With two out of every three marriages ending in divorce, parent-child relationships are suffering writes Katherine Bain
Marital conflict and divorce can create serious instability in the family and insecurity in a child. This immense disruption in the home life can create a situation that serves as a dysfunctional learning experience in all aspects of a child’s life.
Poorer parent-child relationships due to divorce and interparental conflict can cause these children have less secure attachments with parents. The happier they perceive their parents’ marriage to be, the more secure they are.
Divorce has also been associated with economic deprivation, which causes a disrupted home life which, in turn, is associated with subsequent diminished academic achievement, low occupational attainment and poverty.
But the main problem associated with divorce is its passing down through the generations. Research has shown that children of divorce are more likely to divorce themselves.
Studies have come to the conclusion that parental divorce is indeed associated with interpersonal and intimacy problems in adulthood. Young adults of both sexes from broken homes experience difficulty in establishing intimate interpersonal relationships.
Links between divorce and lower levels of self-esteem have also been found. This drop in self-esteem has been related to a decline in the quality of the parent-child relationships. The parent-child relationship is particularly vulnerable during the period of divorce as the parents are preoccupation with their own emotions. This parental self-absorption results in a diminished capacity to parent, and parents may also burden their children with requests for emotional support. This diminished parenting style has been linked to emotional and behavioural problems in children.
The immediate problems often found soon after and during marital conflict and divorce, tend to be more pronounced in boys, while girls tend to exhibit problems later in life.
The deterioration of parent-child relationships is a consequence of marital conflict and divorce. The fact that these relationships play an important role in the healthy development of children implies that disturbances in this parental bonding will have an impact on the development of problems later in life.
For more information please contact Katherine or Natascha at the Depression and Anxiety Support Group on (011) 783-1474/6 or (011) 884 -1797
– The Teacher/M&G Media, Johannesburg, September 2001.