Each child and each family are obviously unique, with different strengths and weaknesses, different personalities and temperaments, and varying degrees of social, emotional, and economic resources, as well as differing family situations prior to divorce. Despite these differences, divorce has been shown to diminish a child's future competence in all areas of life, including family relationships, education, emotional well-being, and future earning power. One review of the literature conducted in the United Kingdom found that “although children are at increased risk of adverse outcomes following family breakdown and that negative outcomes can persist into adulthood, the difference between children from intact and non-intact families is a small one, and the majority of children will not be adversely affected in the long-term” (Mooney, Oliver, and Smith 2009). There is much research, however, that offers evidence to the contrary.
Two large meta-analyses, one reported in 1991 and the other reported ten years later in 2001, showed that “children with divorced parents continued to score significantly lower on measures of academic achievement, conduct, psychological adjustment, self-concept, and social relations” (Amato and Keith 1991; Amato and Booth 1997 as quoted in Amato 2001).
This research demonstrates that, when a child experiences parental divorce, there are significant losses that must be acknowledged.
The child may lose time with each parent
1. Parents must adjust to their own losses as well as to their new role as a divorced parent. Thus, parents may not have as much emotional strength and time to invest in parenting, i.e., the parents experience a “moratorium on parenting.”
2. Although laws are gradually changing, most children spend more time with one custodial parent and obviously have less time with each parent overall.
3. For most children, this means much less time spent with their fathers.
4. The child may also spend less time with their mother as she may need to work longer hours to support the family.
The child may lose economic security
1. Custodial mothers experience the loss of 25–50 percent of their pre-divorce income.
a. Women who divorced in the past 12 months were more likely to receive public assistance than divorced men (23% versus 15%) (U.S. Census Bureau 2011).
b. Even five years after the divorce, mothers who remain single have only risen to 94 percent of their pre-divorce income, while continuously married couples have increased their income.
c. In 2000, the median income of single-mother households was 47 percent that of married-couple households (American Academy of Pediatrics 2003).
2. Only 50 percent of custodial mothers have child support agreements, and 25 percent of mothers who have been granted support receive no payments.
3. Custodial fathers also experience financial loss; although they tend to recover financially more quickly and rarely receive child support.
4. Loss of income may lead to increased work time for parents, as well as a change in residence.
5. Children living with single mothers are much more likely to live in poverty than children living with both married parents (Edwards 2014).
a. In 2009, children living with a divorced parent were more likely to live in a household below the poverty level (28%) compared with other children (19%) (U.S. Census Bureau 2011).
6. Unmarried women are more likely to remain in poverty compared with married individuals and unmarried men (Edwards 2014).
a. Approximately 32.2 percent of people in single-mother families in poverty during the first two months of 2009 continued to be in poverty for 36 months. In contrast, only 18.7 percent of people in married-couple families in poverty during this same time remained in poverty for 36 months.
7. Children living with single parents are less likely to experience upward financial mobility.
a. The fraction of children living in single-parent households is the strongest negative correlate of upward income mobility according to one study (Chetty et al. 2014).
b. The percentage of married families in a community also contributes to future upward economic mobility of all children in the community (Chetty et al. 2014).
The child may lose emotional security (Amato and Afifi 2006)
1. The child may have a weakened relationship with his/her mother.
a. Divorced mothers are less able to provide emotional support (Miller and Davis 1997).
2. The child may have a weakened relationship with his/her father.
a. Divorced fathers spend less time with their children.
b. A study in 1996 found that fewer than half of children living with a divorced mother had seen their fathers at all in more than one year, and only one in six saw their fathers once a week (Popenoe 1996, as quoted in Fagan and Churchill 2012, 6).
c. Divorced fathers are rated as less caring by their adolescents (Dunlop, Burns, and Bermingham 2001).
d. The child may find it more difficult to trust his/her father (King 2002).
3. The child may have a weakened relationship with grandparents or relatives—especially the parents of the noncustodial parent (Kruk and Hall 1995).
4. The child may lose family traditions, celebrations, and daily routines. Even adult children whose adult parents divorced later in life experienced the loss of family traditions and disruption of celebrations (Pett, Lang, and Gander 1992).
5. The change in residence may lead to loss of friends, school environment, and other support systems.
The child may have decreased social and psychological maturation
1. College students whose parents were divorced were more likely to experience verbal aggression and violence from their partner during conflict resolution (Billingham and Notebaert 1993).
2. Children of divorced parents may have lower scores on self-concept and social relations (Amato 2001).
3. Anxiety and depression seem to worsen after the divorce event (Strohschein 2005).
The child may change his or her outlook on sexual behavior
1. There is increased approval (by children of divorced parents) of premarital sex, cohabitation, and divorce (Jeynes 2001).
2. There is earlier sexual debut (Jónsson et al. 2000).
3. Girls whose fathers left the home before they were five years old were eight times more likely to become pregnant as adolescents than girls from intact families (Ellis et al. 2003).
4. Boys similarly have earlier sexual debut and higher rates of sexually transmitted disease when they have experienced divorce in their family.
5. As adults, the female children of divorced parents experience less trust and satisfaction in romantic relationships (Jacquet and Surra 2001).
6. The children of divorced parents are less likely to view marriage as permanent and less likely to view it as a lifelong commitment (Weigel 2007).
7. The children of divorced parents are two to three times more likely to cohabit and to do so at younger ages (Amato and Booth 1997, 112, as quoted in Fagan and Churchill 2012, 26).
The child may lose his/her religious faith and practice (Myers 1996)
1. Following a divorce, children are more likely to abandon their faith (Feigelman, Gorman, and Varacalli 1992).
2. As adults, those raised in step-families are less likely to be religious than those raised by both biologic parents (Myers 1996).
3. Since religious practice has benefits in areas such as sexual restraint, the child of divorce may lose this protection (Rostosky, Regnerus, and Wright 2003).