery, medication, and doing nothing. What response to the broken-ness produces the least harm and best outcome. Not whether it is better not to be broken.