Short-Term Effects Of Divorce On Children

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The Good In Divorce You're sitting at your abruptly called family meeting wondering what you could have possibly done wrong, expecting to be getting in trouble for something, when your parents unexpectedly announced that they are getting a divorce. Just like that, your world stops. Your thoughts are in a thousand different places as you try to piece together how this could have happened. In this moment you are filled with anger, sadness, and confusion. Divorce, like any other loss can cause children to go through the stages of grief, which are denial, bargaining, anger, sadness, fear, blame, and acceptance. Though, once the short-term effects are over, many will realize that the divorce was really better in the long run. Divorce can come …show more content…

The effects can be different among children depending on their age, gender, and how the marriage previously was. Many kids, especially younger ones, may blame the divorce on themselves. They may think that the divorce is because of something that they didn’t do right, because they were not good enough or smart enough or well behaved enough (Johnson 23). With teenagers, it can be much more difficult. Teenagers are already hormonal and confused enough as it is, so when you add a divorce to the equation it can cause all sorts of emotions. They can be left feeling depressed, angry, anxious, and confused. These emotions can may be expressed in many ways. According to Richard E. Mancine, the common ways some teens may express their anger could be by not eating, acting rebellious, not sleeping well, changed study habits, hanging out with new people, and experimenting with new behavior. Many teenagers express their anger in dramatic ways like those because they are also trying to get their parents attention. Divorces are messy and sometimes parents get so caught up …show more content…

Children going through this are not alone. There are somewhere around 1.5 million children every year who are going through the same thing (Scientific American). There are very few long term effects of divorce on children. Some will even insist that there is none. For the most part, children usually end up with their mothers. With this being the case, boys grow up without having a male figure in their life which could possibly cause some minor long term effects. Girls, on the other hand "sometimes exhibit what psychologist Judith Wallerstein calls the ´sleeper effect.´" This basically means that even though they may have seemed to accept and adjusted to the divorce well, there could actually be a lot of anger that is buried , or "sleeping" inside, that could possibly emerge years later. This could, later in the girl's life, cause them to become convinced that no one really loves them or cares about them (Stewart). But, a large majority of the time there are no long term effects for most people. " In a 2002 study, psychologist E. Mavis Hetherington and her then graduate student Anne Mitchell Elmore found that many children experience short-term negative effects of divorce, especially anxiety, anger, shock, and disbelief. These reactions typically diminish by the end of the second year" (Scientific American). With how harsh some of the short-term effects are it is quite amazing to see that research

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