Children of divorce
Thursday, June 6, 2024. I have always been pleased with this post, and I have often been given the homework of reading and discussing it. This is from the first Couples Therapy Inc. blog, revised and updated.
I am often asked about children of divorce.
Wives sometimes ask me, “do you think I should stay in a miserable marriage just for the sake of my kids?” This is a very loaded question.
First of all, this question implies that marriage is in a perpetually static state… once miserable.. forever miserable. That’s the story behind the Walk Away Wife.
Research has proven that this belief is not only false, but it’s also dangerous to the mental health of your children.
Over the past three decades, science has unlocked the secrets of how to make a troubled marriage happy and successful. But as Michele-Weiner Davis points out, it isn’t magic. It takes work.
When you have children and you are unhappily married, you owe it to them to confront every obstacle and employ every resource to avoid dissolving your marriage. There are plenty of new age pundits who claim otherwise. But hear this loud and clear:
Once a marriage dissolves, so too, does the family… forever. Research tells us that children only benefit from divorce only in those situations where there is extreme abuse.
It is estimated that only one third of the divorces in our country fit this criteria. In all other cases, children lose out on many different dimensions when their parents split.
Even when the adults feel happier as a result of divorce, research shows that there is no “trickle down effect” in terms of how the children fare. Michele Weiner-Davis
The science says your “personal growth” can be hell for your kids.
There are a few notable exceptions, such as systemic domestic violence, drug addiction, criminal behavior, severe mental illness, etc.
But “conventionally unhappy” marriages can be turned around. There is no virtue in suffering in silence. You can get action on your chronic issues.
Research on children of divorce
Children of divorce are one of the most carefully studied areas of social science. Don’t let anybody cause you to think otherwise. The science on this is settled. If you have children, divorce dissolves their family, upsets everything they rely on, and may set a bad example that they will carry into their future.
Once you choose to bring children into the world, divorce isn’t a solution to an unhappy marriage. Fixing it is. Michele Weiner -Davis
Impact of divorce on children of divorce by age group
Children of divorce go through predictable responses, according to the research. Knowing these differences can help you anticipate the impact of your marital decisions on your children.
Children of Divorce: Pre-Schoolers and Younger Children…It’s All My Fault!
Children of divorce under the age of 9 tend to believe that they’re responsible for the breakup. They also tend to fantasize about their parents coming back together again and their family life happily restored.
Attachment science tells us that pre-schoolers see their parents as the center of gravity in their emotional universe.
Young children require focused attention, love, and security from their parents to develop into healthy adults.
Because of their sense of guilt and responsibility, pre-school children tend to be clingy and more anxious.
Divorced parents often notice that after the divorce, their pre-school children regress into bed-wetting, and seem to be incapable of completing simple tasks that once were easy for them.
Family therapists tell us that this is often a strategy that little children employ to attract their parents to come together around the symptoms the child presents.
Children of Divorce: Young Adolescents and Teens… It’s All Your Fault!
Children of divorce between the ages of 9 and 18 years put the responsibility where it more appropriately belongs, but they tend to have strong resentments about it. These children of divorce have a higher capacity to think for themselves and are more independent.
They often feel betrayed and let down by their divorcing parents. They think they can’t trust their parents to put their needs ahead of their own, and a sense of growing mistrust enters the relationship.
These children believe that the best way to cope is to focus on taking care of themselves because their parents are modeling that.
Typically, young boys show increased levels of aggression and disobedience, while girls will become more withdrawn and prone to anxiety. Perhaps in a regressive strategy, Girls of divorcing parents also tend to become sexually active earlier than their peers.
“You want a problem? I’ll show you a problem!” seems to be their defiant stance.
Children of divorce between 9 and 18 report feeling increased levels of stress, anxiety, and feeling alone and abandoned. Some also complain that they feel bitter, embarrassed, tormented, and feel a significant loss of self-esteem. Their feelings might lessen as they eagerly anticipate fleeing the nest, which is often a premature launch into early adulthood.
Other known effects of divorce on teens are chronic school issues stemming from behavioral problems. Bitter and angry children of divorce can become incredibly challenging to manage as they careen through their teen years.
But if you want to see sparks fly… prioritize your own emotional reactions over the emotional well-being of your children. Have a bitter and rancorous relationship with your ex. The higher the ongoing conflict between you… the more you compound the misery and pain of your children.
Long-term consequences for all children of divorce
Judith Wallerstein was the most exceptional researcher in children of divorce research. She conducted an extensive and well-designed longitudinal study.
In one of the few close-up studies of its kind, Wallerstein carefully followed 131 children whose parents were divorcing over 25 years. Studying the children of divorce was her passion and her life’s work.
Judith had her detractors. She made some people uncomfortable. She always had to defend her work by saying, “I’m not saying don’t get divorced; I’m saying don’t ignore the long-term consequences.”
People emphasized that her subjects tended to be more economically well-off and better educated. (As if data from more economically disadvantaged and less educated families would somehow improve the research conclusions…)
What was most compelling about Wallerstein’s study was that she also studied a comparison group of children from the same communities whose parents did not divorce. This study showed how divorce impacts the thinking and emotional life of children of divorce, creating more tentative interior models of relationships compared with similar children who grew up with the benefit of intact families. Despite the best intentions, kids and divorce are difficult to handle skillfully.
Her careful work tells us that divorce's most significant negative impact echoes through time, 15 to 25 years into the future.
Here are a few of her research findings:
Only about 45 percent of children are relatively unimpacted after the divorce.
Over 40% are struggling. They are anxious, worried, frustrated, critical, and doing poorly in school.
Half of the divorced mothers and 30 percent of divorced dads were still rageful and contemptuous toward their former partners.
Most children said they had no idea how intimacy between a couple should work.
