Impacts of Divorce on Children

Introduction

Most people get married with the hope and intention of enjoying a life-long family unity. However, there are cases where parents become uncomfortable with each other. They cannot settle their differences, and with time, these differences set them far apart. When they cannot live with differences, divorce becomes a viable choice for everyone to live the way they wish for the best of their lives. A divorced marriage hurts children the most. They see life from a different and mostly harsh perspective than they ever experienced when their parents were together in a united family. Belo is some impacts that divorce has on children.

1. Poverty

When parents have divorced, children are more likely to follow their mother. Divorced women have a higher chance of getting into poverty than women who remain in their marriage (Hogendoorn, Leopold & Bol, 2020). Since these women have children they moved with to their new lives as a divorcee, these children get a fair share of the poverty of their parents. The quality of life of such children is likely to be lower or substandard than the quality of life they would have enjoyed under the protection and providence of their fathers.

2. Failure in education

When parents have divorced, children are left with less supervision. Therefore, they are not reprimanded for their poor performance or even for their laxity in attending school and joining others to pursue their academic excellence. For this reason, children from divorced families are less likely to complete their studies. A lack of enough finances also presents the challenge of financing their education. Even though single parents could afford to pay for high school fees, they might find it quite demanding to provide for their family needs and still need all children’s education financing needs (Diab & Schultz, 2021).

3. Stress and depression

Depression is yet another struggle faced by children from divorce marriages. It is in the children’s best interest to enjoy the company of both their father and mother. What divorce does is that it separates parents, and it makes one of these parents look toxic. When children are young and unable to decide on their own, they grow up believing their parents are tix and probably hate them. They grow stressed about why one of their parents could be so harsh to them to the extent of abandoning them. These are the kind of children who, when much troubled, turn into activities that endanger their lives (Kravdal & Grundy, 2019).

4. Marriages and relationship difficulties

Children from divorced families are likely to end up like their parents. They cannot go through marriage sustainably simply because there is no one to guide them on how to go through marriage hardships. With a divorced parent, children will always reference the lives of their divorced parents and use it to support why they cannot accommodate certain weaknesses of their partner. Since they are not strong enough to withstand all those challenges that come alongside marriages, it is equally difficult for them to make successful marriages when they are of age.

5. Children to parents’ conflict

As children grow older and their cognitive understanding of divorce develops, they start to take a side. Majorly, children refuse to be at the neutral point, and they change their attitude toward their parents. From their misinformed decision, they take to hate and discriminate against one parent simply because they are siding with the other. This creates a separation not just between parents but between parents and their children. Where children take different sides, they end up conflicting amongst themselves. Children conflict based on the side of the parents they wish to support.

6. Unstable social lives

Children from divorce marriages tend to withdraw themselves from their social groups. They might feel shy about their family situation and find it difficult to interact with other children from functional families (Nazri, Ramli, Mokhtar, Jafri & Abu Bakar, 2019). Without social lives, there is little or no sense of belonging within the community where one comes from. Due to a lack of social networks, these children turn to drugs because no one can question them and guide them on how to live lives even with changes. When not intervened on time, the social engagement of these children dies, and they tend to prefer to live solitary lives that are unhealthy for them in the long run.

7. Cohabiting

Children from divorce marriages do not recognize their parents as a course of marriage advice. They tend to believe and follow their institutions on the issues of marriage and family establishment. They start marriages based on cohabitation even without the knowledge of their parents. There are many reasons they may fail to engage their parents in such an issue because they could still be young to get married, or maybe they married out of desperation and are still trying whether things will work out well for them. It is due to such marriage practices such children end up in divorce marriages in the future. It is something they are unable to correct by themselves because, at first, those who were supposed to mentor them in their marriage lives failed in theirs (Johnston, Cavanagh & Crosnoe, 2020).

Conclusion

Divorce has its fair share of challenges for parents and children. However, children are on the severe receiving end of the most challenging of divorce. They suffer from academic struggles, future marriage struggles, conflict with parents and children, depression, and drug abuse, among others, as discussed above.

REFERENCES

Diab, S. Y., & Schultz, J. H. (2021). Factors contributing to student academic underachievement in war and conflict: A multilevel qualitative study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 97, 103211.

Hogendoorn, B., Leopold, T., & Bol, T. (2020). Divorce and diverging poverty rates: a Risk‐and‐Vulnerability approach. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(3), 1089-1109.

Johnston, C. A., Cavanagh, S. E., & Crosnoe, R. (2020). Family structure patterns from childhood through adolescence and the timing of cohabitation among diverse groups of young adult women and men. Developmental psychology, 56(1), 165.

Kravdal, Ø., & Grundy, E. (2019). Children’s age at parental divorce and depression in early and mid-adulthood. Population studies, 73(1), 37-56.

Nazri, A. Q., Ramli, A. U. H., Mokhtar, N., Jafri, N. A., & Abu Bakar, N. S. (2019). The effects of divorce on children. e-Journal of Media and Society (e-JOMS), 3, 1-19.