Divorce On Children

Today about 50% of marriages end in divorce. As these numbers continue to rise, more and more families are being torn apart. Many children under the age of 18 are living with a single parent. It is estimated that 300,000 children will be added to this list each year (Woltmann, 1954). Children can be affected by divorce in many different ways including parent-child relationships, being stressed out, having behavioral issues, and being an adult while parents get divorced. Divorce can affect children from as young as toddlers all the way until their adult years.
Parent-child relationships can be affected by divorce. A survey showed that people who come from divorced families were prone to see their parents as unreliable later in life (Divorce …show more content…
Children will have to start to make different kinds of choices about their life. One choice that a child has to make is what parent they would like to live with (Emery, 2006). This can cause stress to the child because they could fear that they are going to hurt or make one of their parents mad if they choose to live with the opposite parent. As a child is making a decision on which parent they would like to live with, they also have to consider if they would have to switch schools to live with a certain parent (Hansen, 2013). If they children do not have a choice on which parent they would like to live with, they could also have stress from being forced to move schools and to make new friends. Some children may also not be able to keep in contact with one of their parents (Emery, 2006). Unfortunately, it is usually the father that the children don’t keep in contact with as much as they used to. The lack of contact could also cause some children to believe that one of their parents don’t seem to love them anymore (Hansen, 2013). Some children, usually around they ages of six to eight, may have prolonged fantasies and wishful thinking that their parents are going to somehow get back together and be “happy” again. As the children grow older, they can start to become stressed around the holidays. They become stressed around the holidays because they aren’t just going to have one …show more content…
If the parents have a destructive relationship then the divorce will not go as smooth. Having a child see their parents go through a bad divorce is going to affect the children more than it would if the parents were going through a smooth and easy divorce where there is no fighting going on. Each family is going to react to the divorce differently. Parents should be prepared because not ever child is going to react the same way. It is important that the children are getting the correct support systems form their parents so that there will not be any problems in the future with the