Divorce and Preventive Interventions for Children and Parents

Risks Associated with Divorce and Children's Adjustment

Numerous studies underscore the role of divorce and family conflict as a major stressor for separating parents and their children. A meta-analysis of 95 studies involving over 13,000 children showed that divorce poses specific risks for children socially, emotionally, and academically. Children whose parents divorced had more than double the rate of difficulties requiring mental health services compared to children from never divorced families. Problems may endure into adulthood for a significant minority of children, including a heightened risk of social and emotional difficulties, socioeconomic problems, poorer subjective well-being, and a greater likelihood of divorce in their own marriage. These sobering outcomes warrant concern and intervention, but they are not inevitable, nor are they applicable to all children who experience divorce. Preventive interventions designed to help children cope with family changes have been shown to enhance children's adjustment to this major life change.

Preventive Interventions for Children

Coping with unwanted, uncontrollable, and often unexpected life-altering experiences can be [Page 465]enormously challenging, if not overwhelming, for most children. As they watch their parents grapple with painful emotions, children often keep their own distress to themselves—often furthering their isolation. Programs such as the Children of Divorce Intervention Program (CODIP), created by JoAnne Pedro-Carroll and her colleagues, provide shared group support and coping skills and have been shown to reduce the stress of a breakup on children and to foster their resilience and adaptive coping.

Protective factors such as effective coping skills are like shock absorbers that help children manage strong emotions and deal with myriad family changes. Providing children with age-appropriate information and clarifying misconceptions about divorce are approaches that are related to better outcomes for children. Children who blame themselves and who have harmful misconceptions about the divorce have been shown to have more adjustment difficulties. The CODIP focuses on supporting children emotionally by providing a safe setting where they can share their feelings, strengthen effective coping skills, clarify misconceptions, and learn to disengage from problems that are beyond their control. Several studies show that program children were rated by their teachers and parents as having improved in their adjustment at home and at school more than control groups of children who did not participate in the program. Children in the program reported feeling less anxious and more confident about their ability to deal with problems and life changes than non-program children. The positive benefits of this preventive intervention even extended to children's health. Two years after participating in the program, children had fewer visits to school health offices with complaints of headaches, stomach aches, and general malaise than children in a nonprogram control group.

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