D as in “Divorce” – Effects of the divorce on the children

Some years ago, people considered divorcing as very shameful and bad. It was far more acceptable to have a partner who was cheating on you (meaning the male partner) than to get a divorce, to destroy the family. Nowadays, we can observe that the trend is reversed: it is far more shameful to stay in a troubled marriage than to get a divorce.

I can even go a little further and state: it is almost a shame not to have marriage troubles, now, when everybody is so understanding, when children are not teased anymore in school about their divorced parents. We can watch many movies showing us how open-minded we are (should be) about this, how families can consist of divorced parents with their spouses, maybe with a new sexual orientation or other “psychological treats” for the children.

Guess what: a study conducted by the University of Toronto suggests that the adults who were children of divorce are more likely to commit suicide than their peers from intact families. Interestingly, the risks for the male children is twice as big as in intact families. A possible explanation for this is that the boys don’t have a close contact with their fathers after the divorce.

The same University of Toronto conducted also other studies, which have shown that the divorce is more likely to be the cause of the smoking initiation, the cause of bad parental relationships in the adulthood – we really needed a study to prove that – and a possible cause for a stroke in the adulthood .

Sure, there is no reason to continue a bad marriage, the consequences of that are really bad: emotional problems, anxiety. In a high-conflict marriage there is yelling, screaming, and throwing things; sometimes there is even violence and abuse. “Research suggests that children in a high-conflict marriage are actually better off, on average, if their parents decide to divorce, compared to children whose parents stay married and continue to experience high levels of conflict.” Research also suggests that most resilient and strong children can adjust 2 or 3 years after the divorce.

This is why the specialist advice us to pay attention when we are choosing our partners, in order not to make a mess out of the lives of our children. Of course, our parents told us the same, but we never used to listen to them.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net



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Tags: divorce, divorced parents, marriage troubles, smoking, suicide