Sociological Effects Of Divorce On Children

Superior Essays
Sydney Weissman, Noah Prince, Dillon Tanner
Dr. Godwin
Sociological Perspectives
31 October, 2016
Effects of divorce on children
Each year, approximately one million American children experience their parents getting divorced. Statistically, 50% of marriages will inevitably end in divorce (Cherlin). That means that every other child living in America comes from a household with a single parent (Booth). Studies have shown that Americans are marrying earlier and only for personal gratification and benefits rather than long term commitment. Therefore, divorce has become a way to rectify a poor decision. This is a big problem amongst society since divorce can create a plethora of sociological issues not only at the time of divorce, but also later
…show more content…
This decline in education can be seen psychologically and sociologically. Sociologists discuss that children of all ages can have their educational ambitions affected by parental, social, and socioeconomic environments. Therefore, divorce can affect a child’s sociological perspective. Parents provide support with academic success/involvement, sports, hobbies, and other extra-curriculars that are constructive for children during their development. Therefore, if the parent is going through a divorce, the children may lose important resources that are critical for their success. “Thus, adolescents of divorced parents may have lower educational ambitions than their peers from intact two-parent families,” (Henok). This however doesn’t apply if the bond between children and their parents aren’t weakened. The child’s lowered socioeconomic status also affects their educational ambition by potentially being around people with lower educational standards and underfunded schools. Differences in children’s educational ambition can all depend on their age, gender, and even personality after a divorce. Males tend to develop more conduct problems, increase in substance use, and dropout of school. Females suffer more from mental behavior problems such as an “overcontrolled” behavior, leaving them more likely to be introverted and suffer from depression. This greatly affects their ability to have an …show more content…
Since the 1960s, divorce has nearly tripled with 50% of marriages ending in divorce, 60% of those marriages have children. Majority of these divorces, roughly 95% result with children living with their mother. Why?, “A presumption of distrust of the father, along with a presumption of trust in the mother,” (Shevchenko). Based off social structure, men are typically working while women are typically taking care of the children, therefore; women are represented to be more as the caregiver. This is typically what provides leverage to allow custody to women. The problem is that most divorces are proposed from wives in relationships which also controls the existence of a father in the child’s life. This happens all the time and it typically leads to the disbanding of a father and his child because the father’s relationship with the mother is extremely poor. They do not talk except to argue unless they can get along for the sake of their children. This results in less confrontation with a child and either parent because of the poor relationship between both parents. Thus, you have a child left with a divorced mother. If you think about it, a divorced mother has to start supporting herself and how ever many children in the family, the father is usually the support for money. Therefore, children grow up seeing their mother with a “blue collar” job and want

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In today’s world, divorce is a normative event, which is affecting approximately half of all marriages in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). The rise in divorce can definitely correspond to the law of many states allowing unilateral divorces. As Stated by Jonathan Gruber (2000),…

    • 2391 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Divorce is a very prominent occurrence in American families; statistics show that nearly forty to fifty percent of Americans divorce at sometime. Divorce, often looked down upon, may be necessary to resolve complications. Many significant problems may arise from a divorce however. Three predominant effects on children who have divorced parents are mental issues, social problems, and financial instability.…

    • 124 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Impact of Divorced Parents on Their Children Life with divorced parents can be a challenge for some children. Some of the reasons are that divorced parents can impact their children’s communication, security, and stability. The impact on children’s communication, insecurity, and stability can cause problems with few aspects of the children’s daily lives for example, in the relationships in school or work. One impact that divorced parents can cause on their children is communication.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mothers are often awarded care of their children. Boys are less likely to adjust to divorce because the male figure in their life is gone. Another risk factor is the socioeconomic status. When a divorce…

    • 1455 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The article, “The effects of divorce on America”, written by Patrick Fagan and Robert Rector explains how divorce is not only hurting society but children. This article expresses the effects divorce has on a child’s life including educational ability, job stability, and emotional health. When children go through a divorce they are sometime left in the turmoil and are forced to make very difficult decisions which adds stress to the traumatizing experience. The authors said most of the emotional and psychological damage is due to the degenerating relationships with the two parents, or when one child and a parent. Upon reading this article I realized divorce not only effects the family involved but also future generations.…

    • 377 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Parents should do all that they can to stay together and figure out their problems for the best interest if their children. Although the children may not have great relationship examples, they can surround themselves with positive enforcements and decide how they will act instead of being acted upon due to the circumstances. The other thing that childhood divorce encourages, of course, is the avoidance of marriage. For example ,"My mom got remarried and divorced again, so I've gone through two divorces so far. And my father's also got remarried--to someone I don't get along with all that well.…

