Effects of Divorce on Children essay

From the past to present, people all over the world have been determined to live together, which is called “marriage” in another word, so that they depend on for living with each other. Nevertheless, some couples are unable to maintain their relationship; therefore they choose divorce, which is one of the solutions to cope with problems between husband and wife. Furthermore, most people think carefully before they get marriage. However, the divorce rates trend to continually increase nowadays, thus it might be argued that divorces can be taken place easier than the past.

There are three main causes of divorce: changing woman’s roles, stress in modern living and lack of communication, which are highlighted below. The first significant cause of recent rise in the rates of divorce is that women completely change in roles. In the past, men have to earn whole money to afford the expense of family, whereas woman only do housework, hence women have no money leading to depend on husbands’ money. Because of these situations, it is too difficult for most women to separate from their husbands. Nonetheless, these situations entirely change nowadays.

The equality between men and women in roles are very clear at the moment, thus women can work outside to earn money, while men share the household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, washing as well as caring for children. It can be clearly seen that women are independent from money as they can earn money by them to support their living cost. Accordingly, the divorce rates rise. Another cause to confirm the recent increase in divorce rates is stress in modern living. Many people, who live in globalization, have considerable pressures to earn money.

It can be obviously seen that the stress has occurred since they are children. For instance, in Thailand, students generally want to go to famous school so that they take advantage to go to well-known universities. Studying in celebrated universities mostly causes having a good opportunity to find a job or earn a lot of money. This circumstance not only happens in Thailand, but also occurs in many countries. Some people are laid off from their companies; consequently the stress occurs in their family, which leads to divorce.

Some families can earn money, but inadequate for covering their expenses, therefore it is easy to think about divorce. Nevertheless, the rates of unemployment trend to continually increase as a result the divorce rates can also rise. It is no doubt that the stress in modern living may lead to recently increasing divorce rates. The final cause of recently increasing divorce is lack of communication. Owing to financial status in each family, many people are fairly busy. For this reason, they have no time to talk to the problems with their partners, which produces the likelihood of divorce.

Some couples are often quiet when they have problems each other, as a consequence little problems can be expanded to probably become huge problems, resulting in divorce. It is obvious that the more communications are used, the more divorce rates are reduced. Although, these three causes of the recent rise in divorce rates are expressed above, there are also two effects of the recent increase of divorce rates: negative effects and positive affects Firstly, the effects of recent enlargement in divorce rates are negative effects. Most couples normally have children when they get married.

Children often try to stop the divorce of their parents, but there are many who seem to accept it at first. These who seem to accept it may even tell their parents that they are happy about the divorce. This is not always the case, as one would see if he or she spoke with the child for a while. There are many things that divorce does to a family, and there are many things that is does to the child. These effects are rarely positive or helpful depending upon the family’s prior situation. Divorce has many negative effects on the psychological and social aspects of a child’s life.

There are many psychological aspects of a child’s life that change when his or her parents go through a divorce. As previously mentioned by the writer, a child may not show initially how he or she feels about the divorce, but the true feelings of that child eventually surface. Joan B. Kelly, in an article for the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says, Children incorporate repertoires of angry, impulsive, and violent behavior into their own behavior as a result of observing their parents’ responses to frustration and rage.

This is something that many children that witness the divorce of their parents go through. The child naturally looks to his or her parent or parents for the example of how to handle certain situations and emotions. During a divorce there is much anger and aggression that is expressed by one or both parents of that child. This is not healthy for the child to witness for several reasons. One of the main reasons is that the child sees this example of aggression that his or her parents are setting, and he or she begins to react in the same manner.

Anger and aggression tend to become the child’s tools for solving his or her problems. The child becomes like the parents and could cause harm to others because of not knowing or understanding how to control these feelings. He or she may often violently lash out at those around him or her that cause these feelings to occur. This leads to the next psychological effect that divorce has on children. Depression is a major effect that divorce has on children. This is not necessarily something that occurs during the divorce, but has major effects on the later life of the child.

A high level of marital conflict experienced during childhood has been linked to more depression and other psychological disorders in young adults, compared with those reporting lower levels of family conflict during childhood. Lora Heims Tessman, author of Children of Parting Parents says, “most of the adolescents were overly depressed . . . many had conscious suicidal thoughts . . . a minority showed increased acting out with self-destructive components, but without anxious depression” (Tessman 327). These are common psychological effects of divorce on children. There are also many social effects that divorce has on children.

The child often feels unconnected to his or her peers. He or she feels unable to make or maintain friendships and complained about being unconnected to his or her peers. Also contributing to feeling unconnected to their peers is that in numerous studies over the past three decades, divorced children have been reported to be more aggressive and impulsive and to engage in more antisocial behaviors, compared with matched samples of never-divorced children. The divorce that these children experience causes them to act and react in ways that are not considered socially acceptable, and distancing themselves from their peers.

Diagnostically, the adolescents varied greatly, but did share a number of clinical features. The children of these divorced families have become so mixed up that they do not know who they are any longer. Things that they once loved or enjoyed things that they were once interested in no longer matter to them. In conclusion, a family is one of the important parts of society, thus many people had better be aware of the significance of relationship in family. At the moment, divorce has become the substantial problem because of changing women’s roles, stress in modern living and lack of communication.

Nevertheless, there are also the two different ways in effects, which are negative and positive effects. Some couples, which have no children, divorce by consent, therefore divorce should be good solution for couples to deal with this problem. On the other hand, some couples having children in their family should think deliberatively before they end their marriage with divorce otherwise innocent children probably become victims of this situation. Although people tend to think carefully before they get married and until then the divorce rate will continuously rise.