We know how divorce impacts children in the short and long term. We know the major risk and protective factors that predict how they fare. Effective parenting encompassing both warmth and discipline, developing positive parent-child relationships and managing conflict are the three most important factors in protecting children. Evidence-based interventions for children and programs that strengthen parenting skills are helping families at the same time that they are yielding valuable research.
But big challenges remain: How can we help all children come through family changes with resilience and healthy adjustment? How can we reach all the parents and help them develop the focus, skills and determination to give their children the best chance at leading fulfilling lives? The implications of this research provide an empowering message to parents: There is much you can do to foster better outcomes for your children.
The risks are real, but so is the potential to help them grow through the changes, to become resilient, and to feel completely secure in knowing they are loved — and will be loved for a lifetime.
Parents need this valuable information on ways to reduce the negative impact of divorce on their children early in the process of a breakup.
A triage system of support is needed in every community that includes parent education, alternative dispute resolution methods and preventive interventions for parents and children. Many of these services are cut due to financial constraints, yet research shows that early outreach programs are cost effective and help to prevent more complex problems for parents and children.
We need to find effective and cost-effective ways to widely disseminate evidence-based interventions so that they are easily accessed and available to all parents and their children. The biggest implication for policy is to reframe the legal divorce process when children are involved so that it incorporates research on what is genuinely best for children. Decisions about custody and parenting time must be made in the context of child development research, not a uniform default toward any one particular schedule.
Increasing the availability of alternatives such as collaborative law and mediation and providing evidence-based information for judges, legal and mental health professionals, and finding ways to structure legal proceedings to protect children are all changes that will benefit children and ultimately, the society they inherit and shape as adults.
Pedro-Carroll JA. Updated: November Introduction Each year, millions of children around the globe face family disruption, and in many countries, divorce rates are rising. Research Context There are several valuable areas of research that contribute heavily to our understanding of how parents can help their children cope with separation and divorce. What constitutes effective parenting that helps children to thrive in the wake of divorce or separation?
Along with effective parenting, how can parents foster a warm, strong parent-child relationship? How can parents best protect their children from damaging conflict? What do evidence-based interventions for children and parents bring to our understanding of how parents can help children cope with divorce?
Recent Research Results Much can be done to prevent long-term problems and foster resilience in children. As an advisor to the Sesame Street Resilience Project, we developed materials for parents and caregivers to help children understand divorce and family changes. These materials are free and available at sesamestreet. Maintaining structures and routines that are least disruptive to children is important, too, and often their needs change over time. Parents need to stay attuned to how the transitions between them are impacting their children and make adjustments as needed to prevent giving children the sense that their lives are out of control.
Underlying all that parents do to take care of their children is the important — and often difficult — task of taking good care of themselves. Stress often brings on a number of unwelcome changes in sleep, appetite and physical tension. These are generally compounded by additional pressures on the schedule created by sharing the parenting responsibilities from two different homes and the financial impact of splitting the same income to cover additional expenses.
Parents need to make it a priority to find healthy ways to manage and reduce stress and take care of themselves so they can parent in the best way possible. Research Gaps More research is needed on the subject of parenting plans.
Conclusions Since divorce is so prevalent worldwide, it is critical to understand its impact on children and to establish ways to protect them from its potentially damaging effects. Implications for parents, services, and policy Parents The implications of this research provide an empowering message to parents: There is much you can do to foster better outcomes for your children.
Services Parents need this valuable information on ways to reduce the negative impact of divorce on their children early in the process of a breakup. Policy The biggest implication for policy is to reframe the legal divorce process when children are involved so that it incorporates research on what is genuinely best for children. Family Science ; Pedro-Carroll J. Putting children first: Proven parenting strategies for helping children thrive through divorce. Pedro Carroll, J. Tijdschrift van de Vereniging voor Kinder- en Jeugdpsychotherapie [Journal of the Association for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy] ;47 2 Amato P.
The consequences of divorce for adults and children. Journal of Marriage and the Family ;62; Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1 Children of divorced parents as young adults. Coping with divorce, single parenting, and remarriage: A risk and resiliency perspective. In: Hetherington EM, ed. The social readjustment rating scale.
Journal of Psychosomatic Research ;11 2 Hanson R. In institutionalized children, we pretty quickly see a dramatic reduction in brain electrical activity.
We also find that the integrity of various white matter tracts has been compromised. White matter is made up of insulated bundles of nerve fibers that allow various regions of the brain to communicate. Some of these effects are permanent. Some white matter tracts recover after placement into a family, some do not.
We see no recovery of grey matter. My intuition is that the reduction in grey and white matter is due to a lack of input during critical periods. As our brains develop, we overproduce neurons and synapses, and then we prune them back.
But with a lack of input, there may be an overpruning — too many neurons and synapses are deleted. Some of it is also probably mediated by stress. But if a child is old enough at the time of separation, separation itself becomes a stressor. Kids with a history of trauma or adversity are going to be more vulnerable. All of those things conspire to make things much worse.
The way in which the separation occurs, and the conditions the child experiences also matter. If separated children are kept under conditions that lead to sleep deprivation, this can have a negative effect on brain development.
Another factor is age. Older children will be more aware of their circumstances than very young children. In children, attachments start to come online around six or seven months. Babies younger than this may get through this if they are taken care of by someone who is invested in the child. One study found that children's temperaments did not affect their behavioural adaptiveness after parental divorce when they had social supports, but did affect their capacity to withstand the divorce without social supports Hetherington , cited in Grych and Fincham Resilience is thought to have its roots in the child's early attachment to a parent or parent figure e.
Rutter , cited in Kelly and Lamb Nevertheless, intervention can enhance resilience. There is relatively little research on how divorce and separation affects non-white, non-middle class children. Most existing English-language studies are about American children.
Some research in the U. Recent research is cautious about attributing the poor outcomes experienced by some children of divorce to the separation and divorce. It is also cautious about identifying the individual factors operating before, during or after the divorce which determine poor outcomes Rodgers and Pryor Several factors do emerge as important, although their interrelationship is unclear. Moreover, researchers are also studying how positive factors can buffer children against negative factors e.
Wolchik et al. Based on existing largely cross-sectional studies, children's acute distress at the time of parental separation, and their later responses to their resulting residential arrangements, are not important factors in children's long-term adjustment. However, there has been little exploration of the effects of children's acute distress at parental separation the critical event for them on their long-term adjustment Grych and Fincham The authors of the comprehensive British study called for more research on how short-term distress may affect long-term outcomes Rodgers and Pryor Current thinking supports the widespread view that the custodial parent's adjustment is a key factor in children's long-term well-being.
Children with poorly adjusted custodial parents are at much higher risk of faring poorly citations in Kelly Children are more likely to fare well when the custodial parent is in good mental health, has good social supports and has good child-rearing skill, i.
Wallerstein ; see citations in Amato , Hetherington , Buchanan et al. Another recent study has shown that children in lone-parent families whose mothers discipline consistently and accept their child—the two key features of authoritative parenting—have fewer internalizing e.
The custodial parent's consistent and accepting parenting therefore seems to buffer children against adverse effects from other sources of stress, such as economic hardship. Children who perceive low acceptance and less consistency from parents become more vulnerable to stress, and the children perceiving low acceptance and consistency who experience many stressors are the most vulnerable of all Wolchik et al.
Existing research offers no consensus on the importance of children's ongoing relationship with their non-residential parent, typically the father see citations in O'Connor ; Kelly Most large-scale studies using a national database have found no relationship between frequency of access parent's visits and child adjustment Kelly However, several studies report positive outcomes for children in cooperative, low-conflict families in which fathers are involved with their children citations in O'Connor , and in Kelly Children are more likely to fare poorly with fathers' ongoing access in certain high-conflict families, especially boys in these families O'Connor One meta-analysis of 57 studies also found that more recent studies of father-child contact provide stronger evidence of the father's impact on children's adjustment than do earlier studies Amato and Gilbreth , cited in Kelly The overview of largely British studies concluded that continuing contact with the non-residential parent may benefit children's adjustment, but there is no simple relationship with frequency of contact Rodgers and Pryor The ongoing involvement of non-residential parents with their children does seem to be clearly linked to their academic achievement.
Children's academic functioning declines less when fathers are involved with the child's school and schoolwork after separation McLanahan , cited in Kelly Children of divorce are also less likely to earn a university degree, in part because parental aspirations for educational achievement increase for adolescents in never-divorced families, but decrease for adolescents in divorced households McLanahan , cited in Kelly The California study also found that the divorced fathers were often unwilling to fund their children's post-secondary education, especially if they had remarried and had other children Wallerstein and Lewis A growing body of literature affirms that post-separation conflict among parents increases children's risk of poor outcomes.
Children whose parents remain hostile and aggressive, locked in ongoing high conflict are more likely to have behavioural problems, emotional difficulties and social difficulties Johnston They are also more likely to lack self-esteem Kelly The risk of poor outcomes increases when spousal violence is involved, and rises even higher when the children are abused Johnston Even so, studies have found that overall adjustment scores for most children of chronically-litigating, high-conflict post-divorce families also fall in the normal range Johnston et al.
Longitudinal studies have found that some difficulties observed in some children of divorce existed prior to divorce e. Elliott and Richards , cited in Kelly , suggesting that the factors producing these difficulties may pre-date the divorce or separation.
The recent analysis of British studies concluded that family conflict before, during and after separation can be stressful for children. There is no agreement about whether children's maladjustment resulting from parental conflict is largely a result of conflict during the marriage or after its break-up Rodgers and Pryor Divorce and separation often produce a substantial decline in the children's standard of living, increasing economic instability and stress in the custodial home. These changes intensify the stress of separation's disruptiveness for children and affect their long-term adjustment Kelly ; citations in Amato Studies have shown that custodial mothers' incomes drop by an average of 30 percent in the United States after divorce Lamb et al.
In Canada, incomes of women who separated from their spouses in the mids dropped an average of 23 percent during the first year adjusted for the number of people they had living with them , and by the end of the first year, single mothers' average incomes were 31 percent less than their pre-separation income Galarneau and Sturrock One U. More recently, it has been estimated that the economic problems of divorced households account for as much as half of the adjustment problems seen in divorced children McLanahan , cited in Kelly Another study found that divorced children's poorer showings on 27 out of 34 outcomes, dropped to 13 when income differences were taken into account Guidubaldi et al.
Custodial mothers also experience high rates of job instability and changes in residence in the first three years after the separation McLanahan and Booth , cited in Bray and Hetherington Many mothers move to poorer neighbourhoods, with fewer services and supports.
Children are pulled away from their friends, other social supports and familiar surroundings. Access parents may also move to different neighbourhoods, with similar, if less harmful, results for the children. The results of the cross-sectional research suggest that long-term adjustment of children of divorce is best fostered by programs that help their parents' adjust, address social and economic stressors, reduce inter-parental conflict and recurrent litigation over custody and access, and foster cooperative post-separation parenting arrangements with strong ties between children and both their parents.
However, as indicated earlier, the links between children's acute distress during parental separation and their long-term adjustment have yet to be fully explored. For example, the more acute a child's distress, the more difficult it may be for the mother to recover her own equilibrium and maintain positive relationships with her child Wolchik et al. Other research also indicates several ways in which children's own responses to the separation and later circumstances can affect their adjustment.
This research provides a rationale for specific programs for children during parental separation, and in later years. Prominent researchers agree that children who do not rebound from their initial distress and difficulties at the time of their parents' separation, or during subsequent critical events, can be expected to face difficulties later on, often in adulthood Lamb et al.
Qualitative researcher Judith Wallerstein has developed a list of six "tasks" that children must accomplish during the separation period and after, in order to stay on their developmental paths and mature into well-adjusted adults Wallerstein Children need to complete the following tasks regardless of the number and kind of external stressors in their post-separation family arrangements:.
In Wallerstein's view, high priority should be given to ensuring that parents' and children's acute distress responses to separation and divorce do not consolidate and become chronic Wallerstein , making them harder to root out later.
The tasks fall in a sequence with varying time spans for each. The first two tasks, for example, should be mastered immediately to maintain the child's academic and developmental progress Wallerstein These tasks have become the basis of many of the programs currently providing support to children experiencing parental separation and divorce see e.
Fischer Clearly, children need cooperation from family and environment to accomplish some of these tasks. For example, parents who continually engage their children in their intense conflicts, or in family violence or bullying, will make it virtually impossible for the children to resume their cognitive, emotional and behavioural development at school and elsewhere.
Similarly, parents who blame their children for the separation, or for their own failure to recover emotionally from the rupture, will make it extremely difficult for their children to stop blaming themselves. Interventions may be needed to help children get back on their development pathway in spite of their parents' negative influence.
Parents and outsiders may also be positive forces in helping children accomplish these tasks. For example, parents and outsiders can successfully reassure small children that they are not responsible for the separation and that they are still loved Hodges Interventions may therefore be able to help children accomplish all these tasks, especially during the period of parental separation. Research also suggests that children in difficult post-separation circumstances may be able to offset the effects of some stressors by increasing their coping skills and their resilience to adversity.
Much of this research has focussed on children in high-conflict families. Early studies on high-conflict post-separation parenting indicated that all children in such families were at risk of poor long-term adjustment. Other research, however, narrows the negative impacts to high-conflict families in which the conflict prevents parents from cooperating in their post-separation parenting Camera and Resnick , cited in Kelly ; Amato and Rezac Some parents are able to find ways to cooperate in their post-separating parenting in spite of their intense conflicts.
Parents who cannot do this tend to make their children pawns in their own conflict. Studies show that children are at risk when the ongoing high conflict results in the child feeling caught in the middle Buchanan et al.
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