One late summer night when AAM was ten years old, she was cuddled up with her younger brother and sister in piles of sleeping bags on the floor. The pain of the last few months had graciously excused itself that night while hope, instead, was finally welcomed in. She remembers the night feeling carefree; especially once her parents came into join them. However, the happiness quickly vanished and heart-crushing fear began to set in as her parents said, “We have something to tell you.” Her heart began to beat unsteadily with each breath catching in her throat. She looked around to find her little brother and sister pale and lifeless. Her dad looked distant while her mom was epically failing at hiding her tears. All too soon the four most horrid words AAM would ever hear were said. “We are getting divorced,” her parents stated. At that moment, the entire world crashed down around her; leaving her helpless and alone. All she remembers today is her mom’s piercing cries in her parents’ old bedroom, and the terror-stricken fear of not knowing what will happen tomorrow.
Unfortunately, over one million new American children will have to suffer the divorce of their parents each year (Kirn, McDowell, Padgett, Sachs, & Thigpen, 2000). For adults, divorce is simply just a conclusion, but for children, it is the start of uncertainty. Where will I live? Will I still get to see mommy and daddy everyday? Why don’t they love each other anymore? These are a few questions children of divorce ask themselves when hearing the devastating news. According to historian John Sommerville, marriage initially emerged to create “security for the children to be expected from the union;” whereas today, “the child’s interest in the permanence ...
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...orce leaves behind sadness, despair, and unforgettable moments that carry through their lives forever. Some people believe that staying together in an unhappy marriage teaches children the wrong things about love, but divorce only teaches children to give up when things get hard. It is the easy way out when in struggling situations and engraves doubt into children’s minds. Divorce has irreversible impacts on children’s future views of family, life, and love.
Works Cited
Kirn, W., McDowell, J., Padgett, T., Sachs, A., & Thigpen, D. E. (2000). SHOULD YOU STAY TOGETHER FOR THE KIDS? (Cover story). Time, 156(13), 74.
MOSES, M. (2013). Helping Children Endure Divorce. Tennessee Bar Journal, 49(1), 34-38.
Tyre, P. (2005). The Secret Pain of Divorce. Newsweek, 146(17), 14.
Zinsmeister, K. (1996). Divorce's toll on children. American Enterprise, 7(3), 39.
“At current rates, about 40% of U.S. children will witness the breakup of their parents’ marriages before they reach 18” (Cherlin). This started as a prediction that was thought up almost forty years ago, in 1984. Today, this is more or less an everyday occurrence; not every divorce is the same. Yet society tends to lean towards stereotypes of divorce, when it comes to the children and how they should be acting because of the divorce.
The argument over how divorce affects children is one that has been going on for a very long time. Some people believe when parents get a divorce the children are not affected at all, while others believe when parents get a divorce the children are affected by the impact of divorce more than anyone in the family. In some cases, married couples can be in such a terrible marriage that divorce can in no way be avoided, and these divorces are usually the ones that children benefit from and are affected in a positive way. Many times though, a couple will choose to get a divorce because their marriage is not exactly the way it used to be, and they want that aspect of life back; these are the divorces that negatively affect children. Even though in some cases divorce does not affect children negatively, many times when parents obtain a divorce, the children are negatively harmed in many different ways that will forever change their lives.
Boy meets girl. Girl and boy fall in love and get married. Girl and boy have children and life could not possibly get any better. Many years later: Boy and girl start to notice something different in their relationship, something wrong. They decide that their relationship is over, whether they’re both happy with that decision or not and they divorce. Boy and girl’s children see them divorce. Children process the divorce in different ways, and it stays with them for the rest of their lives. People who experience a divorce are affected by it, whether they want to be or not. More often than not, those effects are negative. Before any parents make a rash decision, and before any children put judgment on their parents for messing them up, let’s take a look at the thing people call DIVORCE and how it affects those involved.
