Divorce:
The Effects It Has On Children As the commonality of divorce grows, many children need to adjust to a broken family. Divorce has become much more common in the recent years and it is estimated that the divorce rate is forty to fifty percent for first marriages and sixty percent for second marriages ,which in turn means more children come from divorced families. When deciding whether or not to get divorced with children involved, parents have to focus on who will get custody of the children, their age, and how their parent child bond will be affected before, during and after the divorce. Many parents sacrifice their own happiness for the well-being of their child. When parents begin to decide that it is time to get a divorce, most will consider how it will affect their children. In the book, Should I Keep Trying to Work it Out: A Guidebook for Individuals and Couples at the Crossroads of Divorce (and Before) we look at an interview from “Trisha”. “Trisha” is your average woman who is concerned about how her divorce will affect her children. “Trisha” states: “There are periods of time where I feel like I can’t do it anymore, but literally, I have stayed with him because of my kids. . . . I just really feel like it would just mess up their world too much. . . . If I could leave, I would leave. In fact, I think if things were a perfect situation for me now, I would still leave. So, I guess, yes, on the one hand, I stay together because of the kids, but also because, what am I going to do with five kids? And where am I going to go and how am I going to support them? . . . I feel like I’m trapped a lot. But I just put on a happy face and keep going. But not because I want to but because I feel like I’m forced, I feel like I have to, that I have no other options, at least no options that appeal to me in any way. . . . Are you going to trade a marriage that you’re not happy in for a really hard life of being a single mom? . . . Can I just accept the way things are? It’s not like I get beat up. It’s not like I’m being abused in any way, other than I just feel like I have a loveless marriage, that we are just business partners. He does his thing; I do my thing to help things move along for the family. Can I accept that? I still don’t know if I can accept it” (Hawkins and Fackrell, 45). As parents look into a divorce, this is often a feeling that is brought up. Speaking from personal experience, my parents have told me this is the reason they stayed together. In the perfect world, they would have gotten divorced when my sister and I were three, but stayed because they saw the aftermath of what older children were like whose parents got divorced at an early age. Staying in a loveless relationship is the ultimate sacrifice for your children. Parents also say that it is easier to stay because it would be significantly harder to be a single parent for both personal and financial reasons. But, when is the right time to break the family apart? There is never a ‘good’ time for it. After looking at many children who have divorced parents, it is easy to see that regardless of age there will always be some sort of complication. When parents consider a divorce, a child’s age has an impact on their well-being. Age and gender play a big role on the affect a divorce will have on the child. It has been studied that children between the ages of six to thirteen were the most affected age range. In boys, the studies found “more antisocial behavior among adolescent boys from recently disrupted homes. This finding is supported by studies on the outcome of antisocial behavior, including heavy alcohol consumption and truancy, and criminality among adolescent boys” (Mednick, Baker & Carothers, 1990; Saucier & Ambert, 1992). This is a common example of some developmental disruptions and behavioral and emotional issues after a divorce. When girls were studied, they found that “When sexual development was chosen as a