Divorce Adjustment

Marital conflict, family separations, divorce, and remarriages, although common in the last 30 years, are difficult and often painful challenges for children. Today, approximately 50% of all first-time marriages end in divorce, and this figure has increased approximately 40% from 10 years ago. At any one time nearly 15% of all families will be divorced and in a given year, 17 out of 1,000 children will face a family divorce. Between 40% and 50% of children will experience a family divorce before age 18 years.

Divorce adjustment occurs when children and adolescents cope relatively well with parental divorce and separation provided that other factors such as a decline in parenting or parental psychopathology do not complicate the process, and provided that children receive some support through the transition. A minority of children will actually emerge from the challenges that divorce poses with greater strength, competence, resiliency, and personal enhancement.

Children with divorce adjustment difficulties, estimated at 25% of children in divorcing families, exhibit a variety of behavior problems, including:

• Anxiety
• Attention difficulties
• Impulse control problems
• Depression
• Oppositional and defiant behavior
• Academic difficulties and school drop out
• Eating and sleeping difficulties
• Various physical symptoms
• Social difficulties
• Damaged self-esteem
• Early or inappropriate sexual activity
• Substance abuse

These children are demanding, dependent, or noncompliant with both adults and peers. Approximately 9% of them receive psychological assistance although more could benefit from it. Most children show adequate divorce adjustment within two to three years, although some have difficulties continuing into their [Page 171]adult years. Children living with formerly married mothers also have poorer health, more chronic illnesses, more hospitalizations, and more accidents than children in continuously married families. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to predict which children will exhibit difficulties and what types of problems they will show.

Both researchers and public agree that adjusting to divorce is difficult for children and can cause:

• Loss
• Despair
• Divided loyalties
• Parent absence
• Economic difficulties
• Relocation
• Family reorganization

Divorce is not a singular event but involves a series of multiple transitions and adjustments that both parents and children must make. The transitions involve coping with initial stages of family conflict and impending separation, actual separation and legal divorce, and readjustment to a new lifestyle and family arrangement. Although research has shown that both children and adolescents generally have difficulty adjusting to family divorce and its aftermath, and are at risk for various psychological, social, and educational problems, there is considerable diversity in children's divorce adjustment.

Longitudinal studies show that children's adjustment is poorest in the first year after divorce; by year two, many girls show adequate adjustment, but adjustment declines may occur in adolescence and remarriage is especially challenging for adolescent girls. Compared to girls, boys' adjustment is slower and boys from divorced homes continue to be more withdrawn and act out more than boys from intact families into the adolescent years.

Children's divorce adjustment broadly depends on several interacting factors. The first factor comprises aspects such as personality, age, temperament, intelligence, maturity, resilience, gender, and any preexisting behavioral or cognitive issues they may have had prior to the family disruption. Simply put, welladjusted and easy-temperament children tend to have less difficulty than children with difficult temperaments, disabilities, self-image problems, or issues such as anxiety, dependence, and noncompliance.

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