How much does divorce affect a child?

There are a lot of pretty good studies which show that there are sequellae from divorce, but there isn’t very much proof of any correlation with later psychopathy.

There is no good or bad answer.

“I can’t help but wonder how much of this past environment has made me who I am.”

It has been part of the process that shaped you into the person you are. That person going on to be all you can be. With the tools you have been provided.

No matter what, you can’t change the past. But your future will be as bright as you make it.

Well I would say, at best, it can’t have been good for you changing schools, having to settle in these schools, meeting new peers and then being uprooted from that environment to another one.
Also moving between different homes can’t have been a good experinece for you. Each parent would have different rules and boundaries which you would have to get used to.
I really can’t say how much your childhood has influenced what you have become today.

My wife’s first husband left when their daughter was 2 years old. I married my wife when her daughter was 5. She is now 31, and has always had abandonment issues with her dad.

It’s never as bad as the damage done to the parents’ finances lol.

My parents divorced when I was six.I actually cannot recall any home life at all with my Dad.The years prior to that are just a blur.Apparently he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants & naturally my Mum, tired of his philandering initiated divorce proceedings.I grew up not really been adversely affected by this only to say the ocassional & perfectly natural urge to have a Dad around would have been nice.I’ve not seen him for a good few year’s now.I dare venture to say that it probably suits all parties fine.Happy days.

Statistically, children are safest and do the best when they live with their married, biological parents. But, I think it’s important not to confuse cause and effect. A long, successful marriage takes two stable and committed partners; the very people who are best suited for raising a family. Children don’t do well when they grow up in a toxic or dangerous environment. In other words, in the absence of a healthy, functional family, a child’s better off coming from a broken home than living in one.

I’m pretty sure that everything we experience contributes to the person we become, good and bad. Sometimes, obviously, the products of divorce might be less damaging than the effects of an unhappy marriage.

That said, even in a divorce that doesn’t appear contentious, there may be many subtle factors which contribute to the anxiety or stress of the child(ren). Most children wish for their family to be re-united. Most miss the more constant association with the parent who leaves. Those who are very young when the divorce happens are obviously less affected by a sense of loss, except that they may wonder what they lost, and that can be very disturbing too.

One such example is my son’s divorce, in which his former wife spoke very negatively and said untrue things about him and his behaviors in front of the children. He chose not to tell the children the (extremely damaging) things she had done which had initiated his decision to leave, so the children have felt some bitterness and sense of abandonment towards him. He just bites it, and keeps showing them unconditional love and support, and they seem to adjust with time, but not without pain.

He is a very loving and involved father, perhaps unusually so, and his daughters adore him, but there have been great issues for him to overcome. He is by far the more affectionate, attentive and loving parent, and the children figure that out for themselves, but then tend to wish that he was the primary caregiver. In fact he has taken that role with one of the children when her mother threw her out. Not that he’s too permissive, in fact their mother is very concerned about her own social life, and discipline and concern for their welfare runs a distant second to what’s on her mind.

She will be marrying someone who lives a day’s drive away from their present home and moving two of the children away from their father next month. This has been a great source of pain to dad and the girls.

Also, the two parents have very differing parenting styles, which in some cases have devolved into disputes which haven’t escaped the attention of the children. They have suffered, and these things have definitely affected their personalities and their behavior.

Certainly , many parents are able to put the needs of their children ahead of their own in their after-divorce relationships, and I guess that’s about the best they can do. I don’t think there is an ideal situation where the parents of children are not able to continue a marriage/relationship. But hopefully these challenges can help them to develop good coping skills and make the children better able to deal with other difficult things which inevitably come into their lives.

@eden2eve Thanks for your answer.

To everyone, do you think it would be beneficial to talk to my parents about any of these issues? I could talk to my Dad about my mom’s behavior and vice versa. Would this serve any purpose or should I just continue pursuing the present?

You know your parents best and how receptive they would be to a discussion with you, but I think that almost any information you can get and filter from them about your childhood would further your understanding of yourself. You also might find it helpful to work with a counselor for a time to sort out some coping strategies for your anxiety.

@janbb Thanks. These are good tips and I do have therapy on my to do list. :)

my parents divorced when i was four, so i know personally that it does effect me now. my dreams of living in a nice house with a family and sibblings never came true, but other than missing out on the experiences of a real family, i am not affected by anything now. you might have other problems or things in your life that are causing you stress.

@silverfly

I think that communication is almost always a good thing. But it’s important that the communication be appropriate. If you’re not sure, it might be good to ask someone wise who you really trust, and who knows you and the other people involved.

I’m not sure if it’s best to talk to your mom about your dad and vice versa. Sometimes it might be better to talk to mom about your issues with her and dad about your issues with him. If you do the former, you might cause more contention between your parents, and that is usually not good for the child or anyone concerned. And besides, generally the opposite parent can’t do much about the problem. It would be different if the situation is dangerous to someone, in which case it would be important to bring it out, I believe.

