Mediate Michigan

Most divorcing parents’ greatest fear is the effect it will have on their children. These fears have their origin in a time when divorce was a rare event. Fifty years ago, children from divorced parents were commonly described as coming from “broken homes,” and they had to live with the stigma that such a phrase implies. To compound matters, early research on the effects of divorce–which got a lot of attention because it was news–reinforced the notion that virtually all children were negatively affected, and for their entire lives.

There is no denying that, on the list of stressful life events, divorce ranks high. For children it represents an ongoing crisis that has the potential to turn their lives upside down. That said, it is possible for children not only to survive this crisis, but to emerge from it stronger and happier in the long run.

What We Now Know About Divorce

Early research on the effects of divorce on children, which drew a gloomy picture to say the least, were based on studies with very small sample pools and were limited to what children reported in interviews. More importantly, these studies failed to compare children of divorce to children from so-called “intact” families, to see what if any differences there were between these two groups. For example, are teenagers from divorced families any more moody than teens from two-parent homes?

via Joseph Nowinski, Ph.D.: Does Divorce Inevitably Damage Children?.