How
parental divorceaffects
children's ability to judge their own relationships
By
PT Staff, published on November 01, 1993 - last reviewed on August 30, 2004
Doing Better, Feeling Worse
Count among the legacies of divorce a certain amount of
relationship anxiety. If your parents were divorced, you're likely to
think your own marriage is in trouble--even when it isn't.
Men and women whose parents split while they were growing up are
just as likely to have a happy marriage as are folks from intact
families, reports a team of Michigan sociologists. But even when happily
married, they are more likely to think that their own marriage is full of
conflict.
Adult children of divorce are 70% more likely than their peers from
nonfractured families to fear their marriage is suffering. They're also
more inclined to consider divorce in the face of marital problems. Having
seen their parents split up, they accept divorce as an option.
Pamela Webster, Ph.D., and colleagues surveyed more than 13,000
adults whose parents had divorced, who had experienced the death of a
parent, or who had never lived with their biological father.
Children of divorce, she found, report problems in
communication--they tend not to know how to de-escalate the conflict that
is inevitable in married life. So they constantly perceive marital
trouble.
It's not merely the absence of a parent that hurts them. Those who
had lost a parent through death felt no more marital anxiety than those
from intact families, while those who'd never lived with a biological
father had the same feelings of anxiety as the offspring of
divorce.
The loss of a parent through divorce gives rise to feelings of
betrayal and an insecurity that endures. A child who loses a parent
through death may feel betrayed, but such feelings usually disappear with
maturity.
Tags:
anxiety,
biological father,
children of divorce,
communication,
death of a parent,
divorce,
happy marriage,
intact families,
loss of a parent,
marital problems,
marriage,
married life,
offspring,
parent,
sociologists
