If you’re on this page your clearly
interested in learning about how divorce can affect children. Being a child of
separation not only once but twice, I see the effects it can have on children
not only in myself but in my siblings. And it’s something that people overlook
because children deal with it in different ways. With that being said I wanted to give you
guys a taste of what I learned over the course of this semester, while
researching this topic. I chose to do this because it’s something people should
look for and learn about especially if you’re dealing with children.
Children of
divorce or separated parents show increased behavioral problems and the marital
conflict that comes with parent divorce places the child’s social abilities at
risk. Even intact families that have low levels of conflict, children still
have issues. There are several studies out there that suggest that parental
conflict affects the outcomes of children’s behavior problems, regardless of
marital status. Overall, young adults are best off when raised by two
continuously married parents with a low-conflict relationship. Children who
engage in fighting and stealing at school, are more likely to have come from
broken homes then children who came from households with married parents.
Children of divorced families are more than twice as likely to drop out of high
school than children from intact families. Boys whose parents divorced while
they were in elementary school tend to develop problems over the years
following their parent’s separation. Children from intact families have fewer
behavioral problems in school. For example, a first-grade child born to married
mothers are less likely to show disruptive behavior, like disobeying a teacher
or aggressive behavior to peers, than children born to single mothers.
Guys
I have to tell you something! Not everything online that is supposed to be
informational is accurate or explained to you guys in its full entirety. They
can even be biased because of the writer’s views but even if the writer wants
to reach a certain audience. I say this,
because the popular sites are what you guys tend to read first. For this assignment,
the popular media article I chose was from The Our Family Wizard Blog, I chose
this because it gives you the information you need but it doesn’t show you the
research somebody has done to find why all of the above is true.
Robert
Sampson, a professor of sociology in Chicago. He reported that after studying
171 cities in the United States with populations over 100,000 that the divorce
rates predicted the robbery rate of any given area. In these communities, he
found that the lower divorce rates showed higher supervision of children which
in turn showed lower crime rates. In 1994, it was reported in Wisconsin that
the incarceration rate of juvenile delinquents was twelve times higher with
children of divorced parents then with children of married parents. In a
British longitudinal study of males aged eight to thirty-two, David Farrington,
found experiencing parental divorce before the age of 10 to be a major predictor
of adolescent delinquency and committing a crime as an adult.
Divorce
reduces children being able to handle conflict. The difference between
marriages that remain intact and those that end in divorce lies primarily in
the parent’s ability to handle conflict and moving towards an agreement. For
example, compared to students from intact families, college students from
divorced families use violence more frequently to resolve conflict and are more
likely to be aggressive and physically violent with their peers. The National
longitudinal study of adolescent Health shows that children from married
families are less frequently suspended, expelled or delinquent, and less likely
to experience school’s problems that children from other family structures.
Do you see what I
was saying? Parents who are going through divorce should be reading information
like this so they can act accordingly. Maybe if this kind of information was
more accessible to those who aren’t doing research, parents would try not to
have such horrible divorces. I also feel that teachers should look into this as
well because children tend to act out in school since they are around a bunch
of other students and people who aren’t their parents.
Well
guys, that all for me! Seems like we have come to the end of our journey. I
hope that I showed you what I see through these big brown eyes, like I said I
would do when I started our journey.
https://www.ourfamilywizard.com/blog/behavioral-issues-children-after-divorce
David P. Farrington, “Implications of Criminal
Career Research for the Prevention of Offending,” Journal of Adolescence 13,
(1990
Wisconsin Department of Health and Social
Services, Division of Youth Services, “Family Status of Delinquents in Juvenile
Correctional Facilities in Wisconsin” (1994)
