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Consistent with the divorce rate in the United States, about half of all children—representing more than a million children each year—will experience their parents' divorce. This rate is considerably higher in Sweden and lower in the southern region of Europe and Asia. Experiencing a parent's divorce can be stressful for children because the marital discord is often kept secret from them until legal action has taken place, leaving them with little time to cope with the transition of entering into a single-parent family. Additionally, divorce disrupts standard family routines, a child's sense of emotional security that living in a two-parent family provides, and a child's attachment with one or both of his or her parents. Although divorce can potentially be detrimental to a child's well-being, in the presence of certain protective factors children can demonstrate great strength and resilience following a parental divorce.

Divorce and Child Age

Among other factors, children's resilience when parents divorce is related to their age and level of cognitive development. Children's inability to cope effectively with parental separation can manifest itself in many different ways, such as psychological, social, emotional, behavioral, and academic adjustment problems.

Infants

The effects of divorce on infants can be understood by recognizing their attachment to caregivers. Influenced by the amount of time spent with parents and the quality of the parent–child relationship, the primary developmental task in infancy is forming a trusting bond with parents or caregivers. Infants who have attentive and caring parents tend to form a secure and trusting bond with their parents. In the occurrence of divorce, however, one parent typically gains custody of the child, limiting the time a nonresidential parent spends with the child, and residential parents may take on additional non-child-related obligations that compete for their time with their children. When the nonresidential parent is suddenly absent—or when the residential parent takes on longer work hours—an infant may experience emotional insecurity and separation anxiety. Common physical symptoms of insecurity and anxiety are an increase in crying episodes, irritability, loss of appetite, sleep disturbances, and developmental delays.

Toddlers

In many cases, children regress developmentally in the occurrence of a stressful event like parental divorce because of an inconsistency in family routines. This is especially true of toddlers and preschool-age children, who need a stable family environment that allows them to autonomously explore the world and develop a sense of self separate from their caregivers. In toddlerhood, the cognitive milestone of self-reflection produces the ability to feel emotions such as joy, pride, shame, guilt, fear, and anger. The awareness of these emotions influences toddlers' adjustment to parental divorce. Fearing that they will be abandoned by their residential parent, coupled with the anger resulting from losing their nonresidential parent, children in this age group may develop an emotional dependency on the residential parent and demand more attention from that parent than usual. Other children may take another path and withdraw from their residential parent as a result of their anger and fear of abandonment. Developmental regression in the areas of toilet training, eating, sleeping, verbal communication, and language production are possible effects of parental divorce on toddlers.

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