Eric Bartel's Marriage

Picture yourself living with an angry wife and a couple of children and anything you do to help is not good enough. This is the same situation author Eric Bartels faces in the midst of his marriage. Eric Bartels describes his marriage as a “battlefield” of “paroxysmal anger” (61), which fuels the arguments between Bartels and his wife. In his situation. Bartels could settle for divorce, but instead, he decides to look past the arguments and as a result his marriage continues. However, not all couples are able to iron out arguments and this leads to 40-50% of marriages resulting in divorce (Popenoe and Whitehead 16) and with that, 28% of the divorcing couples have at least one child under the age of six (Leon). When divorce occurs, damage happens

Social interactions a child experiences from birth on shapes his or her social development. A child begins social development through play and the cooperation it demands. A child in preschool starts learning his or her purpose through active play and imagination, known as symbolic play. For example, a child will often play house, school, or space ship. Which are involve make believe and pretend which is symbolic play. From eight months to three years of age children participate in symbolic play and if there is conflict in the child’s home symbolic play is disrupted. Kim Leon, child psychologist, found that most children of divorced parents either refused to participate in play or played with themes of an aggressive nature. Kim Leon in the same study found adults “whose parents divorced when they were younger were functioning less well in work and relationships than those whose parents were divorced later”, depicting that the play period of a child is important to social development. When a child feels confined from expressing his or herself during play, this affects his or her social development. This is important to note because parental divorce at a young age negatively alters an individual’s interpersonal skills because the child will not be able to make meaningful relationships and function well with others once he or she is an adult. This creates frustration when trying to develop a professional and intimate life because he or she is not able to form successful relationships. Interpersonal skills are also affected by parental divorce in terms of antisocial behavior. Antisocial behavior plays out in a child in the following ways: regularly not getting along with peers, constantly fighting, punching, and harming pets. Antisocial behavior from a child is most common during the divorce rather than post-divorce. This is caused by the child bottling up his or her emotions and