I am a child of divorce. My mother and father separated when I was 4. A few months later, we moved to a city 4 hours away. My mother went from being a stay-at-home mom to being a single mother of five children who were all dealing with different levels of trauma. It was a mix of things. For my older siblings, they had to deal with losing all of their friends and moving to a new school. All of us were adjusting to the loss of a father. We lost the stability of our family and our home. I remember moving just about every other year until I was 18. Hardest of all, my sisters and I were dealing with the trauma of our sexual abuse at the hands of our father.
Was it hard to handle the effects of the divorce? Yes! Poverty is hard. Lack of stability is hard. Loss of a parent is hard. Lack of time with the remaining parent is hard. Was it worth it? Again, yes!
For our family, divorce was the best option. Because we all knew that, the adjustment was a little easier. The stability lost from having two parents and a stable housing situation was mitigated by being together. That period of my life is why I am so convinced about the importance of siblings. However, we’ll get into that at a much later time. For now, divorce.
Children need stability. The more aspects of their lives that they can rely on, the more secure they feel. This leads to all kinds of positive benefits in the future. When that is taken away from them, those benefits are replaced with negative outcomes. Some things are out of our control, like the death of a family member or the loss of employment. Let’s focus on one of the things that is in our control: the stability of our own marriages.
Numerous studies have shown that kids of divorced parents fare worse across the board than do children of continuously married parents. Bruce Kieth and Paul Amato performed a meta-analysis of these studies to try to identify just how much children are affected by divorce. They found the effects of parental divorce to be modest rather than strong (as many studies had suggested). However, they believe that this is due to the wide variety of experiences that the children have. Some children of divorced parents do extremely well. Some children of continuously married parents probably would have done better if their parents had divorced. I expect my and my siblings’ outcomes would have been drastically worse if my parents hadn’t divorced.
So what? Divorce is bad for kids, but sometimes it’s good for kids? What do we do with that kind of information? We try to minimize bad divorce and maximize good divorce. If there is no abuse and a couple is low-conflict, they should stay together for the kids. They should also go to marriage counseling to try to make the best of their marriage. Making counseling normal and accessible is key. Educating couples before marriage is even more important (an ounce of prevention…)
Just as important, parents need to be taught what is and is not acceptable within a relationship and a family. When there is any kind of abuse, when parents have a high-conflict marriage, divorce can be best for the kids.
Here’s a list of sources and further reading:
State of our Unions 2019
State of our Unions 2012
The impact of family formation change on the cognitive, social, and emotional well-being of the next generation.
The Art of Marriage 