036: The impact of divorce on a child’s development (Part 1)

This is the second of a short series of episodes on issues related to divorce.  The first was our “All Joy and No Fun” episode, where we talked about how parenting today can be the most joyful thing in our lives – even if it isn’t always a whole lot of fun from moment to moment. The series was inspired by a listener who sent me an email saying: “I was divorced when my husband was 2 ½ years old.  He is now 5 years old and has a very hard time expressing his feelings.  I have an intuitive “gut” feeling that it has to do with the fact that he went from being with me every day (I was a stay at home mom) to suddenly spending 7-10 days away from me and with his father, and also away from me as I set up a career.  Do you know of any research on this?”   Well, I didn’t, but when I started looking around I realized there’s actually so much of it that it makes sense to break it down into two episodes which is what we’re going to do.  So today’s episode focuses very much on the factors leading to divorce and the impact of divorce itself on children, and the final episode in the series will look at how what happens after divorce – things like single parenting, ongoing contact with both parents, ongoing arguments between parents, and remarriages and stepparents impact children.     Other podcast episodes mentioned in this show: 020: How do I get my child to do what I want them to do.   References Amato, P.R. (1999). Children of divorced parents as young adults. In E.M. Hetherington (Ed.)., Coping with divorce, single parenting, and remarriage: A risk and resiliency perspective (p.147-163). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Brody, G.H., & Forehand, R. (1988). Multiple determinants of parenting: Research findings and implications for the divorce process.  In E.M. Hetherington & J.D. Arasteh (Eds.). Impact of divorce, single parenting, and stepparenting on children. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Deater-Deckard, K., & Dunn, J. (1999). Multiple risks and adjustment in young children growing up in different family settings: A British community study of stepparent, single mother, and nondivorced families. In E.M. Hetherington (Ed.)., Coping with divorce, single parenting, and remarriage: A risk and resiliency perspective (p.47-64). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Emery, R.E. (1988). Mediation and the settlement of divorce disputes. In E.M. Hetherington & J.D. Arasteh (Eds.). Impact of divorce, single parenting, and stepparenting on children. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Forehand, R., Long, N., & Brody, G. (1988). Divorce and marital conflict: Relationship to adolescent competence and adjustment in early adolescence. In E.M. Hetherington & J.D. Arasteh (Eds.). Impact of divorce, single parenting, and stepparenting on children. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Hetherington, E.M. (1989). Coping with family transitions: Winners, losers, and survivors. Child Development 60(1), 1-14. Hetherington, E.M. (1999). Should we stay together for the sake of the children? In E.M. Hetherington (Ed.)., Coping with divorce, single parenting, and remarriage: A risk and resiliency perspective (p.93-116). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Grall, T.S. (2009). Custodial mothers and fathers and their child support: 2007. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from: https://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p60-237.pdf Miller, C.C. (2014, December 2). The divorce surge is over, but the myth lives on. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/upshot/the-divorce-surge-is-over-but-the-myth-lives-on.html?_r=0 Twaite, J.A., Silitsky, D., & Luchow, A.K. (1988). Children of divorce: Adjustment, parental conflict, custody, remarriage, and recommendations for clinicians. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. Wolfinger, N.H. (2005). Understanding the divorce cycle: The children of divorce in their own marriages. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast.  Today’s episode is another that comes to us via a question from a listener, and it’s the second in our three-part series on how the adult relationships in a family affect the child.  We kicked off a couple of weeks back with an episode called All Joy and No Fun, which is about the book of the same name and discusses how parenting today can seem very joyful when you look at it as a whole thing, but if you ask yourself during an average moment with your toddler or preschooler whether you’re having fun, I think many parents might say ‘no.’  And I don’t mean to suggest that having all joy and no fun is a leading cause of divorce but it could certainly be a contributing factor, and that’s our topic for today.  The listener who sent me an email said “I was divorced when my husband was 2 ½ years old.  He is now 5 years old and has a very hard time expressing his feelings.  I have an intuitive “gut” feeling that it has to do with the fact that he went from being with me every day (I was a stay at home mom) to suddenly spending 7-10 days away from me and with his father, and also away from me as I set up a career.  Do you know of any research on this?”  Well, I didn’t, but when I started looking around I realized there’s actually so much of it that it makes sense to break it down into two episodes which is what we’re going to do.  So today’s episode focuses very much on the factors leading to divorce and the impact of divorce itself on children, and the final episode in the series will look at how what happens after divorce – things like single parenting, ongoing contact with both parents, ongoing arguments between parents, and remarriages and stepparents impact children. I also want to say before we get going that I have no position on whether or not you should get divorced if you haven’t already done it, or whether your divorce was a good thing or not (if you have); I’m not arguing for divorce to be outlawed in the interests of our children or that we should all try it once just to see what it’s like.  I have nothing against divorce – I’ve done it myself, although not with children involved – but I’m also not going to try to persuade you to stay in a marriage.  My goal here is simply to help you to understand the impacts of divorce on a child’s development so you can better support that child through the changes that might one day happen or have already happened in your family. Throughout this episode we’re going to examine a number of factors at play when we talk about divorce and the impact that these have on a child’s development, but the one idea I want to leave you with (and so I’m going to tell you about it now so you can keep it in mind as you’re listening) is that the research paints a picture of a series of risk factors that exist in the child, the family, and the larger society that make a particular child more or less vulnerable to the kinds of disruption that occur through divorce.  These risk factors interact in ways that aren’t always expected; we might see some children with a lot of risk factors who sail through a divorce and adjust relatively well afterward.  And there are others whom we might expect to do fairly well who fall apart after a divorce and have a hard time recovering.  But the one that seems to be more important than all the others is the quality of the parent’s – and particularly the custodial parent’s relationship with the child, and whether that is warm and loving while setting and maintaining appropriate limits. So let’s dive in.  California enacted the first modern no-fault divorce law in 1970 which, for those who don’t live in the U.S. is the idea that you can get divorce just because you want to, without having to prove that one party was at fault – by committing adultery or abuse or something like that.  Popular wisdom says that the divorce rate has skyrocketed since then, although actually it has slowed down over the last twenty years.  There’s a nice graphic on it in a New York Times article that I’ll link to in the references which shows that about 70% of marriages that began in the 1990s reached their 15th anniversary (excluding those in which a spouse died), up from about 65% of those that began in the 1970s and 1980s, and those who married in the 2000s are so far divorcing at even lower rates.  The Times cites later marriages, birth control, and the rise of so-called “love marriages” as some important factors in the drop in the divorce rate.  In some states (including Louisiana, Arizona, and Arkansas) couples can *choose* to have a “covenant marriage,” which can only be divorced under fault-based circumstances, although only about 2% of couples in Louisiana opt for it.  Nevertheless, politicians and family activists continue to advocate for the modification or repeal of no-fault...