CHILDREN AND DIVORCE

8 Pages 1922 Words

being and behavior of their offspring (Amato 1280). Research shows, however, that many parents are not as emotionally or physically available as they’d like to be during the divorce process (Lewis 33). Overall, children are better off in most situations if their parents, being involved in a high-conflict relationship, divorce rather than remain unhappily married (Amato 1278).
Most of the damage that children experience emotionally is not caused by the separation or divorce, but rather by stress leading to split-up, the divided family, and the events to follow. Children’s needs vary due to their own family position and personal experiences prior to, during and after the divorce (Stuart 202).
Remarriage is a common feature of the family lifestyle in society today. Many recent studies indicate that children whose custodial parents remarried were found to be less depressed with fewer interpersonal troubles, when compared with children living with a single custodial parent. Studies do show that it tends to matter little which parent becomes the custodial parent when predicting the outcomes of the offspring. However, incompetent parenting on the part of the custodial parent leads to lower achievement rates academically, internalizing and externalizing problems, lowered self-esteem, and a weakened sense of social proficiency. Remarriage is shown to benefit African-Americans more so than the white population (Amato 1280-1281).
Unfortunately, the positive consequences of divorce ar...