    • 1574 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    21 Oct. 2015. < http://web.b.ebscohost.com.db02.linccweb.org/pov/detail/detail?sid=540e477d-715f-4aac-970c-d8544e530621%40sessionmgr114&vid=0&hid=107&bdata=JnNpdGU9cG92LWxpdmU%3d#AN=3628746&db=pwh> >>>This article remarks upon the effect of the social impacts of divorce on the citizens of the United States. It relays many facts about how it affects the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S alone. It provides many different facts such as “Children whose parents have divorced are increasingly the victims of abuse and neglect….” And many more facts that would not normally be known to the general…

    • 510 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Children in the United States grow up in an array of family structures. Single-parent families and two-parent families are produced and reproduced through marriage, remarriage, divorce, and cohabitations aside of marriage. Forty percent of all children are born to unmarried mothers (Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2016, para. 7). In fact, single-parent families are the fastest growing family structure.…

    • 275 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Fault Divorce In Children

    • 1995 Words
    • 8 Pages

    It has been seen in past research that children with divorced parents suffer depression, failing at school, and even turned into criminals, but recent studies show that these children were dealing with these issues before the divorce. “Children 's psychological reactions to their parents ' divorce vary in degree dependent on three factors: (1) the quality of their relationship with each of their parents before the separation, (2) the intensity and duration of the parental conflict, and (3) the parents ' ability to focus on the needs of children in their divorce.” The article also talks about how children who are kept in touch with both their parents have a better opportunity to be more balanced and more realistic, and throughout the years children adapt to the divorce terms and find easy to make this positive. The effect on women is more economical, seeing as women initiate divorce twice as often as men, in fact after the divorce most women find peace and adjust better than men do. Economically, divorce takes a toll on women since 65% of women don’t get paid for child support and that 60% of people under the poverty line are divorced women and children.…

    • 1995 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Long-Run Implications of Unilateral Divorce by Jonathan Gruber (2004), the author stated that adults who were exposed to unilateral divorce regulations as children are less well educated, have lower family incomes, marry earlier but separate more often, and have higher odds of adult suicide. The author argues that the rise rate of divorce are increasing in states that allows unilateral divorce - divorce that does not require the explicit consent of both partners.…

    • 454 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Divorce interrupts stable monitoring, problem solving, and consistent discipline, and each of them contribute to failing at school and deviant peer association (ADD). If the parent is occupied by work or taking care of the house, then that parent will not be able to see what their child is doing. Divorced parents tend to be less consistent, exercise less control, and do less monitoring over children (ADD). Without parental monitoring a child may be led by a group of friends or someone to hang out with others known as criminals and the parent won’t even become aware of it. Hanging out with a group of friends that gets in trouble constantly will impact a child’s performance in school.…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Scientific and research work with children of divorce have focused mainly on parental partying as a distressing experience and its effects on children as a catastrophe situation. An emerging agreement is that divorce establishes a major imbalance in the lives of almost all children who has experienced their parents' divorce. Damaging short-term effects have constantly been described in the areas of educational performance, social change, and emotional well-being. There is significantly less agreement about the potential long-term impact of divorce for children. (Guidubaldi and Perry, 1984).…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    There is positive news for parents pondering if their breakup will affect their children’s capability to have a serious relationship later in life. A study at Penn State University discovered children of divorced parents are not more likely to develop commitment issues than those who grew up in a whole household. This study observed six hundred single parent families for seventeen years and discovered that kids who had more trust in others maintained a closer relationship with both the father and mother after the divorce. New research suggests that divorce is not the full reason for some of the children’s behavioral problems. Allen Li, associate director of the Population Research Center at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California…

    • 1211 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The parent may need to work extra hours, and may not be available to provide schoolwork assistance for the children, increasing the likelihood of the child failing at school because of the new situation (Moon, 2011). In addition, the child may be forced to switch schools, and go to a ‘public’ school, and the change of setting can have a negative impact on the child’s success at school. Using these considerations, one can expect that highly educated parents who have superior economic resources, and skills to cope with their children’s and their feelings of stress (Wijckmans, 2013). Therefore, they can deal with the negative long-term effects that are associated with divorce to their children’s educational achievement (Amato P. R., 2014).…

    • 967 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This study illustrates that there are numerous consequences of parental divorce on children. When compared to children from non-divorce households, children from divorced families have more stressful relationships with other members of the family, poorer academic performance in school, and delayed psychological development (Cartwright, 2008). Additional research found children from…

    • 1800 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays