Divorce

Divorce Divorce Divorce: The Effect on the Children Divorce, once uncommon in our society, is now becoming more and more frequent, disrupting our children’s state of well-being. Some children of divorced families have long-term behavior problems such as depression, low self-esteem, poor school performance, acting out, and difficulties with intimate relationships. Children with divorced or divorcing parents often have a sense of abandonment, because their parents become too preoccupied with their own psychological, social, and economic distress that they forget about their kids’ needs (Lamb and Sternberg, 1997). In 1988, Professor Jeanne Dise-Lewis conducted a survey of 700 middle school students. The students were asked to rate certain events as to the stress they causes. The death of a parent or close family member was the only thing that outranked divorce (Zinsmeister, 1996). A divorce in the family creates a major life change for most children. Loss of contact with friends, schoolmates, neighbors, teachers, and sometimes moving to a new location may bring a lot of psychosocial stress upon the children, and that stress can be very harmful. Since the divorce boom started in the 1960’s, father-mother divorces have increased at an alarming rate. Today more than 1,000,000 kids experience a divorce, children, parents, support, parent, friends, divorces, child, often, nonresidential, family, custody, about, 1997, two, stress, sternberg, one, now, lamb, families, each, united, today, states, six, situation, marriage, economic, divorced, becoming, because, affected, zinsmeister, years, whose