Divorce and Children

Divorce is not only separation of husband and wife but it also separates children from their parents. Children who grow up with single parents – mostly created due to divorce, suffers a lot of psychological problems. It has been observed that one third of the children come out unharmed after divorced. Another one third functions satisfactorily but experience a lot of difficulties. It is sad to know that another one third just remain upset with their life. They experience difficulties and hurdles in every point of their life. The development process of their life becomes very hard and complicated.

Children may differ in short term effects of divorce but they share many common features of long term effects of divorce of their parents. Pre-school children with egocentric, egoistic and insensitive reasons blame themselves for the separation of their parents and they also take it as personal rejection. It can also affects sleep, diet, participation in sports and games which ultimately results in lack of confidence in communication and degrading oneself with no reason.

School going children suffers from loyalty conflicts. They usually fantasize about their parents getting back together. This can cause decline in academic performance or psychosomatic symptoms Participating in outside activities can help to get away from the tensions at home and many children seeks this solution.

Due to break down of marriage, men and women both often experience a diminished capacity to parent.  They do not communicate much with their children. They give them very less time. They provide them less discipline and become less sensitive towards them. It has been said that mothers become more coercive and fathers become more lax and indulgent. Both of them provide less affection to their children. These actions of parents result in disobedience attitude of children and parents-child relationship may suffer with a lot of behavior problems.

Most of the researches show that boys are more vulnerable and helpless than girls to divorce related stress and recovers more slowly. The reason is that it is difficult to live with opposite sex than same sex and because the custodial parent is often the mother, boys is exposed to this situation more often. Another perspective is that girls are likely to be just as troubled by divorce as boys are, but demonstrate their feelings in a manner that is more appropriate to their sex role, namely by being anxious, withdrawn or very well behaved (Kaslow and Schwartz p.164).

Divorce has long lasting psychological effects on children which turn out to be shown with time and can also be permanent. Children of the divorce parents have vivid and clear memory regarding separation of their parents. These details are engraved permanently in their brain even more than any experience of their lives.

Many researches show that academic achievements of the children of divorced parents are at disadvantages. Many academic depicts are found among them, lagging behind children from different families.

According to parent’s children's reports, court and school records disruptive actions occur more frequently among children of divorce than other groups, including intact families. This behavior can be defined as lying, fighting with no reasons and maltreatment with other children, teasing, cheating, stealing, and running away.

Social and emotional functioning includes communication with peers, emotional states of fear, anxiety, depression, despair and capacity to cope with stress or frustration. The majority of studies show the social-emotional functioning of children of divorce is less than intact families.

These problems can leave life time effect on the lives of children which have adverse effect on society as well. Divorced parents should develop friendly relation with their children. They should maintain regular communication with each other and control their anger towards them. The parents should never ask the children to choose between them. Children also need their own time to mourn the death of their mother and fathers marriage, just as much as their parents need to. Both of parents should meet up on regular basis. In schools teachers should not represent negative attitude towards divorce. They should not demean children whose parents are separated nor shown them piety.