Less is less. Divorced parents offer their kids less sensitivity, time, and discipline. Divorce, like physical illness, encourages a narcissistic self-involvement, even in the best of parents.
Many parents are unable to form healthy boundaries with their kids. They share far too much of their personal lives with them. These kids become emotionally activated and more vulnerable to depression and rage.
Research tells us that most divorced parents blow it. Despite their best intentions, they are often chaotic, poorly organized, and incapable of responsible parenting. Divorce is significant trauma, and it’s had to bring your best self forward when you’re howling in pain…but your kids need you too.
As parents continue to act out, a vicious circle is created that inhibits the healthy emotional development and functioning of the children.
“The children of divorce tended to do well if mothers and father, regardless of remarriage, resumed parenting roles, putting differences aside, and allowing the children continuing relationships with both parents. The problem is that only a few children had these advantages”. Judith Wallerstein.
Children of divorce were studied by other researchers as well
Another critical researcher, E. Mavis Hetherington, is a developmental psychologist. She also conducted an extensive longitudinal study following 1,400 families with a population of 2500 kids over 30 years. Here are some of her findings:
About 25% of children of divorce develop acute emotional problems, as compared with only 10% from intact families.
A whopping 75% of adult children of divorce express the belief that divorce is an entirely appropriate solution to being unhappily married… even if you have kids, while only 40% of adults raised in intact families agree. A family history of divorce normalizes divorce.
Children of divorce in a house divided
Researcher Elizabeth Marquardt conducted fascinating research that focused on what happens to children of divorce who are shuffled back and forth between two households. Marquardt led a research project involving 1,500 young adults from age 18 to 35. She split these subjects into two groups: the children of divorce and the children of intact families.
The children of divorce were under the age of 14 when their parents split up. She focused on their “inner feelings” in a survey. Here are a few of her findings:
Children of divorced parents are more likely to feel torn and conflicted being shuffled between two households with often conflicting values.
As a rule, most parents keep poor boundaries. They were asked to keep secrets about the goings-on in these different homes. These self-preoccupied parents offered little or no moral guidance.
These kids became increasingly dependent on their peer group and siblings for emotional support.
Children of Divorce suffered measurably more feelings of loss, loneliness, isolation, and grief than children of intact families
The inconvenient truth of children of divorce
In the late ’80s, Marquardt and Wallerstein endured a firestorm of criticism from a culture that did not want to hear this sad news about the effects of divorce on children. They supported each other in the press and declared unequivocally that many adult children never recover from the often “cataclysmic” impact divorce has on their development.
Our culture loves to portray divorce as a second chance for happiness for adults, but the children of divorce have a profoundly different experience.
Wallerstein endorsed Marquardt and her research. “Her observations are right on target,” said Wallerstein. “These children have a sense of living in two different worlds. They grow up with difficulty in feeling whole.”
Wallerstein and Marquardt contradicted a cultural norm, comforting afflicted children, and afflicting comfortable divorcing parents. A cottage industry of third-rate detractors emerged to oppose them in the media, but they had no science behind them, only narcissistic polemics.
The benefits of emotion coaching
A little over 20 years ago, John Gottman developed the concept of meta-emotion and styles of emotional discourse. As a result of this research, he developed the idea of Emotion Coaching.
Emotion Coaching is a specific quality of parental engagement and is particularly impactful with children of divorce.
Parents who display an accepting attitude toward their children’s emotions while acknowledging the reality of their feelings and verbally coaching them to understand, describe, and ultimately cope with their feelings were buffered against the emotional upheavals of their parent’s divorce.
Research with preschoolers, elementary school-age children, and adolescents has demonstrated that Gottman is right. Emotion Coaching has a positive impact on children of divorce. In a 3-year longitudinal study, Katz and Gottman (1997) found that parents’ emotion coaching beliefs buffered preschool-age children from the negative effects of their parents’ distress.
Emotionally coached children of divorce tend to adapt better. They acquire a better understanding and regulation over their emotions. They also exhibit fewer behavior problems and internal symptoms.
Children of divorce become parents themselves… eventually
Some divorces are unavoidable and may even be necessary. Emotion-coaching can help your kids acquire the resilience they need to get through. But unnecessary divorce may set your kids up to anticipate a future failure when they eventually cross the developmental threshold into their own romantic attachments.
Children of divorce become conflicted, tormented, and gun-shy. As adults, many tend to flee commitment at the first sign of trouble. If they have kids, the same maladaptive pattern can repeat, echoing into future generations long after your unhappy marriage is over and forgotten.
Are you on the edge of divorce? You can turn it around. I can teach you how to rein in negativity and stop fighting in front of the kids. We can even teach you how to fight fair, even if your parents never showed you how.
Science-based couples therapy is 70-90% effective. But it takes courage and guts to turn around a difficult situation. Book an online assessment today.
Learn more about improving your marriage
RESEARCH:
Gottman JM, Katz LF, Hooven C. Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: Theoretical models and preliminary data. Journal of Family Psychology. 1996;10:284–291. [Google Scholar]
Gottman JM, Katz LF, Hooven C. Meta-emotion: How families communicate emotionally. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1997. [Google Scholar]
Hetherington, E. M., & Kelly, J. (2002). For better or for worse: Divorce reconsidered. W W Norton & Co.
Katz, L. F., & Gottman, J. M. (1993). Patterns of marital conflict predict children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Developmental Psychology, 29(6), 940–950. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.29.6.940
Marquardt, E. (2005). Between two worlds: The inner lives of children of divorce. Crown Publishing Group/Random House.
Wallerstein, J. S., & Blakeslee, S. (1989). Second chances: men, women, and children a decade after divorce. New York: Ticknor & Fields.
Wallerstein, Judith (21 Sep 2000) “THE OPEN MIND: The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce”. PBS.
