Divorce: How Does It Affect Children?

Divorce: How does it affect children? Over 60 percent of couples seeking a divorce have children still living at home. ( 6) What some parents don't realize when they file for a divorce is the damage and effect that it will have on their kids. Divorce affects children in many ways. It affects kids emotionally and causes them to experience painful feelings such as fear, loss, anger and confusion. Divorce also hurts a child's academic achievement. Children whose parents divorce generally have poorer scores on tests and a higher dropout rate. (3) Children react differently yet similarly in divorce. Every child caught up in the distress of divorce has a hard time coping with it and imagining their life without a parent. Their anxiety levels peak as they feel they are going to be abandoned. They experience feelings of loneliness due to the loss of the other parent. Different children go through these emotions at different levels and at different times depending on the child's age. How bad or how well children handle the divorce depends on how the situation is handled. It can throw the child's entire life into a whirlwind. Young children, up to age five or six, are the most confused and the most disoriented by their parents' separation. They often fear they are going to be abandoned by their parents, which causes great anxiety. The loss of a parent is extremely sad to a child of this age because they feel that their needs are not going to be attended to as well as they had before, when their needs are not going to be attended to as well as they had before, when their family was together. Many of the children in this group are worried that they will be left without a family or their parents might have money troubles and they will be deprived of food and toys. These thoughts that children of this age have cause them to have feelings of guilt, being unloved and fear of being alone. Some children will be extremely sad and show signs of depression and

Bibliography: 1) http://www.alfra.org/risks2.htm 2) http://www.canadianparents.com/articles/feature08b.htm 3) http://www.divorcereform.org/crime.html 4) http://www.ksu.edu/psych/bartel/adolescence/divorce-yes.html 5) http://www.theallengroup.com/members/Fr_flammer.html 6) http://www.womentodaymagazine.com/family/kidsdivorce.html