Blog 7

Does parents’ divorce harm children more than fighting?

The topic that I chose for my literature review is about “Divorce and Children”. I think it is really hard for kids to deal with divorce and they don’t have any choice. However, regardless of whether parents stay together or split, if there is fighting going on between them all the time, the children will suffer.

It is widely known that divorce is hard on everyone involved, including children of divorcees. However, there is some disagreement on the degree of harm that divorce does to children. There are two opposing views on the effects of divorce on children. The first viewpoint is supported by Judith S. Wallerstein who wrote a book titled "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A Twenty-Five Year Landmark Study”. In it, she claims divorce is devastating to most children and that the effects are long lasting. According to Wallerstein, children with divorced parents suffer more depression, more substance abuse, lower grades, and are more likely to need psychological help than children from intact families. Countering this opinion is research conducted by E. Mavis Heatherington. In her book, "For Better or Worse: Divorce Reconsidered," She found that most children of divorce do not have significant long-term damage and function well as adults. She does concede that 20-25% of children of divorce do have serious problems, but we tend to focus on this small amount of negativity when we should be focusing on the overwhelming majority of cases that are positive.

While Heatherington argument is very valuable and considerale, on average, however, research indicates that children of divorce (or those who were born into a single-parent family) do much more poorly in many areas such as problems in school, poor health, higher risk of substance abuse, mental illness, criminal behavior and early sexual activity, feeling of loss over one parent's absence due to divorce, risk of being abused by living with a stepparent or unmarried partner, and becoming divorced themselves someday . Overall, I think divorce can harm children more than parents’ unhappy relationship.