The Impact of Divorce on Children and Their Future
Seleena Heyward
Liberty University
Impact of Divorce on Children
“Daddy left, will Mom leave me to?” This is a question many children of divorce ask. They ask
this because they sense change which brings forth countless emotions. Some of those emotions
may be sadness, fear, guilt, loneliness, anger, shock, confusion, and abandonment among
additional emotions. When divorce is decided within a family by the parents they are not the
only ones affected. One of the first steps when divorce is decided is both parents separate leaving
the child in the hands of one parent or shared custody. Another effect of divorce is that it“…
clearly increases the risk that children will suffer from psychological and behavioral problems”
(Emery, 2000, p. 1). Soon the psychological and behavioral problems will translate into
difficulty in social situations and eventually will take a toll on the child’s or children’s
academics. Divorce can also lead to affecting the relationships the child or children may
experience in the future. It is important for positive role modeling to be shared so that a healthy
relationship is displayed. Along with positive role modeling, counseling for both the parents and
the child or children involved can be a major turnaround in how their future plays out.
Persons raised in divorced families tend to have less positive attitudes towards marriage, and
more positive attitudes towards divorce. This negative attitude about marriage leads to decreased
commitment to romantic relationships, which in turn is related to lower relationship
quality.1)4Divorce can also affect4children's sexual behavior, thereby compromising their
emotional and relational stability.
1. Trust in Relationships
Parental divorce often leads to4low trust4among children, 4and those who casually date exhibit
“the strongest effects of parental divorce, suggesting that the repercussions of parental divorce
may be in place before the young adults form their own romantic relationships.” The divorce of
their parents makes dating and romance more difficult for children as they reach adulthood.
Parental divorce horrifies young adults’ heterosexual relationship experiences though the
connection is more evident for women than for men, according to one study.
These effects carry into adulthood. When compared with women from intact families, women
from divorced families also reported less trust and satisfaction in romantic relationships.
Children of divorced parents fear being rejected, and a lack of trust frequently hinders a
deepening of their relationship.4One study showed that individuals whose parents divorced were
more likely than individuals whose parents remained married to believe that relationships were
beset by infidelity and the absence of trust, and they were also more likely to believe that
relationships should be approached with caution.
2. Hesitancy toward Marriage
Persons raised in divorced families tend to have less positive attitudes towards marriage, and
more positive attitudes towards divorce. This negative attitude about marriage leads to decreased
commitment to romantic relationships, which in turn is related to lower relationship quality. In
Sweden, where parental rejection is very high, no significant differences were found between
individuals from divorced and intact families in their attitudes towards marriage and divorce.
Thus the more common divorce and rejection is among adults, the more the attitudes and
expectations of rejection are mainstreamed among children, even those raised in intact married
families.
Adult male children of divorced parents show more ambivalence than men from intact families
about becoming involved in a relationship, though they invest more money and tangible goods in
casual dating relationships. Women share this ambivalence and demonstrate even more conflict,
doubt, and lack of faith in their partner’s benevolence and tend to place less value on consistent
commitment.4Unwed teen mothers, who have expectations of rejection and divorce in
relationships, seem to retain negative attitudes towards men instilled by their parents’ divorce.
3. Acceptance of Divorce
Compared with children of always-married parents, children of divorced parents have more
positive attitudes towards divorce4and less favorable attitudes towards marriage.4Specifically,
“adolescents who have experienced their parents’ divorces and remarriages may feel that
marriage is unpredictable and unstable.” People raised in divorced families4are less likely than
those from intact families to believe that marriage is enduring and permanent, are less likely to
insist upon a lifelong marital commitment, and are less likely to think positively of themselves as
parents. Parental breakup also increases children’s acceptance of cohabitation, at least until
adulthood. However,4religious participation4can reduce this effect.
These attitudinal differences among children of divorced parents are noticeable even as early as
kindergarten. Children from divorced families are more tolerant of divorce than are children from
intact families, though this is only likely if their parents had remarried. Without remarriage, the
effect on their views of divorce was not significant.4The mothers’ accepting attitudes toward
divorce cause more children to be accepting of divorce themselves. These positive attitudes
towards divorce affect not only likelihood of divorce, but also overall relationship quality.
After controlling for age, high levels of post-divorce inter-parental conflict are associated with
less positive views of marriage among adolescents. One study of adolescents after a parental
divorce reported that many children fear that their future marriages will lack love, trust, or
communication, and that they will be beset by infidelity, conflict, or abuse. They also worry that
their marriages will fail or that their spouse will abandon them, a finding common to another
study published that year (2008).
In her study of children of divorced parents from Marin County, California, Judith Wallerstein
found that the children of divorced parents still had persistent anxiety about their chances of a
happy marriage a decade after their parents’ divorce. This anxiety interfered with their ability to
marry well: Some failed to form satisfying romantic ties, while others rushed impulsively into
unhappy marriages. This may explain why children of divorced parents tend to have a lower
relationship quality as adults. The evidence shows that “adult children of divorce who eventually
wed are more likely to divorce than are adult children from intact families.”
