"Divorce" is a strange concept to me. Once married, a family becomes a unit in society, bound by laws and by familial attachments. However, when a divorce occurs, that unit is broken and husband and wife are no longer responsible for one another and lead separate lives. But what about the children? Children cannot "divorce" themselves biologically from their parents, nor can the parent divorce themselves from their children. There are laws that order the parents to provide financially, but what about emotionally? I have known parents who are emotionally divorced from their children, and the children are the ones that suffer. What other kinds of social, economical, psychological, and spiritual price do children pay for divorce?
In a video produced by ABC News 20/20, "Divorce School For Kids", it is apparent that children are the ones to pay the emotional price for a broken marriage. Children can be confused, blame themselves for the failure of the marriage, and resent parents for not making the relationship work. One boy in the video expressed anger at his mother, even after a few years, because she had promised him that they would never get a divorce. The mother believed her son would have trust issues as a young adult due to her broken promise. One therapist had older children write letters to their parents, expressing the hurt and disappointment they were feeling. The children wrote to their parents how the divorce was affecting them. The report stated that these letters had more impact on the parents' attitudes than even judges and counselors. I thought that having an outlet for the children to express their feelings and thoughts was a brilliant idea, however, a little too late. How much better for them had the parents simply listened to their children regarding how a broken family would affect their lives and their future relationships even before a divorce was contemplated.
There are several ways in which children pay the price for divorce. According to Paul Amato in The Future of Children, 15(2), 75-96 he declares that, "Children in divorced families tend to have weaker emotional bonds with mothers and fathers than do their peers in a two-parent families." (page 77). I find this very interesting because I believe that parents from a broken marriage desire and seek to have a strong emotional bond with their children since they no longer have the emotional support of their spouse. In this instance, both the parent and the child suffers. The child has no desire to be emotionally close to a parent for fear of getting hurt, and the parent does not have the comfort of an emotional bond as the child moves further away. Amato also states, "..studies have shown that the differences in the well being between children with divorced and children with continuously married parents persist well into adulthood. For instance, adults who experienced parental divorce as a child have....weaker bond with parents, lower psychological well being, poorer marital quality, and an elevated risk of seeing their own marriage end in divorce."
I have known many married couples that have divorced, some for reasons I understood and some for reasons that bewildered me. In the majority of those cases, the adults expressed that it was "their decision", and would not hurt anyone but themselves. They could not see the bigger picture of how it would affect their children, even into adulthood. These friends have also expressed confusion about the life choices of their adult children, and resentment that the children were not "there" for them when they needed support. There are some counties that require pre-marital counseling before marriage. Would it be a good idea to require "post-marital" counseling when a divorce with children is contemplated, and before the divorce is finalized? It seems that innocent children should be awarded that small concession to help cope with their broken family.
This sweet video of a 6-year old explains the affect that divorce is having on her, and pleads with her mother to get along with her father. It is sad that there is a need for her to express these views, but she is wise beyond her years.
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