The Effects of Divorce on Children

I find this blog very interesting. I have never experienced divorce and no one in my extended family has either. The first experience I have had with divorce is my boyfriend and his family and it has affected him substantially. I have met a lot of other people that have gone through divorce and have not been affected at all. It is interesting that you bring up that the amount of fighting affects the outcome and that is very true. Each child emerges from the situation differently.

I completely agree with what you believe. The level of negativity going into/during the divorce is what carries the negative effects of divorce. As a child of divorce, I loathe people that assume that I have some sort of disability because of it. People assume I'm depressed, only have one parent, or am troubled in some way. However, people can completely continue their lives normally after a parent's divorce. In fact, I believe it is better to get a divorce than to continue to have a difficult relationship in front of your child. I also believe that children of divorce may also think more deeply when going into marriage about the negative outcomes. I know that when I get married, it will be someone that I believe I will never get a divorce from.

This is a very interesting point of view. I definitely agree that the level of negativity between the divorced parents effects how the child deals with it and whether or not they will suffer from long term effects. As a child of divorce, the hostility between my parents has made it extremely difficult for me to form stable and healthy romantic relationships with others because I have a constant reminder of what could go wrong. With that said, I work significantly harder at my relationships with others so that I wont repeat the cycle of my parents. As difficult as it may be sometimes, their negativity has not kept me from trying to form healthy relationships.

I agree with you that the amount of emotional damage that a child experiences due to their parents' divorce depends on how much conflict and negativity there was prior to the divorce and during the divorce process. I definitely think that there are children who really suffer through their parents' divorce and then there are others who adjust to it just fine. I also think that a parents' divorce can be beneficial and may make the child feel relieved to finally not have to deal with marital conflict anymore. Personally, my parents never got a divorce, but growing up, I always thought they should. Sometimes it's worse to drag out a failing relationship than to end it.

I am also a child of divorce, and learning about its affects from a psychological standpoint was really interesting. I was also really interested to read your blog about how it affected you and the comments about it already.

From my experience I think it has a lot to do which how old a child is when the divorce occurs. While I was affected someone by the process, my younger brother was much more affected than I was and my older sister was less affected.