Divorce and Remarriage

4/29/22, 3:48 AM 12.3: The Consequences of Divorce for Spouses and Children

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Characteristics of the Child

The age of the child at the time of divorce appears to be related to personal adjustment problems. The younger children are at the time of marital disruption, the more likely they are to have adjustment problems. However, after the initial trauma of divorce, most children are as emotionally well adjusted as those in two-parent families.

The gender of the child appears to be an important variable, with boys being more handicapped by divorce than girls. Boys affected by divorce show more aggression, have a greater need for attention, and are lower achievers in school; when these boys are adolescents, they have more problems than do girls with alcohol and drug use (the studies finding these differences compared boys and girls from divorced homes with boys and girls from intact homes). Boys seem to take about twice as long as girls to adjust to a divorce, and they are more likely to have a relapse during adolescence. Girls, too, are affected, but in different ways. Boys are more likely than girls to “act out” in response to divorce while girls respond in less visible ways (Furstenburg, 1990:392).

4/29/22, 3:48 AM 12.3: The Consequences of Divorce for Spouses and Children

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The seemingly greater resilience of girls to the potential trauma of divorce may, however, be a consequence of the living arrangements made after divorce rather than the divorce itself. Since about 85 percent of children of divorced parents live with their mothers, the negative behaviors of boys may be the result of living with a female rather than a male parent. Boys in families headed by a single mother are less well adjusted than are girls. However, boys living with single fathers are better adjusted than are girls living with single fathers (Seltzer, 1994:241).

Adolescence appears to be a particularly troublesome time for children of divorced parents. They are more likely to begin sexual intercourse at an earlier age, and they are more apt to engage in delinquency, deviancy, and antisocial behavior. The research indicates that all of these behaviors are more the result of living with one parent than of divorce per se. That is, antisocial behavior of the children of divorce may be more a function of less parental control than the result of the trauma of parents divorcing.