Children's adjustment to parental divorce - a review
- Author:
Hsien-Jin Teoh
- Publication Type:Journal Article
- MeSH:
Human;
Male;
Female;
Child;
SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT;
LIFE CHANGE EVENTS;
DIVORCE;
CHILD
- From:
The Philippine Journal of Psychiatry
2003;28(2):16-23
- CountryPhilippines
- Language:English
-
Abstract:
Objective:
This review examines children's adjustment to marital crisis from behavioral and emotional perspective so as to identify coping behavior and to show negative impact that marital conflict has on children.
Methods:
This review examines the evidence that parental divorce affects children's mental health. It begins by reviewing: 1) the different definitions of children's mental health that are used in the divorce literature; 2) the divorce rate in the general population; 3) surveys of the number of children of divorced parents seeking psychiatric help; and 4) the effects of divorce on children's mental health. The duration of the child's maladjustment to the divorce as compared to the degree of maladjustment of children from non-divorced parents is also described.
Results:
There were 34 American, 13 Australian, 2 Canadian and 3 research articles from the United Kingdom cited in this study. Defining children's adjustment requires collecting data from multiple sources - children, parents and teachers. Increasingly a number of studies indicate that family structure may not the be the most reliable predictor of children's adjustment. Not all studies have found that parental divorce predicts children's general adjustment, instead it would appear that the presence of on-going inter-parent conflict may be the active factor that is causing stress to the children.
Conclusion:
The experience of parental divorce or separation affects the child's adjustment. Even though children of divorced parents have been found to have more adjustment problems compared to children of non-divorced parents, these differences are not large. Inter-parental conflict has been identified as a stronger predictor of children's adjustment as compared to the parental divorced per se. The review ends with conclusions on the findings along with recommendations on what needs further research.
