Q: How can parental divorce shape children’s lives? 

A: Here are four tendencies, not certainties, to consider. First, divorce can cause insecurity about the permanence of parental love. Second, divorce can emotionally destabilize and intensify a child’s growth. Third, divorce can encourage a more determined push toward independence. And fourth, divorce can raise issues about commitment when the child is approaching significant romantic relationships of his or her own.


THE VERY YOUNG CHILD (up to about age 6):
To see love lost between parents can raise a series of scary questions. “If my parents can lose love for each other, can they also lose love for me?” “If one parent has moved out, am I in danger of losing the other?” “Since anger at each other caused the divorce, if I get angry at them (or they get angry at me) will they divorce me?” “If I can’t count on their love being forever, then what can I count on?” No wonder very young children often express more insecurity in the wake of divorce, sometimes seeming to regress, having more difficulty separating from the primary parent, clinging to that parent out of fear of further loss. Often a child will establish security rituals around departure and reunion points with the primary parent to help reduce fears when leaving each other (“Will you return?”) and when coming back together (“Are we still all right?”). The parent needs to respect these rituals for what they usually are-- attempts to assert individual control when family change feels chaotic. Respecting these rituals may mean, for example, reassuring the urgent child precisely four times that he or she will be picked up after school. As adjustment to the new family circumstance takes place, the need for support these transition rituals provide will subside. In the mean time, parents can also strive to make the family schedule as predictable as possible, establishing household and visitation routines on which the child can rely.


THE PREADOLESCENT CHILD (around ages 6 to 9):
Stress from parental divorce can be so overwhelming that less focus and energy is available for meeting the demands of school. Thus it is not uncommon to see young children during the first year after parental divorce perform lesswell academically because their emotional energy is diverted into grieving parental and family loss and into worry over what other changes are yet to come. In many elementary schools, counselors conduct support groups for children of divorce to help them work through this painful transition, to give students help in coming to terms of understanding and emotional acceptance of the unwanted family change that has occurred. The sooner a measure of understanding and acceptance has been gained, the sooner the child able to fully reengage with the instructional demands of school.