Amicable divorce still damaging to children

A far cry from the days when people were intent on keeping the past in the past and ex-partners were akin to sworn enemies, we now have parents peacefully co-parenting after divorce.

While this is definitely a good show for the children, new scientific research suggests that regardless of whether parents remain friends following divorce, it is still as damaging to the children. To a child, there is no amicable divorce.

Researchers from Indiana University in the US came to these findings after studying the lives of 270 couples who split between 1998 and 2004.

The couples were asked to reveal how they felt their breakup had affected their youngest child, where the average age of these children was eight years old.

Of these couples, 31 percent regarded their ex-spouses as co-operative and involved, 45 percent ex-spouses were moderately involved in the lives of their children while the remaining 24 percent had infrequent and conflictual involvement.

EXTERNAL SYMPTOMS

The research showed that the children of divorced parents suffered external symptoms like behavioural problems and drug abuse and also had internal problems like anxiety and depression.

Sadly, they found that these symptoms which included bad grades at school continued to prevail whether or not the parents continued to fight after the separation.

On analysis, the study findings show that it is not only the conflict but the split itself that has damaging effects on the children.

Behaviour of the parents thereafter does nothing to ease the devastating effects.

Parents are clearly in the dark about how a split will affect their children.

Those who opt to work together after a divorce usually believe that they are cushioning their children against the potential effects of the split but this study which has been published in the academic journal Family Relations shows a mismatch in the perceptions of parents and those of their children.

While getting along with your ex-spouse will definitely make you feel better about a split, it apparently does little for the children.

To a child, it makes little sense that the parents are friends and yet can’t live together. The researchers thus feel that divorced parents should feel reassured that their children will not be more seriously harmed if a divorce was nasty and they can’t have a cordial relationship with their exes. Apparently, a good divorce is a myth.