The Primary Effect Of Divorce On Children

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Children have always faced the threat of family disruption in their lives. In the past death was more likely to cause family disruption than anything else. Well, things have changed. Divorce has become more acceptable in today’s society than ever before.
The primary effect on children is the diminishing of relationships between family members. When parents divorce, they do not only divorce themselves, they also create a "mini" divorce between themselves and their children. Divorced mothers, despite their best intentions, are less able than married, are to give the same level of emotional support to their children. Divorced fathers are less than likely to have a close relationship with their children and the younger the children are at the time
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Before the divorce, there are two financial supports in a child's life. Following the divorce, custodial parents (mostly mothers) generally have less income than most two-parent families. There is a common belief that many of the difficulties experienced by children of divorce are the result of the economic difficulties experienced in these families. (Hughes Jr.) Clearly, after a divorce a child's difficulties are increased due to many more things than just the diminishing of relationships alone, a child of divorce's difficulties can also be increased through economic strains. One of the ways that lower income may impact a child is through disruptions that may result from less money. Many divorced families change residency which may result in changes in schools, friends, and other supportive relationships. All in all, less money leads to more disruptions, which leads to more problem for …show more content…
The negative part, desertion of civic duties, is most widely obtainable in the studies of the effects of divorce, and can be seen in crime and etc. Children of divorced parents are more likely to be delinquents by the age of fifteen, regardless of when the divorce took place, rather than children of intact families. (Fagan) Adolescents from “always-single-mother” families are consistently more likely to delinquent than those from intact families, though the same holds for children from intact conflict ridden families. One 1985 study tracked one thousand families with children aged six to eighteen for six years and found that those children living in intact married families exhibited the least delinquency, while children with stepfathers had the greatest risk of the most disruptive behavior. (In this study single-parent children fell in between.) (Fagan) Obviously, these statistics prove that children of divorced parents are more likely to be deliquents than children with intact families.It may seem that most children of divorce do well in the long term. In a quantitative review of the literature in 2001, sociologist Paul R. Amato, then at Pennsylvania State University, examined the possible effects on children several years after a divorce. investigators followed these kids into later childhood, adolescence or the teenage years, assessing their academic