The impact of parental divorce on adolescents.

Abstract

This study examines the long and short term effects of parental separation and divorce on several indicators of adolescent adjustment, using data from a longitudinal survey of 1208 high school students in the Boston metropolitan area. Results show that parental marital disruption is weakly associated with emotional problems, and is strongly associated with behavioral problems and poor school performance. Differences in adjustment by the recency of the divorce are observed, as separation within the past year is strongly predictive of emotional problems, and separation or divorce prior to the past year is associated with problems of undercontrol and poor school performance. Consistent with gender differences in socialization, sex-specific patterns to the expression of distress following parental divorce are observed. Girls are more apt to experience emotional problems following recent divorce, while boys are more apt to experience behavioral problems in response to earlier divorce. Class differences in divorce effects are also observed, as youths from higher socioeconomic contexts are more emotionally troubled by recent divorce, and youths from lower socioeconomic contexts exhibit poorer behavioral adjustment to earlier divorce. Several hypothesized mechanisms of divorce effects are examined, including the explanatory role of prior standard of living and degree of interparental conflict, and the mediating influence post-divorce parent-child relations, friend relations, parental monitoring, negative life changes, and remarriage. The failure of these explanatory and mediating factors to account for the emotional effects of recent divorce suggest further research on the content of children's short term separation responses. Analyses of the long term consequences of divorce show that parental remarriage is generally beneficial, although youths in higher socioeconomic contexts exhibit better emotional functioning in single-parent families. Post-divorce life circumstances completely account for the effects of distant divorce on emotional problems, and substantially reduce differences in behavioral problems and school performance. This is due primarily to the mediating influence of negative life changes involving self and family. The preponderance of negative events among children of divorce is tied to disruptions in the home environment, which interfere with children's socialization.