3.1 Girls
Young women from divorced families will feel a need for love and attention and yet fear
abandonment; they will also be prone to both desire and anxiety. 4Women whose parents divorce
are likely to be hampered or even overwhelmed by anxiety when it comes time to make decisions
about marriage, though some “women with no ill effects from paternal divorce, may develop
[the] security of friendship-based love quite well.” 4One study linked parental divorce to4lower
relationship commitment4and confidence in women but not in men.
3.2 Boys
While parental divorce affects the child’s view of marriage, girls may be less influenced in their
attitudes towards divorce “because they have more role models of intimacy and marriage as the
ideal in their environment than boys do, especially in the media.” By contrast, boys have fewer
role models of intimacy outside of their families. Hence a father’s modeling of interpersonal
skills is more important for boys. 4Men from father-absent homes also experience less masculine
sexual identification and more feminine sexual identification.
Men whose parents divorced are inclined to be simultaneously hostile and a “rescuer” of the
women to whom they are attracted, rather than the more open, affectionate, cooperative partner,
more frequently found among men raised by parents of an intact marriage. They are also more
likely to be more violent toward their partner. By contrast, the problem of being4overly meek or
overly dominant4is much more prevalent in the romantic relationships and marriages of the
daughters of divorced families than it is among daughters of intact marriages.
4. Expectations to Marry or Divorce
The children of divorced parents, stepfamilies, or single parents are less likely to expect to
marry. Children who have experienced parental divorce are more likely to expect to divorce,
compared with children of intact families. Children of divorce also have more negative attitudes
towards marriage and a preference for smaller family sizes, although the negative attitudes are
mitigated by their parents’ remarriage.
5. Likelihood to Marry or Divorce
One generation4passes on its marital instability4to the next. Sons of divorced parents with less
educated mothers have an increased tendency to forgo marriage.4Additionally, parental divorce
raises children’s likelihood of divorce: 4Children who have experienced parental divorce are
more than twice as likely to divorce, compared with children of intact families.4One study found
that adults who experience parental divorce have chances of divorce 38 percent higher than
adults raised in intact families. Significantly, this increase is not seen in children whose parents’
marriage ended because of the death of one of the parents.
Children of divorce are 39 percent more likely to marry other children of divorce, after
controlling for education. Couples with one spouse from a divorced home are nearly twice as
likely to divorce as couples with both spouses from non-divorced families. Worse still, couples
with both spouses from divorced families are over three times more likely to divorce than
couples with both spouses from non-divorced families.
Children who experience three or more transitions in family structure are much more likely to
divorce later in life, compared to children who did not experience such family transitions.4That
is, 59 percent of the individuals who have never experienced a transition are predicted to never
end a marriage, compared to those who experienced three or more transitions, whose likelihood
to never divorce is about 33 percent.
Daughters of divorced parents divorce more than sons of divorced parents do. The risk of
divorce in the first five years is 70 to 76 percent higher for the daughters of divorced parents than
for daughters of intact marriages.
6. Marital Behavior
Adult male children of divorced parents show more ambivalence than men from intact families
about becoming involved in a relationship, though they invest more money and tangible goods in
casual dating relationships. Women share this ambivalence and demonstrate even more conflict,
doubt, and lack of faith in their partner’s benevolence and tend to place less value on consistent
commitment. Unwed teen mothers, who have expectations of rejection and divorce in
relationships, seem to retain negative attitudes towards men instilled by their parents’ divorce.
Parental divorce is also associated with lower marital quality for their children. This manifests
itself in arguing more about the family,4increased rates of jealousy, moodiness, infidelity,
conflicts over money, excessive drinking, and drug use.4Analysis of the 1987-1988 wave of the
National Survey of Families and Households showed that children of divorce whose marriages
were less than “very happy” communicated less and were more than twice as likely to argue
frequently and to4shout and hit4when they argued.
The child with an available father, both in the early and the adolescent years, is more
companionable and responsible as an adult.4In particular, “boys who feel close to their fathers,
regardless of biological status, have better attitudes about intimacy and the prospect of their own
married lives than boys who do not4feel close to their fathers.”
7. Cohabitation
Children of divorced parents are more likely to have more positive attitudes towards
cohabitation4and more negative attitudes towards marriage than children of always-married
parents.4When they leave home, they are two to three times as likely to cohabit4and to do so
earlier,4especially if their parents divorced during their teenage years.
Daughters of divorced parents anticipated cohabiting before marriage, regardless of the amount
of affection between them and their fathers. Among daughters of intact marriages, it was mainly
those with4poor relationships with their fathers4who anticipated they would cohabit.
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