The way to measure the effects of divorce on children is to compare children of divorced parents with children of parents who are still married. Right?
In a New York Times op/ed, Ruth Bettelheim says that there isn’t a difference:
Studies conducted in the past 20 years have shown that on all meaningful measures of success — social, economic, intellectual and psychological — most adult children from divorced families are no worse off than their peers whose parents remained married.
What goes unreported is the effect of divorce that extends beyond the family splitting up.
Researchers have found two explanations for this. Children who have to cope with their parents’ separation and post-divorce lives often grow resilient, self-reliant, adaptable and independent. And children benefit from escaping the high-conflict environment of a rocky marriage. After their parents’ separation, as conflicts fade, children recover.
And I propose a third explanation: divorce has become so normal, so ordinary and expected, through television and movies, young adult literature and the constant drooling promotion of single motherhood, that practically all children today “experience the kinds of problems that are usually attributed to divorce: low self-esteem, depression, high anxiety, difficulty forming relationships, delinquency and withdrawal from the world.” It’s because the effects are pervasive – not because they’re well-handled – that they’re so difficult to identify.
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The link said there would be one response here.
Even worse than children who go through a divorce are the bastards that grow up without any father at all.
The link said there would be one response here.
The response is the trackback from popularmovies.org. Is it spam?
Even worse than children who go through a divorce are the bastards that grow up without any father at all.
I only know one person who grew up without a father at all (his father died before he was born). He did have a difficult childhood and he’s not well adjusted, but that could also be because he’s very nerdy-intelligent and a homosexual. He went to an Ivy, then got a Fulbright, and has a promising career as a journalist, if he plays his cards right
The story is a little bogus in my opinion, since it only making comparisons based on divorce which is a one time process and not necessarily a huge effect on a child’s life over the long run. For instance, most children of divorced parents still get to see both parents on a somewhat regular basis, hence, the child is still receiving attention from both the mother and father.
What they should really be comparing is the lives of children who have ACCESS to two parents or just one. I would argue that those children who grow up in a single mother household, where the father has flown the coop never to be seen from, will have much more difficulty growing up than those that have access to a mom and a dad.
Good point.
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