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Negative effects of divorce on children
Effect divorce has on children
Divorce Effects on Children's Mental Health
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Resilience is a major issue when it comes to the effects divorce may have on parents and children. It is the act of the child or parent attempting to face life adjustments and how they may react to the change. Emo0tionally resilience can be a bad thing because some child display their emotions differently. “As a consequence, the experience of divorce is a psychosocial stressor and a significant life transition for most children, with long-term repercussions for many” (Lamb, Sternberg & Thompson, 2005). This shows that divorce has many everlasting emotional effects on the parties that are involved. Most child tend to display those feelings verbally or through actions within their behavior to express how this has impacted them. Often withholding
Long time ago, I was talking to one of my friends Sami who was living with her dad. She is always upset and depress because her dad couldn’t take care of her all the time. She always missed her mom. She wanted to be with her mom. She wondered if her mom still loves her even though she never saw her mom. I asked her, “Why did your parents got divorced?” She answered, “I have no idea because they separated when I was three years old. My dad doesn’t like to talk about it. I miss her very much and I know she miss me as well. I am sure she might be thinking about me just like I think about her all the time”. Her words touched my heart emotionally. I felt sad. This conversation made me to think more on divorce, but I never got time to research on it. Now, I got an opportunity to select a topic to research so I chose divorce. I would like to know what situations children go through after their parents get divorced. I am assuming that divorce might be the hardest thing for some children, especially in childhood life.
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.
Having your parents go through divorce is tough and difficult. I would know because I know this feeling. The hardest decision is to choose who you want to live with. Just think how you would feel if you had to make that decision and then on top of that having to deal with school, relationships, friends, and sports. Keeping up on this stuff is tiring, it physically and mentally drains your energy. Divorce affects majority of kids that have gone through their parents getting a divorce they have more mental problems than kids and young adolescents but it also affects adults. Adults whose parents divorced when they were kids are more likely to consider suicide. Divorce can affect kids and adults, it’s a difficult situation that can physically and mentally damage them which can lead to bigger problems ahead of them in life.
Divorce has many psychological effects on children. The parents are often oblivious to the child’s feelings as they are fighting their own battle with the ex-spouse or fighting the battle of custody of the child. Children usually have an unbiased approach to both parents and to witness the conflict between the ones they love has detrimental effect on the child. The degree of psychological effects depends on the age of the child. Children of ages 6 or lower tend to have less developed cognitive abilities which will increase as the child matures. At this age, children experience egocentrism which causes them to blame the divorce on themselves (Foulkes-Jamison, 2001). These children are emotionally dependent and will...
...d by their parent's divorce but also have negative side effects later on in adulthood (issue 8 pg 146). Developmental psychologist Hetherington agrees that divorce can be harmful to a child's development but that they ultimately overcome it. Eventually they will overcome it, but this is most likely to happen past stage 6, in middle adult hood after one has decided whether or not they want to spend their life with someone. Erickson's theory of personality development can help one realize the stages which are mostly affected by a parent's divorce. The stages affected are stages 3, initiative versus guilt, stage 4 industry versus inferiority, stage 5, identity versus confusion, and finally intimacy versus isolation. The symptoms of having a broken home might not always be very noticeable until a person is peeled little by little and ready to fix their heavy past.
Children, whom are involved in divorce deal with much emotional baggage, which carries along other issues dealing with behavior and social issues. Dealing with divorce is a stressful experience for a child, before it happens and dealing with it after the divorce is finalized. Ongoing parental conflict ...
Family is the fundamental group of people that hones each individual into a social being and trains each person into a being that complies with various changes that may occur in one’s life. It aids in developing a person’s skills and attitude in relating to other people. If not for the family, growing and developing one’s self is a difficult and an almost impossible task to accomplish. In the article by Joan Patterson, known as Understanding Family Resilience, it had highlighted various information and explanations of how a family responds and should opt to act during times of adversity, or also known as family resilience. It is defined by McCubin, H and McCubin, M. as “characteristics, dimensions, and properties which help families to be resistant to disruption in the face of change and adaptive in the face of crisis situations.” Since change occurs on a daily basis and is entirely inevitable, the trait of a family to be flexible in adjusting is necessary. Events that may trigger changes are various crises and challenges or internal and external forces. Such occurrences that arise and are experienced by the family may draw most families to become hopeless and disoriented. In Patterson’s work, a clear explanation and citation of various instances to prove that such misfortunate events that could lead to the disorganization of a family can be avoided and be used as an opportunity to further strengthen the relationship founded in the family.
