Divorce and its impact on child development

Running Head : Divorce and Child development

Divorce and Its Impact on Child Development (Name (Institution (Name of Instructor (Course Subject

Divorce and its Impact on Child Development

Parental separation , divorce , remarriage , and family reconstruction have become common experiences in children 's and parent 's lives , the idyllic image of the two parent , multiple-child nuclear family of the 1950s has been replaced with a more complex yet more realistic view of parenting and families in the 1990s (Hetherington , 1999 . The intricate networks of family relationships that are formed , nurtured , and sometimes broken

over the lifecourse of a family that experiences parental separation and remarriage present a complex array of risk as well as protective factors that are , in part , responsible for the wide range of individual differences seen in children 's post-divorce and post-remarriage adjustment , and these remains no doubt that experiencing such family changes during childhood and adolescence caries some liability for emotional and behavioral problems (Hetherington , 1999 The fact that the process of divorce takes place in relation to a complex network of social , cultural , legal , economic , and psychological variables , makes it difficult to determine a real net effect of divorce on children (Gutmann , 1993 . A study sponsored by the NAESP may represent found out that there is a large gap between the Grade Point Average of children from one-and two parent homes , and on the other study , it was found out that the effects of divorce proved quite consistent among grade levels and high schools (Jeynes , 2002 . Part of the reason for this specificity in the research on high school students may rest in the fact that most people associate the teenage years with considerable change , and indeed , evidence suggest that a good deal of behavioral changes associated with divorce emerge during the teenage years (Jeynes , 2002 . It was assumed that the variables accounting for disruptions in children 's growth and development are inter-parent hostility and poor mother-child relationship , and divorce results in cessation of inter-parent hostility and an improved mother-child relationship resulting in positive adjustment in children (Gutmann 1993 . Regarding the assessment of the value of conceptualizing divorce as one instance of the father absence , a preponderance of studies reviewed do indeed suggest that father-absent and father-present children reveal differences in patterns of growth and development , and the findings suggest that loss or prolonged absence of the father has a telling impact on his children 's subsequent development (Gutmann , 1993 Specifically , father absent children shows lower levels of self-esteem marital stability , and academic achievement , and higher levels of aggression and disobedience and equivocally , disruptions in moral development and heterosexual functioning (Gutmann , 1993

Studies indicate that the element of time along a number of dimensions can play an interesting role in determining how much impact divorce has on educational achievement of children , and the three most studied dimensions include , the age of a child at the time of the divorce , the number of years since the divorce has taken place , and the long term effects of divorce (Jeynes...