Divorce Hits Home Essay Research Paper Divorce

Divorce Hits Home Essay, Research Paper

Divorce Hits Home

When life was so much shorter, there was barely time to live out one s adult life with a single mate. Today, the thought of twenty, thirty, or even forty years in a bad relationship can be a very weighty factor in deciding to leave (Ahrons 43). Many people in the United States have not survived a long marriage. So many people rush into marriage or get married for all the wrong reasons. When people don t take time to fall in love or get to know one another, their marriage usually ends up to be a failure. When a couple has decided that it would be best not to stay together anymore, they usually file for divorce. A divorce can be a very traumatic situation and it can affect a lot of people, mostly children. How will divorce affect these children. Are there typical reactions and predictable problems that boys and girls will have because of their parents divorce. What can the parent do to help their child cope with divorce. These are all questions frequently asked by parents (Schneider and Zuckerberg 11).

As the divorce rate has soared in the past twenty-five years, most people have either personally experienced or shared with a friend the disruption of marriage and family. Divorce has become so widespread in the 1990s that over one-third of children today will experience a parental divorce. Divorce is often misconstrued as a circumscribed or terminal event that ends when the judge drops the gavel (Teyber 5).

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Most children are shocked and surprised by the separation, even though it is clear to the parents that the decision was not sudden. Boys tend to find the initial separation time more upsetting than girls do (Naylor 33). Even if there was a great deal of fighting, tension, or unhappiness in the home, children do not want the divorce to take place. After the first year of marital problems, parents tend to see more anger, fear, depression, and guilt in their children. Most children feel like they are to blame for their parents getting divorced. Most children are egocentric. They believe that the world revolves around them. They feel that everything that goes on in the world is happening just for them or is caused by them. As the child grows and matures, the egocentric attitude tends to fade away (Naylor 66). Preschoolers often react to their parents separation with both anger and sadness. Boys become noisier, angrier, and restless. Boys will not get along with their friends as well as before and they tend to sit alone more. Girls will be angry too, but most become little adults . Girls start to become overly concerned with being neat and good. They will tend to lecture or scold other children as if they were a parent or teacher. Both boys and girls at this young age will feel sad, cry more often, and become more demanding (Schneider 101).

Divorce is especially difficult for six-to eight-year-old children. Boys around this age are usually upset by the breakup and will usually be more distressed than girls. The main reaction of these children is sadness. They are most likely to cry openly about the marital disruption and will often be sad and weepy (Wilymz). When one parent leaves the home, the child usually feels rejected by him or her. The child also longs for the parent who is not in the home. Most of the children have lowered self-esteem,

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depression, and a big decline in school performance due to the intense feeling of rejection (Blakeslee 74). The nine- to twelve-year-old children feel anger instead of sadness. These children will become very upset at both parents, especially the parent who initiated the separation. Strong gender differences have been found in school-aged children s reactions to divorce. Boys from divorced homes are more likely to be in conflict with their mothers and disobey them than boys from an intact home (80). School-aged girls from divorced families are more likely to function well and get along with their custodial mothers (81). The tendency for boys to be more aggressive and uncooperative both at home and at school seems to occur in part because ninety percent of children live with their mothers after divorce (Ahrons 56). An adolescent can respond very differently to his or her parents divorce. One-reason adolescents respond differently to the divorce is because they adjust to family separation better than younger children do (Neumann 95). Some adolescents show a positive spurt in response to the separation. The children become helpful to their parents and younger siblings during this family crisis. Their maturity can be seen as they help make family decisions, help around the house, and help take care of the younger siblings. Then, there are the adolescents that feel betrayed by the divorce (103). Some adolescents will grow farther apart from the family, act out his or her aggression sexually, become depressed, withdraw from friends, or lose their plans or goals for the future (104). Most of the time, the adolescents think about how the marital failure will influence their own future ability to a have a good marriage or their ability to go to college.

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Along with the short-term reactions that children have, there are also long term reactions to the divorce. A few research studies have looked at the long-term effects of divorce on children five to ten years after the divorce, and when