Many couples face that difficult decision about whether divorce would be the answer to their problems. Divorce is at a very high rate today and many more people are using this method to walk away from a marriage. When divorce is the only option then its repercussion can have a devastating effect not only on the parents but on the children. It is the children that must suffer because of the parent’s mistakes. Divorce is a long arduous process that in time can tear apart a family. There are many factors of divorce that can affect the children. Because of the divorce on the parents it can change the whole family structure. There can be a loss of income, lack of educational needs, mental illness, poverty, homelessness, and depression. These can all effect the children by causing them to be very angry, lash out at others, academic and cognitive decline, criminal offenses, and engage in risky behavior. These are just a few of the topics that will be covered within this paper.
Strengthening Family Resilience Family resilience can be described as the successful coping of family members under adversity that enables support and cohesion within the family (Walsh, 2006). According to the research, resilient families typically have many of the following protective factors: positive outlook, spirituality, family member accord, flexibility, family communication, financial management, family time, shared recreation, routines and rituals, and outside support networks (Walsh, 2003). These protective factors not only serve as a function within the family structure, but are a factor in the therapeutic process. The family resilience perspective in therapy shifts away from a deficit-based lens that views struggling families as
Divorce is a process that millions of married couples go through when falling out of love. Family members, including children, parents, aunts, uncles etc. are affected by this common yet unsatisfying process. Unfortunately the children are the ones stuck in the middle of the chaos. From separation to expressing their feelings, children in divorce cases are more likely to be affected than others. While all of this chaos is happening they are helpless, either too young to understand or scared one parent might hate the other. Choosing sides is typical, but a harmful decision for a child to make. Teenagers also deal with the pain and anger of not knowing what to do. Even though children are too young to understand, the effect divorce has upon them
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. Younger children may begin to cling to the parent that remains in the home with them for they fear that both parents will eventually leave them. Older children may begin to rebel or become extremely disobedient and disrespectful. You may see unpleasant attitudes develop and they can become unsocial and no longer desire to be around their friends. Most children feel guilty for their parent’s ...
Divorce is a word that haunts many young children. Kids don't understand why it's happening; all they know us that they now have two homes, two families, two Christmases. The lives of every member of the family are forever changed. Everything they know and are familiar with will be different. This significant shift in lifestyle can cause many effects on various age groups of people. When a married couple is miserable and unhappy, considering divorce seems like the only answer. Some parents do not consider how much the divorce will affect their lives, along with the lives of their children. When a married couple gets divorced, children in the family have trust issues, teens become rebellious, and the couple themselves often go into severe depression or sadness.
Kelly, J. B. and Emery, R. E. (2003), Children's Adjustment Following Divorce: Risk and Resilience Perspectives. Family Relations, 52: 352–362. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2003.00352.x
Children react differently yet similarly in divorce. Every child caught up in the distress of divorce has a hard time coping with it and imagining their life without a parent. Their anxiety levels peak as they feel they are going to be abandoned. They experience feelings of loneliness due to the loss of the other parent. Different children go through these emotions at different levels and at different times depending on the child’s age. How bad or how well children handle the divorce depends on how the situation is handled. It can throw the child's entire life into a whirlwind.
There are a lot of emotional tolls that come from it as well. The divorce alone is not the only thing that causes children to act in such a negative way. Fighting that occurs in the household causes increased reactions to the situation (Oppawsky, 2000). As anyone would guess precursors to divorce and divorce lead to more crying. It is not just more crying though, it also children are crying for longer periods of time (Oppawsky, 2000). Thinking about it, it makes sense for this to occur. Divorce is a sad time for any child because no one wants to see his or her parents split up. In Oppawsky’s (2000), report children also experienced different variations of sadness as well as feeling shame with what was occurring in their family unit. Problems with emotional instability arise when children start to express anger towards their parents. Depending on how conflicts were being handled at home and a child’s coping abilities a number of negative feelings could be expressed towards parents (Oppawsky, 2000). One little girl recalled her situation “a terrifying time of loneliness” because she felt so much hatred to her parents she wanted nothing to do with them (Oppawsky, 2000). The biggest emotional response from children was fear. Being in the situation children did not know what was going to come from it. They feared the unknown, losing contact a parent, and worst of all they feared death (Oppawsky, 2000). Some children