Annotated Bibliography

Purpose: The purpose of my paper is to examine the relationships among the relationships
between childhood trauma related to their parent’s relationship and how that later affects their
adulthood and relationships with others.

Reference: Hetherington, E. Mavis; American Psychologist, Vol 34(10), Oct,1979 Special Issue:
Psychology and Children: Current Research and Practice. Pp. 851-858. Publisher: American
Psychological Association; [Journal Article]

Results: The best statistical prognostications suggest that an increasing number of children are
going to experience their parents' divorce and life in a single- parent family. A conflict-ridden
intact family is more deleterious to family members than is a stable home in which parents are
divorced. An inaccessible, rejecting, or hostile parent in a nu- clear family is more detrimental
to the development of the child than is the absence of a parent. Divorce is often a positive
solution to destructive family functioning; however, most children experience divorce as a
difficult transition, and life in a single-parent family can be viewed as a high- risk situation for
parents and children. This is not to say that single-parent families cannot or do not serve as
effective settings for the development of competent, stable, happy children, but the additional
stresses and the lack of support systems confronted by divorced families impose additional
burdens on their members. Most research has viewed the single-parent family as a pathogenic
family and has failed to focus on how positive family functioning and support systems can
facilitate the development of social, emotional, and intellectual competence in children in
single-parent families. Neither the gloom-and- doom approach nor the political stance of
refusing to recognize t h a t many single-parent families headed by mothers have problems
other than financial difficulties is likely to be productive. We need more research and applied
programs oriented toward the identification and facilitation of patterns of family functioning, as
well as support systems that help families to cope with changes and stress associated with
divorce and that help to make single-parent families the basis of a satisfying and fulfilling
lifestyle.

Methods:
Participants: 32 different families.
Measures: The perspectives all seem to be around times ranging from 1968-1980. Sex
differences in response to divorce.
Procedures: Research evidence from 32 families who have presented their papers from there
perspectives to everything from National State of Mental Health conference to Johnson and
Johnson symposium.

Note to self: It was interesting to me how divorce affects boys and girls differently but
definitely made sense.
Purpose: The purpose of my paper is to examine the relationships among the relationships
between childhood trauma related to their parent’s relationship and how that later affects their
adulthood and relationships with others.

Reference: Kalter, Neil; American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol 57(4), Oct, 1987 pp. 587-600.
Publisher; American Orthopsychiatric Association, Inc,; [Journal Article]

Results: This paper has described potential impediments to children's attainment of three key
developmental goals and has discussed their role as central factors in the emergence of specific
emotional, social, and behavioral problems associated with children of divorce. These are
considered in the context of a post-divorce, single-mother household with a markedly
peripheral father or an ongoing, mutually antagonistic ex-spousal relationship. It should be
reiterated that the interplay between particular family dynamics and the intrapsychic
development of children described here, though more easily discerned in a post-divorce family,
is applicable to many families in which a divorce has never occurred.
The long-term negative effects of divorce on a sizable minority of youngsters can be
understood as due in large measure to developmental vulnerabilities sustained or created by
these post-separation issues. Problems that are first seen in the crisis period of the divorce and
that persist for years may draw their staying power from the ongoing contributions of particular
family interactions as well as the effect of these systemic stresses on the individual child.
Similarly, the sorts of difficulties which arise de novo years after divorce may have their roots in
the post-divorce interaction of family dynamics and child development that has been
articulated here; it is as if these unfolding post-divorce processes are tantamount to laying
multiple land mines in the path of child development. The conceptual framework presented in
this paper has direct implications for the delivery of both preventive and traditional clinical
services to children and families in post-divorce circumstances. On the preventive side it
follows from our position that brief, one-shot interventions timed as close to the parental
separation as possible (the crisis intervention perspective that has been supported by the
National Institute of Mental Health and many clinical agencies) hold limited promise for having
a significant, long-term impact on the quality of children's lives. The family dynamic-child
development processes described here can be expected to overwhelm any brief, single effort at
preventive intervention. Potentially more fruitful strategies would include: 1) efforts to educate
parents about the importance of a positive co-parental, post-divorce relationship and the
involvement of both parents to healthy child development; and 2) adopting the notion of serial
or intermittent brief interventions with children and families. These approaches recognize the
contribution of ongoing family interactions to the persistence or emergence of post-
divorce problems in child adjustment. Similarly, the delivery of traditional clinical services
to children and parents after divorce may be more effective when the interplay between these
family dynamics and the inner lives of children are recognized.
Methods:
Participants: 44 families/ research evidence of papers written already.
Measures: Childhood Development; Crises; Gender Identity; Childhood (birth-12 yrs)
Procedures: Research and clinical work with children of divorce have focused primarily on
parental separation as a traumatic event and its effects on children as a crisis situation. The
present paper, based on clinical experience, considers potential long-term problems of
these children in key developmental areas: handling anger and aggression, separation-
individuation, and gender identity. Implications for prevention and service delivery are
presented.
Note to self: This one definitely gets into it with more depth about the significant different
effects on male and female, Problems in their development.

Purpose: The purpose of my paper is to examine the relationships among the relationships
between childhood trauma related to their parent’s relationship and how that later affects their
adulthood and relationships with others.

