The Effects of Divorce on Children’s Academic, Social and Emotional Development
Biby Chahine
Concordia University It is currently projected that 40.7% of all marriages in Canada will end before the thirtieth wedding anniversary (Employment and Social Development Canada, 2015). With about 33% of all first marriages ending, and about 16% of people divorcing more than once in their lifetime, divorce is no longer a very rare event in families (Feldstein, 2013). It used to be that divorce was a bit of a “taboo”, something that represented a kind of personal failure, and that disgraced you in the eyes of society. Nowadays, it has become more and more socially acceptable, and in many cases it even improves men and women’s happiness and quality …show more content…
This, apart from the fact that children and adolescents are usually not mature enough to completely understand and accept the situation, can cause a lot of harm in the children’s lives. Therefore, although divorce has become more and more acceptable in society, its consequences on children are still important to monitor, since it can lead to decreased academic performance, an increase in behavioural issues, and permanent casualty to their romantic relationships and to their self-esteem, although these negative effects can be potentially ameliorated through quality parent-child relationships, a stable post-divorce environment, and effective communication.
One of the biggest worries for when a child has divorcing parents is how that change in lifestyle will affect their academic performance in school. To test this, Anthony, DiPerna, & Amato (2014) studied the effects of divorce in the classroom as it impacted two things: students’ approaches to learning (ATL), and their academic achievement. For the ATL, they used a scale that measured behaviours such as attentiveness, persistence, enthusiasm, and organization in the classroom. The results found that children from …show more content…
Tuckman and Regan (1996) conducted a study where they examined the cases of 1,767 children that had been referred to outpatient psychiatric clinics. They cross-referenced the number of different referral problems with types of homes (i.e., homes with parents that were married, separated, divorced, widowed, and unmarried). The analysis showed that adolescents from divorced families displayed the highest aggressive and antisocial behaviors that got them into the clinic, and the second highest school problems, when compared to the children from all other home types. Because these results were purely numerical and based on a large population sample, it is fair to say that they were extremely objective and give us unbiased statistics about the prevalence of behavioural issues in children of divorce. Spiegelman and Spigelman (1991), however, performed classic Rorschach Inkblot Tests on children from divorced and intact marriages in order to analyze the more psychological side of behaviour. They measured three variables: levels of aggression, hostility, and anxiety in the children. The results, which were blindly evaluated, showed significantly higher scores in all variables in the children that came from divorced parents, and they also showed that there was no correlation between “the time elapsed
Biby Chahine
Concordia University It is currently projected that 40.7% of all marriages in Canada will end before the thirtieth wedding anniversary (Employment and Social Development Canada, 2015). With about 33% of all first marriages ending, and about 16% of people divorcing more than once in their lifetime, divorce is no longer a very rare event in families (Feldstein, 2013). It used to be that divorce was a bit of a “taboo”, something that represented a kind of personal failure, and that disgraced you in the eyes of society. Nowadays, it has become more and more socially acceptable, and in many cases it even improves men and women’s happiness and quality …show more content…
This, apart from the fact that children and adolescents are usually not mature enough to completely understand and accept the situation, can cause a lot of harm in the children’s lives. Therefore, although divorce has become more and more acceptable in society, its consequences on children are still important to monitor, since it can lead to decreased academic performance, an increase in behavioural issues, and permanent casualty to their romantic relationships and to their self-esteem, although these negative effects can be potentially ameliorated through quality parent-child relationships, a stable post-divorce environment, and effective communication.
One of the biggest worries for when a child has divorcing parents is how that change in lifestyle will affect their academic performance in school. To test this, Anthony, DiPerna, & Amato (2014) studied the effects of divorce in the classroom as it impacted two things: students’ approaches to learning (ATL), and their academic achievement. For the ATL, they used a scale that measured behaviours such as attentiveness, persistence, enthusiasm, and organization in the classroom. The results found that children from …show more content…
Tuckman and Regan (1996) conducted a study where they examined the cases of 1,767 children that had been referred to outpatient psychiatric clinics. They cross-referenced the number of different referral problems with types of homes (i.e., homes with parents that were married, separated, divorced, widowed, and unmarried). The analysis showed that adolescents from divorced families displayed the highest aggressive and antisocial behaviors that got them into the clinic, and the second highest school problems, when compared to the children from all other home types. Because these results were purely numerical and based on a large population sample, it is fair to say that they were extremely objective and give us unbiased statistics about the prevalence of behavioural issues in children of divorce. Spiegelman and Spigelman (1991), however, performed classic Rorschach Inkblot Tests on children from divorced and intact marriages in order to analyze the more psychological side of behaviour. They measured three variables: levels of aggression, hostility, and anxiety in the children. The results, which were blindly evaluated, showed significantly higher scores in all variables in the children that came from divorced parents, and they also showed that there was no correlation between “the time elapsed