@eden2eve Yeah, I see your point. My thinking was that by talking to Dad about Mom would provide more honest answers. If I ask my Mom how she treated me when I was a kid, she may say, “I was the best parent ever!”. I’m thinking that I’ll probably get pretty straightforward answers. I’m just not sure if it will help much. Ultimately, my parents don’t know how the other raised me when he/she wasn’t around. Confusing stuff since both were generally caring. I’m interested in exploring because it’s all kind of hazy. Some clarity would be a breath of fresh air.

It might be good to strategize a bit and think of some questions that will elicit the information you want without putting them on the defensive. Maybe you could ask each of them about their perceptions of you as a child and how they think the divorce affected you?

My husband was I think 20 when his parents divorced..they were miserable though, and stayed together until the youngest were 18. I think it gave them all skewed perceptions of relationships..they all have issues.

When I was young my sister and I used to hope my parents would get a divorce. Constant fighting. Somehow I have a fairly calm relationship with my husband, I am very happy with him, but my parents were not good role models when it came to temper, control issues, and anger. I got kind of lucky that my first boyfriend was not an angry person at all (although he did cheat and lie) but I learned from him that you don’t have to yell and scream all of the time, and not to get so angry about little things.

I think each of us have dificiencies in our upbringings, whether parents are married or divorced, and as we get older we learn from their mistakes, or we copy them and become them. We can also learn from observing how other people handle situations. If I were to give you any advice, which you were not really asking for, when you see people you admire, admire their outlook on life, or admire how they handle situations, find out how they think. I really believe we can reframe situations in our head.

I believe anxiety has a lot to do with avoidance. I don’t know if this fits into your circumstance. Avoiding a situation, anticipating a bad interaction, avoiding a conversation, or a strong feeling of lack of control. Your anxiety might have something to do with your childhood, but I certainly know plenty of people who have anxiety disorders who have married parents. I think it might be more accurate that your upbringing might have influenced how you handle difficulties, not necessarily blaming the divorce. Are your parents anxious? Did you feel like you had to protect either of your parents? Did you feel your opinion was not listened too? You mention go and bac and forth between households, did you resent it?

I think @janbb suggestion is a great one. Talking to your parents, their insight might really help you. Most divorced parents think a lot about how the divorce is affecting their children. They also, during the conversation, might point out to you an event that happened that concerned them, or something that will cause you to better explore how your personality developed.

My parents divorced when I was 12-years-old, reconciled, and divorced again when I was a young adult. Those intervening years were pure hell. It’s hard to criticize anyone for taking marriage vows seriously and trying to honor a commitment—especially when there are minor children involved—but I spent my teenage years in a state of fear and turmoil. I honestly believe that foster care would have been healthier than living in that household.

Where I once believed a new positive environment could overcome divorce fallout, I now believe there are scars that will always be, some of us have more noticeable than others.

It never occured to me I’d have abandonment issues since my parents divorced when I was less than a year old and it was my mother who left but gave me over to the care of my grandparents who were fantastic. What I’ve discovered through a few crisises is I do have “missing daddy” issues and it made me really upset with myself (I’m not young anymore) because I thought I’d lived enough to overcome any neediness and childhood disappointment stuff.

When I look at my own sister, also a child of divorce between my mother and stepfather, I often wonder how she could have problems since she had such a stable life and two parents only up until her teen years but she feels some things more strongly than I. I suppose it’s a gamble against the odds of not carrying any unwanted baggage and a reminder most of us should cut each other a little more slack when trying to make a go at relationships.

More than the spouses and the effects will not be known for years. There are no winners in divorce, but the kids are always the losers. They are completely vulnerable and powerless in the whole process.

@silverfly Can I ask your age?

Sometimes, when a divorced parent with custody of the children remarries, that can be a much greater stressor on children, than if the parent focussed on the needs of their children until they were old enough that they quasi-independent and less vulnerable to the impact of their parent’s remarriage. I rushed into remarriage in hopes of establishing a loving and supportive two parent family. What a mess that turned out to be. It was a big mistake on my part and it adversely affected my children. If I could have had a do-over, I’d have done things so much differently.

@JLeslie Sure, I’m 27. You gave great advice concerning anxiety. My anxiety is very much centered around avoidance, unreal expectations, and irrational fears. I’m beginning to think that some deep introspective will be the way to go. I need answers.

@silverfly Well, I have a couple of things to say. One, almost everyone I know finds some calm as the get older, barring anything very awful happening God forbid, so I think you can look forward to feeling better in the future. Especially since you are willing to be self analytical and open minded. Also, I think a conversation with your parents (I don’t mean it has to be with them together at the same time) can be practice for communication on topics that are difficult. You have not said anything to indicate either parent is harsh in anyway, so I am going to assume they will be willing participants in your journey to feel better, as long as you do not put them on the defensive. In a way it is like phobia therapy which the common thinking is exposure is very effective. So, if you generally avoid, pushing yourself to do things in little steps, and seeing nothing terrible happens, might help you get over avoiding. Just a thought. I am not a therapist.

I think maybe you put a lot of pressure on yourself to be perfect, do things right, not make a mistake, make the right decision, all basically the same theme, and people like that tend to get paralized, afraid to make the next move. I have some of that, I try to work on it myself.