The Negative Emotional Effects of Divorce on Children

Parental Loss

• When parents divorce, the time children spend with one parent is often substantially diminished. Psychologist and child custody evaluator Robert Galatzer-Levy reports that children of divorce report a sense of longing for their noncustodial parent and demonstrate symptoms commonly associated with grief, including depression and anxiety. He has also pointed out that in surveys of adult children of divorce, children who spent little or no time with one parent reported the most unhappiness with their parents' divorce and often expressed frustration with the legal system. Parents who want to minimize negative aftereffects from divorce should strive to ensure children maintain a relationship with both parents whenever possible.

Relationship Difficulties

• A large number of studies during the 1990s and 2000s reported in "The Scientific Basis of Child Custody Decisions" point to the ways parental divorce can affect children's romantic relationships. Parental divorce dramatically increases the likelihood that children will ultimately divorce their spouses. Children may also try to compensate for the pain of their parents' divorce by making poor relationship choices. Girls whose parents divorced are more likely to later seek out older men, while boys are more likely to be verbally and physically abusive to girlfriends. However, when children see their parents handle conflict in a healthy way, it may help to mitigate or even eliminate many of these negative effects.

School Problems

• Children who are raised by happily married parents perform better on numerous measures of child adjustment and welfare. The most notable of these measures is school performance. Children of divorce, particularly highly contentious divorces, may have trouble with school performance.

Custodial Parent Problems

• Robert Galatzer-Levy reports that when parents do not share custody, single parents report markedly higher levels of stress than either married parents or parents in joint custody situations. In self reports, some divorced custodial parents report higher levels of stress on average, and also report using more punitive discipline tactics with their children as well as losing their tempers more frequently than parents who are married or who share custody. Parents who learn to manage stress effectively and who have support of their family and the noncustodial parent, however, do not report these negative outcomes.

Drug Use

• Children of divorced parents are more likely to use illicit drugs and alcohol. Researcher Judith Wallerstein has argued that this is probably a misguided attempt to cope with the stress that often accompanies divorce. Heated custody battles, fights over money, and contentious divorces all increase the likelihood of drug use.

  In his survey of the research done by developmental psychologists and professional child custody evaluators, Robert Galatzer-Levy concludes that these negative effects are likely an outcome of particularly contentious divorces, divorces in which children are deprived of visitation with one parent, and divorces in which there is family violence. Wallerstein's research may overestimate the incidence of drug use among children of divorce, but subsequent research by psychologist Michael Lamb, R. Bauserman, and many other psychologists has pointed to a correlation between particularly ugly divorces and subsequent child drug usage.

Poverty

• Children's standard of living often deteriorates after divorce. Single parents may have less money and may expend resources fighting over custody. Robert Galatzer-Levy reports that as many as 25 percent of divorces end in poverty for children. Poverty can cause lower educational quality, more parental and child stress, more access to drugs, and a host of other social ills.