Divorce is becoming a worldwide phenomenon, significantly affecting children’s well-being. It radically changes their future, causing detrimental effects. According to (Julio Cáceres-Delpiano and Eugenio Giolito, 2008) nearly 50% of marriages end with divorce. 90% of children who lived in the USA in the 1960s stayed with their own biological parents, whereas today it makes up only 40% (Hetherington, E. Mavis, and Margaret Stanley-Hagan, 1999). Such an unfavorable problem has been increasing, because in 1969, the California State Legislature changed the divorce laws, where spouses could leave without providing cause (Child Study Center, 2001).
Divorce is a heavy concept that has many implications for those involved. The situation becomes even more consequential when children are considered. As divorce has become more commonplace in society, millions of children are affected by the separation of the nuclear family. How far-reaching are these effects? And is there a time when divorce is beneficial to the lives of the children? This paper will examine some of the major research and several different perspectives regarding the outcomes of divorce for the children involved, and whether it can actually be in the best interest of the kids.
Demo, D. H., & Acock, A. C. (1988). The impact of divorce on children. Journal of Marriage
Zinsmeister, Karl. "Divorce's Toll on Children." American Enterprise. May/June 1996: 39-44. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 04 May. 2014.
Girgis, George, & Anderson (2011) define marriage as the union of a man and a woman who make a permanent and exclusive commitment to each other of the type that is naturally (inherently) fulfilled by bearing and rearing children together. These marriages are intended to last eternity and are partially accomplished by raising children together, yet four of every ten marriages lead to divorce and of these divorces, 35% involve children (Ambert, 2009). Children tend to blame themselves for the divorce and are usually caught in the crossfire. These divorces lead to both stress and depression for children and without a strong sense of family, children will have a huge disadvantage over children with a stable healthy family (Arreola, Hartounian, Kurges, Maultasch, & Retana, 2013). Without the ability to cope with the stress of a divorce, children can be effected in multiple ways including a change in mentality, unacceptable behavioural traits and both short and long term emotional factors that will ultimately lead to a critical issue in child development.
DeBord, K. (1997). Focus on kids: The effects of divorce on children. National Network for Child Care. Retrieved November 3, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.nncc.org/Child.Dev/effectsdivorce.html
Arkowitz, Hal, and Scott O. Lilienfeld. (2013). "Is Divorce Bad for Children?". Scientific American Mind. 24(1).
Hughes, Jr. R. Ph.D. (2009) The effects of divorce on children. University of Illinois at urbana-Champaign
Rosemond, J. (1989, Jan 21). Effects of divorce on children vary: Researchers. The Ottawa Citizen Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/239297736?accountid=458
Marriage Counseling or “Couple Therapy” is a term that is used to describe a type of counseling a couple attends in order to help them overcome issues in their relationships to avoid separation or divorce. Today, people view divorce as something that occurs commonly between married couples who have difficulty maintaining a relationship with their spouse. For the past thirty years, the phrase: “fifty percent of marriages end in divorce”, seems to have been ingrained into people’s mentality because it has become extremely common to come across individuals who have either been through one or more divorces. Divorce or separation not only affects the couples, but also their children. Having a strong family plays a major part in the lives of children and is crucial for their mental well-being. A report done by a team of senior academics for DailyMail UK found that “the damage caused to a child by divorce continues to blight his or her life as far as old age” and that “parental separation in childhood was consistently associated with psychological distress in adulthood during people’s early thirties”. Not only does the report show that children are affected by the effects of divorced but, the report also suggests that as divorce and separation continues to grow more common in society, the effects it has on the mental health of children does not reduce.
Marriage is no longer taken seriously; commitment and monogamy are no longer an essential ingredient. For most couples today, it’s not even considered a part of marriage. The negative effects that divorce has on children should be the number one consideration when a couple hits that hard time in their relationship. Children are psychologically and socially affected by divorce and may need counseling either at the time of their parent’s divorce or in the future. They may react instantly by getting lower grades or becoming depressed or anxious.
In the world we live in today, divorce has unfortunately become a normal thing in our lives. Many married couples are getting divorced for many reasons; problems in the marriage, either a spouse having an affair, a loss of feelings, and many other types of complications. Many divorces involve children who are young and due to their age do not understand what is really going on. We all know someone who has dealt with divorce. Children are the ones who are typically affected the most by the divorce and they will have to learn to cope with their parent’s divorce at such a young age, affecting them in positive or negative ways.