My husband and I are processing our divorce papers my greatest fear is how our action is going to affect our children. We are blessed with three wonderful children that I cherish a great deal. Please Harriet I will like to know the effect of divorce on children. Thanks.
The effect of divorce or separation on children is a huge important question to your children and you as well. When parents no longer love each other and decide to live apart, children have this feeling that their world has been torn apart. The level of upset they feel varies depending on how their parents got divorced/separated, their ages, how much they know about the divorce, the support available from their parents, families and friends. However countless scholars have conducted studies on the effects of divorce/separation on children, identifying a wide range of results and responses, both immediate and long-term. While some mental health professionals believe that a divorce (and the concomitant likely separation of a child’s daily life from one parent) is more traumatic at some ages than at others, according to Josh McDowell’s handbook on counseling”. There is no good time for children to endure the divorce or separation of their parents. Divorce/ separation is always stressful for children because most children do not want their parents to be separated or divorced unless the marriage was full of domestic violence or other source of misery which they found unsuitable. Children experience a lot of feelings as a result some children may respond in multiple and varied ways to the news of their parents’ divorce/separation. Some of the reactions due to the fact that their parents are not going to be together again are as follows; denial, a sense of loss, shame and embarrassment, blame or guilt, anger, fear, relief, insecurity, low self-esteem, grief, depression and isolation or loneliness and so on. Denial; this is a common response to emotional or mental pain. Some children act in denial in situation like separation/divorce. To them it is not happening, they insist to themselves that their parents won’t go through with it. Because they are in denial, in most cases they may say nothing at all to their friends, if asked may say their father is simply away on business. This form of denial is often maintained for a long time, even after the divorce is final and new living situations have been formed as children, they entertain a stubborn hope that their parents will soon get back together. Another form of denial children manifest is personal refusal to admit that he/she is really upset in any way by the divorce or separation. Such response is often characterized by an attempt to shrug off the divorce/separation or by refusing to talk about it because ‘it is no big deal’, while there may be, in rare cases, a degree of relief at the breakup of their parents’ marriage. Such casual responses are an indication of the children inability or unwillingness to face what is happening to his or her family. Apart from these, denial can also take other forms like idealizing the absent parent or even bragging loudly and frequently about parents’ breakup in order to mask his/her own anxiety. As a concern parent you must realize that denial is usually unhealthy, it is regarded as defense mechanism. Children who resort to denial do so unconsciously to protect themselves and guard a certain degree of stability in their lives. Sense of loss; divorce or separation to children creates the feeling of losing not only their homes in some cases but whole way of life as well. This can lead to psychological and behavioural problems. Children who feel troubled either by sense of loss are particularly likely to develop problems with anger, disobedience, and rules violations. Their academic performance is not left out (drastic drop in grades) some children on the other hand, become perhaps overly responsible who end up caring for their parents instead of getting cared for by their parents. Blame/ Guilt; children often attach huge significance to a single event in their immature attempt to determine the cause of their parents’ divorce or separation. The most memorable events in a child’s mind are those that pertained to the child; for example the disagreement about who will attend the PTA meeting. Children remember such agreement between their parents as their fault not knowing other factors that have led their parents to take such a decision. As a result children often blame themselves for their parents’ divorce or separation. Teenagers may also think that their struggle for independence or their teenage rebellion contributed to the split. They may also feel responsible because of their dropping grades, flaring tempers, or failure to communicate their love to one or both of their parents. Some teenagers have even been told by parents or adults that their attitude or behaviour contributed to or caused their parents’ divorce/separation, which is not true. Therefore children who are experiencing blame/guilt sees it an urgent need to encourage their parent to reconcile. A problem shared is a problem half solved