Reference: Schick, Andreas; Swiss Journal of Psychology / Schweizerische Zeitschrift für

Psychologie / Revue Suisse de Psychologie, Vol 61(1), Mar, 2002 pp. 5-14. Publisher: Verlag
Hans Huber; [Journal Article]

Results: Overall, 11 of the 28 investigated behavioral and emotional aspects of the adjustment
to divorce yielded significant differences – independent of gender – between children from
divorced and children from intact families, with all of them revealing more negative outcomes
for the children of divorce. When examining the time effects by distinguishing
between children whose parents had been separated for more than or for less than 2.5 years,
only seven tests yielded significant differences. However, these significant differences did not
occur between the two groups of children of divorce, but solely between the children from
intact families and those children whose parents had been separated for a maximum of 2.5
years. In this subgroup, parents evaluated their children as exhibiting more behavior problems,
showing more signs of social withdrawal, being less consistent in their academic performance,
and displaying delinquent behavior more frequently than children of nondivorced families. In
accordance with the results of Kinard and Reinherz (1984), the children of divorce showed
more negative outcomes with respect to some areas of behavior evaluated by the parents the
less time had passed since separation. However, some of the time effects tested just missed the
significance level because of the reduced sample size due to the subdivision. Therefore, the
importance of the point of time of separation should be more closely examined with greater
sample sizes.

Methods:
Participants: Behavior Problems; Competence; Divorce; Early Experience; Emotional
Adjustment; Childhood (birth-12 yrs); School Age (6-12 yrs); Adolescence (13-17 yrs); Adulthood
(18 yrs & older); Male; Female.
Measures: Table 1
Procedures: As indicated in Table 1, only one of the six scales of the SPP yielded significant
differences between the two groups. The children of divorced homes evaluated their behavior
as less self-confident than did their counterparts from intact homes. Ten of the seventeen
comparisons concerning the behavior problems evaluated by the parents, yielded statistical
significance. As anticipated, the data obtained with the MVL as well as the data obtained with
the CBCL yielded a higher frequency of behavior problems among the children of divorce, with
the mean scores of the children of divorce staying beneath the limits of clinical significance,
reported for these assessment procedures (see Döpfner et al., 1994; Ehlers et al., 1978). The
two-factor multivariate analyses of variance, computed for each measure, with gender as
second factor, yielded no significant interactions, i.e. boys and girls were equally negatively
affected by their parents’ separation.
Measures: Table 2
Procedures: Looking at the percentages in Table 2, it is striking that according to the MVL
scales, based on the parents’ evaluations, a lot of children had clinically significant problems.
However, the children’s self-evaluations on the SPP and the parents’ evaluations on the CBCL
were less serious – except for the high percentage of children with internalizing problems
(CBCL). In contrast to the analyses of variance described above, only a few differences
remained significant. Similar to the results reported by Warren et al. (1987), these significant
differences were limited to the children’s behavior evaluated by their parents. On the average,
the children of divorced parents had more clinically relevant problems, yet, the only differences
in frequency that proved to be statistically different, were the differences on social anxiety
(MVL) and unstable performance (MVL).
Measures: Table 3
Procedures: Seven of the 23 univariate analyses of variance performed yielded significant
differences. Yet, as post-hoc tests revealed, none of these differences were due to differences
between the two groups of children of divorce. At the adjusted level of significance, only
differences between children of nondivorced parents and children whose parents had been
separated for a maximum of 2.5 years were significant. A detailed examination showed that
these children of divorce, in contrast to the children from intact families, were less consistent
in their academic performance (p = .007), more often socially withdrawn (p = .000), and
exhibited more delinquent behavior (p = .000). In addition, their parents evaluated them as
having more general behavior problems (p = .002). The different frequencies of children with
clinically significant problems within the three groups were again verified by means of Fisher’s
exact test. The alpha level was adjusted and set to α = .007 (.05/7). None of the tests yielded
significant differences. That means, the frequency of children with clinically relevant problems
did not depend on the length of time that had elapsed since separation.
Measures: Table 4
Procedures: As can be seen in Table 4, the social support from the mother was not a relevant
mediator, because it was not affected in the families of this sample. More over the differences
between the two groups were independent of whether the children mediated during parental
conflict, whether they were the subject of the conflict, or whether they felt helpless in their
parents’ conflict. However, impressive changes in contrast to the analysis of variance could be
found when the effects of the destructiveness of interparental conflict were controlled in an
analysis of covariance.
Measures: Table 5
Procedures: The decreased support of the father could also explain some of the differences
between children of divorced and nondivorced parents. The results presented in Table 5 show
that, by eliminating the effects of the reduced social support from the father, only the
differences in the children’s evaluation of their self-confidence (SPP), and also the differences
in the parents’ assessment of the social problems (CBCL) and the internalizing and externalizing
problems (CBCL) were eliminated. These results support the hypothesis on the importance of
the social support from the parents only in parts, because no mediator effects could be proved
for the mother’s social support and only a few mediator effects were found for the father’s
social support. However, major effects could be shown for the children’s perception of
interparental conflict. When statistically eliminating the effects of the destructiveness of
interparental conflict, all differences were eliminated, except for the differences concerning
social anxiety and unstable performance (MVL).

Note to self: