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 Head:  THE  EFFECTS  OF  DIVORCE  ON  CHILDREN     1  

 

The Effects of Divorce on Children’s Emotional Development

Duquesne University

December 2, 2014
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Topic Choice: How a child’s emotional development is effected when the child’s parents

get divorced.

Abstract

The research that will be taking place is to determine whether or not children’s

emotional development is effected when their parents separate at a young age. A child

development is very important to their over all well-being and life style. So much

happens during the developmental stages of their youth that the littlest of things can cause

some type of issue in their development. It is important to pin point the things in the

developmental stage that can poorly effect development. During this research child that

have parents that got divorced at a young age will be asked to answer a series of

questions and then be observed interacting with their parents.

Literature Reviews

Peter Ernst Haiman PhD, Haiman (1994) discusses how divorce and separation

affects a child’s emotional development and how to protect the child from being to badly

affected by it.

Right off the bat Haiman (1994) states “The child’s development of an emotional

attachment to a primary caregiver in the first six years of life is very important. A

disturbance in this development can create problems in childhood, adolescence, and adult

life.” (p. 1). It is very important that if a family is going through divorce or separation and

young children are involved the parents have to work extra hard to make the child feel

comfortable with the new changes that are going to be taking place.

Haiman (1994) goes on to discuss “The Child’s Point of View” (p. 1). He states
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that the child should always have easy access to the parent to whom them developed the

emotional attachment too, most likely this is the mother (p. 1). The child should be given

a normal routine that is very closely followed by both parents. Haiman (1994) gives five

actions that should be taken by the parent that is the primary caregiver, they are: “(a)

loving physical contact between the adult and child, (b) the caregiver’s regular ability to

soothe the child by holding, (c) the caregiver’s sensitivity to the child’s signals and the

ability to time interventions in harmony with the child’s rhythms, (d) the mutual delight

the adult and child have by being in each other’s company, and (e) the creation of an

environment that permits the child to derive a sense of the consequences of his or her

own actions.” (p. 1).

Haiman then discusses how to handle talking to the child and doing what’s best

for the child when courts becomes involved and then discusses the effects of separation.

After legal action is taken if the child is separated from the primary caregiver significant

psychological impact on the child’s well being can happen (p.1). The child can become

extremely anxious and distressed from even just a short amount of time being separated

from the primary caregiver.

This article has a lot of useful information in it about how separation effects the

child and their emotional development. The one thing that I would have changed about

the article was to include information for both parents and not just focus primarily on the

caregiver parent. By just focusing on the caregiver parent the other parent (who also is

still very important) is not given a good idea of what they should be doing while this

process is happening.
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Carl Pickhardt PhD (2011), discusses how young child are affected by divorce

compared to how adolescents are affected to divorce.

Pickhardt (2011) starts off by making it clear that no matter what age the child is

it is a traumatic experience for the child. The child is witnessing their parents marriage

come to an end. They see two people that use to love each other for their whole life come

to an end. The new family dynamic will have an affect on the child and how it they are

affected later on in life.

For a young adolescent separation and divorce tends to accelerate their

independence (p. 1). They become more independent because they feel that now because

one of their parents is no longer around they now need to take charge of their own lives

and step up and be independent. The child takes control of their actions and becomes

more self aware of their life and what they do and how it affects them (p. 1). Adolescent

children become more aggressive when their parents separate or go through a divorce (p.

1). They become angry with the parent that they live with and blame them for the other

parent leaving. They also blame themselves for their parent leaving. They think that they

did something wrong to make their parent not want to be at home anymore.

A young child would react the opposite than how an adolescent would react to

separation and divorce. The young children do not become more independent but more

dependent on the parent that they resign with (p. 1). The child relies more on their parent

to make decisions for them and to be there for them. Young children fantasize about their

parents getting back together and everything going back to how it use to be (p. 1). Young

children tend to not be able to understand what is going on so they have to come up with

their own reasons as to why these changes are happening in their families.
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With this article I think it is an interesting approach on how to explain the

different effects of divorce or separation on young children and adolescents. I think that

the author could have organized the effects of divorce and separation on young children

and adolescents better and not so scattered throughout the article. Over all the reader can

learn a lot from this article about how divorce and separation affects different age groups.

Karen DeBord, Ph.D (1994), Child Development Specialist, discusses how the

parents of a child who’s parents are going through a divorce should talk to their child and

handle the situation that is at hand. Talking to a child who is going through this very

stressful situation needs to be talked to in a very delicate way. According to DeBord

(1994) the worst thing that parents can do in not discuss what is going to be happening

with the divorce with their child or children. Debord’s (1994) main focus in this article is

to teacher the parent who to eliminate emotional stress for the child.

DeBord (1994) starts the article off by saying that just like adults who are going

through a divorce react in different ways so do children depending on certain

circumstances (p. 1). Such circumstances would be the amount of involvement the

nonresidential parent has in the child’s life, what the situation before the divorce or

separation was, the residential parents ease into the divorce or separation, parenting skills

of both parents, agreement on child rearing and discipline, approval and love from both

parents, openness to discussing the divorce with the parents, degree of conflict with

parents, economic hardship and other added stressors (i.e. moving, changing schools,

parental remarriage) (p. 1). DeBord (1994) then goes on to discuss what from divorce

causes stress on a child. She lists the following as stressors for the children: 1) The family

that they have always known will now be different. No matter what their family will no
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longer be like it use to be even if the parents were to get back together (p. 1). 2) Loss of

attachment. The child will no longer be around the people and objects that he or she is

use to constantly being around (p. 1). 3) Fear of abandonment. The child fears that

because they have already lost one parent that they may lose the other parent as well (p.

1) . 4) Hostility between parents. This makes the child feel like it is their fault. They

might feel guilty or alone when the parents fight (p. 2).

After DeBord (1994) is done discussing what can cause the child emotional stress

she goes on to explain in detail how divorce affects different age groups of children.

DeBord (1994) states off with infants stating that the infant will not realize that there is a

conflict going but will react if the parents energy levels change from what the infant is

use too. If this is the case the infant might have a loss of appetite, upset stomach or be

more fretful or anxious (p. 2). Toddlers will understand that one of their parents are

missing and has moved away but will not be able to comprehend why. Toddlers might

cry more, become clingy, have trouble sleeping, regress back to behaviors of when they

were infants, may worry when parent is out of sight or may withdrawal, bite or ignore (p.

2). Pre-school aged children will not understand what separation or divorce means but

they do realize that one parent is no longer as active as they use to be in his or her life

anymore. The child might possibly react by having pleasant or unpleasant fantasies, is

unsure about his or her future, the child may feel responsible for what is happening, may

hold anger inside, feels that they deserved to be punished, may become angry toward the

parent he or she lives with at the time or may experience nightmares (p. 2). Lastly

elementary aged child begin to understand what divorce and separation means. The child

will understand that his or her parents will no longer be living together anymore and that
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they no longer love one another as they did before this happened. The reactions that the

child might possibly have are that the child may feel like there is a loss of hope and that

they were deceived by their parent, they might hope that their parents get back together,

feels like the parent who left no longer loves them, fears that they will be forgotten to be

picked up after activities such as school or sports practices, trouble sleeping or ignoring

school work and their friends (p. 2).

Over all this article is well written and helps the reader get into the mind of a

child who’s parents are separating or getting a divorce. It is important to learn what

stresses a child out during this process and to learn how to help with that stress. I think

one thing that the writer could have done better is to give actual examples of children

who have gone through this experience and how it affected them.

Method

My predicted answer is I think that a child’s emotional development will be effected

when the child’s parents get divorced when the child is young by the child developing a

higher risk for dependent issues, trust issues, a fear of abandonment and a lack of social

skills.

Participants in the experiment that will take place will be males and females between the

ages of 14 to 16 whose parents have went through a divorce before they reached the age

of 8. I will place an ad in the paper looking for children who meet these criteria. The

children will be chosen with the permission of the parents to participate in the study.

There will be between 10 t o 15 participants for the experiment/survey. Half the children

will be children whose mothers left before the age of 8 and the other half will be children

whose fathers left before the age of 8.

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Design to prove my theory would be the following:

A) I would observe a group of children who’s parents get divorced when they

were between the ages of 3 to 10

B) I would like to observe the child interacting with one another in a room

unobtrusively for 3 hours a week for 4 weeks and see how they interact with

other kids around their age.

C) Observing them interacting with kids their own age will determined how they

have developed socially and how they handle being away from their parents

for an extended amount of time

D) I would then like to observe the child interacting with their parents in a room

unobtrusively for 3 hours a week for 4 weeks and see how they interact with

their parents when put in a room with them.

E) Observing them with both their parents in a room will determine what parent

they are more attached to, how they feel about both parents and how they feel

about their parents being in a room together interacting with one another.

Materials that will be used are the questionnaire that the children will answer. The

observation room will also be used so that I can observe how the children and the parents

interact with one another without disturbing them.

Procedure will be me asking the children to answer the questions of the questionnaire as

honestly as possible. The only way to get true results is to have the participants to answer

honestly. Then they will be observed interacting with their parents in a room for 30

minutes twice a week for 4 weeks.

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Discussion

I think that is important to determine whether or not children’s emotional

development is effected when their parents separate when they are young because that

will affect their whole lives and how they interact with people throughout their lives. It

can create personality disorders or anxiety disorders and it would be interesting to see

whether or not divorce at a young age can actually cause these things or some other type

of issues.
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References

Haiman, P. (1994, January 1). Protecting A Child's Emotional Development

When Parents Separate or Divorce.

DeBord, K. (1994, March 23). The Effects of Divorce on Children. North Carolina

Cooperative

Extension Service.

Pickhardt, C. (2011, December 19). The Impact of Divorce on Young Children and

Adolescents.