Effects Of Divorce On Children
The effects of divorce on children are often overlooked when two once loving parents begin looking for a “way out” of their marriage. They just want the pain to end so they work with divorce lawyers to ensure they get what they are entitled to.
The initial damage happens often before the couples’ divorce is even finalized during a custody battle. It has been proven again and again that children need BOTH parents to grow up as stable, secure and confident adults.
The Washington Post released an article on the effects of divorce on children stating that the child’s relationship with their father greatly declines after the divorce takes place.
Take a look at a snippet of the article for yourself:
“Eighteen months after the divorce, children perceive the father with less respect; and half of the 9-to-12-year-old boys openly rejected him as role model. But by the five-year mark, there was a clear correlation between the health of the relationship with the father and the child’s attitude toward the divorce: Those who still felt the divorce had been a mistake (approximately 28 percent) had a bad relationship with the custodial mother or yearned for their father. Boys between 9 and 13 expressed particular longing for their fathers and worried that their own masculinity was in jeopardy without a role model.”
The story then continues about the long term effects of divorce…
Judith Wallerstein and Joan Berlin Kelly, authors of the seminal work “Surviving the Break Up: How Parents and Children Cope with Divorce,” found that few of the kids in their follow-up survey agreed with their parents’ decision to divorce-even five years after the parents separated.(These results are part of the researchers’ continuing study of 144 middle- and upper-middle class California children of divorce.)
In a 10-year follow-up, published last month in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Wallerstein reported that among the 38 young people in the original study who were between 6 and 8 at the time their parents split, over half later viewed the divorce as “the central experience in their lives.” A majority expressed “feelings of sadness or neediness, of a sense of their vulnerability,” and were “burdened by intense worries about failure in present and future relationships … and by an overall sense of their own powerlessness.”
Resource: The Washington Post - Broken Children, Broken Homes
The truth is, children carry this burden of divorce with them for their ENTIRE LIVES..well into their adulthood and definately into their marriage. As the report stated above, children grow up with the overwhelming fear that what happened to their parent’s marriage…will happen to their OWN marriage.
And the scary thing is, this isn’t too far off from the truth. Children whose parents divorced actually have a greater chance of being divorced themselves when they enter into marriage.
The book, “Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives Of Children Of Divorce” is a great resource that will give you insight into the REAL effects of divorce on children.
In a nutshell, the book is about: “A pioneering national study reveals that even successful young people are profoundly shaped by childhood divorce.” as they put it.
So what does this mean if it’s already TOO LATE for you…and your spouse has already filed for a divorce?
I’ll be posting in a few days with some FREE resources that may help you maintain a good relationship with your spouse while going through the divorce.
While you cannot avoid the effects of divorce on children, you can minimize the effects by having a civil relationship with your ex spouse.
I have created a program specifically for this purpose.
For Men: Men, if you would like more information about this “Marriage Afterlife” solution, avoid the effects of divorce today.
For Women: Women, if you would like more information about this “Marriage Afterlife” solution, learn how you can avoid the effects of divorce today.
Talk to you soon.
Larry Bilotta
