Research conducted by Glick (1989) and Wegman (1986) indicates that more than one million children under the age of 18 experience parental divorce each year in America. Almost half of these children (born in the late 1970s and early 1980s) will spend an average of five years living in a single-parent home before the custodial parent remarries. These statistics highlight the importance of understanding how parental divorce affects children. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of the literature regarding the effects of divorce on children.
Some of the most comprehensive research on the effects of divorce on children has been conducted by Wallerstein (1983) and Wallerstein and Kelly (1980). Specifically, these authors conducted a longitudinal study of 60 divorcing families living in California; at the time of the study, the children ranged in age from three to eighteen years. The authors state that their research indicates that the divorce itself, no matter how conflict-ridden the marriage, always comes as a shock to the children.
Also, no matter how well parents explain events, most children will feel afraid of the future, guilty about their own (usually imaginary) role in the divorce, hurt at the rejection they experience when a parent moves out and angry at both parents for the divorce itself. There can be depression, hostility, disruptive and irritable behavior, feelings of loneliness, sadness and even suicide. Some children can become accident-prone while others may suffer from fatigue, insomnia, skin disorders, loss of appetite, inability to concentrate, loss of interest in school work and or in social life.
Although there are age-specific reactions to divorce (which will be discussed later), Wallerstein (1983) and Wallerstein and Kelly (1980) state that there are six tasks that are crucial to whether children are able to overcome their initial negative emotional reaction to divorce and...