Divorce And The Risk Of Emotional, Behavioral, And Social Problems

Divorce can increase the risk of emotional, behavioral, and social problems in children (Stallman & Ohan, 2016), which can be caused by changes in emotional, social, residential, and financial life (Stallman & Ohan, 2016). These divorced parents can experience symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress (Stallman & Ohan, 2016), and these can interfere with proper parenting practices. Families with non-divorced parents and a non-distressed household had the lowest risk of distress symptoms (14%), the risk is moderate for a family with either a divorced or distressed parent (20%), and highest when the parents are distressed and divorced (30%) (Stallman & Ohan, 2016). All of this proving that divorce and distress within a family can cause psychological problems for the children. The conflict that results from divorce is what causes most problems when comparing the psychopathology of children from divorced families, to those of non-divorced families (Stallman & Ohan, 2016). This conflict can disrupt parenting practices by their monitoring, positive attention, and emotional availability towards their children being decreased due to having to take on two roles at once (Stallman & Ohan, 2016). Previous longitudinal studies have found increases in problematic parenting with divorce, such as inconsistent discipline, reduced affection, and lack of emotional availability towards their children, which increases the child’s risk to emotional, behavioral, and social problems (Stallman &…