Scientific American, "Is Divorce Bad for Children?"

As with so many other things, it’s not what happens to you, it’s what you do with it.  Children who suffer the most from their parents’ divorce do so because of their parents’ high conflict, poor coping skills or other failure to cope after divorce.

Hal Arkowitz and Scott O. Lilienfeld authored “Is Divorce Bad for Children,” published in Scientific American magazine March 19, 2013.  The article describes how most children actually recover well from their parents’ divorce, with only a “relatively small percentage” experiencing long term harmful consequences.

These authors do not dispute that, in the short term, most children are affected by divorce.  The point of the article is, that despite long standing perception that divorce causes significant damage to children, recent research shows that most children recover fairly quickly from their parents’ divorce.  

However one thing has remained constant, from earlier research to recent and across current studies: “high levels of parental conflict during and after divorce are associated with poorer adjustments in children.”   

In addition to high conflict, other dysfunctional behaviors of parents also determine their child’s recovery from divorce.  Parents can slide into depression following divorce, or substance abuse.  Anxiety and stress, financial challenges and loneliness can also severely impact the quality of parenting post-divorce.  The article specifically points out that, “children who live in the custody of at least one well-functioning parent do better than those whose primary parent is doing poorly.”  As a Family Law practitioner, I see this as a potential basis for modifying residential responsibility.  If one parent is not coping well after divorce and, more importantly, not taking responsibility for managing his or her coping problems, the child may be better off with the other parent.

 

See the entire article at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-divorce-bad-for-children&page=2