Baker And Brassard: A Psychological Analysis

While Baker and Brassard talk about lifetime depression caused by divorce, Eleni Vousoura, a counseling and clinical psychologist, and her colleagues Helen Verdeli, Virginia Warner, Priya Wickramaratne and Charles Baily talk about how depression can be hereditary and may still be caused by divorce. Vousoura and her associates did the first three-generational study on the effects of depression and how it is correlated with divorce. They studied one hundred seventy-eight children around the age of fourteen who are from both divorced and intact families to see if they were at risk for divorce, much like their parents and grandparents. Vousoura and others had found that “depression in grandparents was a risk factor for psychopathology in grandchildren…” and that “…parental divorce would be associated with offspring psychopathology…” (Vousoura, et al. 719). Vousoura and her coworkers found that if one generation was affected by their parents’ divorce, then there was a higher …show more content…
Wallerstein believes that divorce helps children gain independence and maturity, but when the child is in school this tends to affect some children in a negative way. Likewise, there are groups of children who now have to take care of their younger siblings because their parents will not do so themselves, either because they’re focusing too much on their divorce, they are working extra jobs, or in some cases, they have lost the motivation to do so. These are many of the children who suffer academically the most because they do not have time to focus on their own school work, or even have time to go to school because they are making sure their younger brothers and sisters get their work done and make it to school on time. After they have helped their siblings with homework and getting them to school, they often have other tasks they need to complete, such as cooking and cleaning around the house. This can result in either failing grades, or dropping out of