The Impact of Divorce on Children

A divorce is a traumatic experience for all parties who are involved but it perhaps the hardest on children of the couple being divorced. This is a complex problem and there is no simple answer to the question of how it affects children. To muddle the waters further, experts give conflicting advice to parents on how to deal with children during a divorce.

The fact of the matter is that when there is a dramatic change like divorce in the life of a child, this traumatizes the child and both parents need to promote the well-being of the child to help them cope.

Divorce lawyers in Eagle County note the effects of divorce in children:

Stress

to begin with, divorce is stressful for children because they don’t wish to see their parents separated. If the relationship between the parents was breaking down and full of anger and other forms of negativity, it is possible that the child would’ve wanted it all to end. But otherwise, very rarely does a child wish for divorce, because it often leads to losing contact with one parent, economic hardship, increased strain on the parent-child relationship and conflict between the parents themselves. The question of how well the child deals with the transition depends on the parents.

Attitude Problems

Divorce ups the risk of psychological and behavioral problems in children and children who are affected are likely to develop problems with anger, disobedience and inability to follow rules. In addition to this, performance at school might also suffer and the children wind up being depressed, anxious and becoming irresponsible, or even the opposite. Some children respond to the situation by attempting to look after the parents instead of vice-versa.

Resilience

This is a positive effect, but rare. It is true that the majority of children from broken marriages don’t wind up with these problems. Children become resilient when they’re in such situations and this is helped all the more, if the parents can do a decent job of managing the transition. This means that they are able to deal with life like the children from normal marriages. But it is still the parents’ job to help build resilience in the child.

These are just some of the ways that a divorce affects children of the couple involved.