Divorce Impacts a Child Emotionally, Mentally and Academically

The child 's life becomes more stressful because of economic loss and the loss of a supportive parent. Since many children do not adjust well, their behavior is affected. The change is devastating for many children and it affects their entire life. Divorce of parents causes many problems and affects children negatively. The loss of a parent can cause loss in knowledge, skills, and resources from the parents.

The Effect of Divorce on Children Divorce, once uncommon in our society, is now becoming more and more frequent, disrupting our children's state of well-being. Some children of divorced families have long-term behavior problems such as depression, low self-esteem, poor school performance, acting out, and difficulties with intimate relationships. Children with divorced or divorcing parents often have a sense of abandonment, because their parents become too preoccupied with their own psychological, social, and economic distress that they forget about their kids? needs (Lamb and Sternberg, 1997). In 1988, Professor Jeanne Dise-Lewis conducted a survey of 700 middle school students.

Often enough the divorce causes children to feel displaced and also to have feelings that their world is coming to an end. These children tend to grow into adults with either extreme emotional detachment and self-esteem issues or they will have strong family values and try to prevent the cycle from repeating itself but the majority of these children grow up suffering from the divorce. Children of divorced parents often enough feel as though the divorce is their fault and become depressed and distant while suffering from low self-esteem since they think that they are the reason their parents split. Many children of divorced parents typically grow up with behavior problems and poor self-images as though they cannot be loved or are not worthy of being loved since their parents divorced, there is the feeling of not being loved at all. The children also suffer because they are now separated from one parent and no longer have both parents in the home.

Adults also experience numerous emotional changes like depression, anxiety, guilt, aggression, substance abuse, etc. (Derichs) Research also show that many adults often have trouble making future relationship commitments. They no longer believe in love and find it very difficult to trust others again. Their self-esteem is extremely damaged during the divorce and it can cause some to refuse to put themselves in a dating environment. Effects on Young Children Young children whose parents go through a divorce often have different reactions than other members of the family.

English 111-R950W Lindsey Ashdown, 7/11/2016 Essay #2 Causal Argument Essay Divorce: To Love or to Leave? The Effects of Divorce On Children In the United States today, about forty to fifty percent of marriages end in divorce (Doherty, 2009, p.42). Of that rate of divorce, sixty percent of those cases involve children. Divorce doesn’t just impact the adults going through the divorce, divorce also impacts the children in between the chaos. Divorce in the family leads to many negative effects on the children like academic problems, poor social skills, depression, and physical and emotional pain and suffering.

In today’s society, divorce rates are increasing at an astounding rate. The statisticians at Divorcesource.com state that increasing divorce rates are leaving close to fifty percent of children growing up in single parent families. As one looks around at the present situation in the world they can spot children who have been exposed to divorce between parents, either civil or violent; divorce still affects the child in a negative way. When parents divorce, children are all affected but, in slightly different ways. Some children will place the blame entirely on themselves, while others who witness divorce will be more prone to look for love in strange places and develop violence in their own relationships.

This is a situation through which kids develop inaccurate thoughts as to why their parents are not together. Blame sometimes corrupts the child's thoughts and eventually the child perceives he/she may be the reason their parents separated. Children are left in the dark numerous times. Children develop revulsion towards the parent whom they feel has caused this terrible situation. A constant question, Why?

People do not realize the pain, not just emotionally but physically as well, that young children go through when they lose a parent, or both. What goes on inside a child’s mind is something some will never understand because at a young age everything is a blur. When the loss of a parent takes place involving children under the age of 18, they are either placed temporarily with family members or worse, put in foster care. The emotional trauma this creates is just overwhelming and devastating. A child feels like they are being punished even more when steps like that are taken, making them feel useless, and hopeless.

Divorce and separation are emotional processes in which the child is affected just as much as are the parents. After a divorce, the child whose parents are disconnected feels incomplete, empty, anxious, depressed and has low self-esteem. After the child realizes that their parents will never be together again, he or she will always feel incomplete to an extent. Children want to be with their parents at family dinners, dance concerts, football games, and other social activities and gatherings. This is far more unlikely to happen in families with divorced parents.

It will cause the children to not be as close to their parents as they once were, because they are angry at their parents for getting the divorce. In some cases, the parents will talk