The Effect of Growing Up with Divorced Parents on Children

A child's life can be destroyed just because of certain decisions that parents take. When I was 12 years old, I used to spend a lot of time with my best friend, Daniel. Daniel was always happy and enjoyed very moment of his life. One day, he came over to my house extremely sad and he did not want to tell me what was going on. A week later, he told me that he was moving to a new house, however, he did not seem excited about it. Daniel was devasted and was being different. Then, after asking tons of questions, he told me that his parents were getting divorced. Daniel developed new behaviors, became very aggressive and did not care about his life anymore especially with his school life. He hated the world and disliked everything. It is clear that the divorce of Daniel’s parents was the hardest moment of his life and was very new for him. 

Some parents may think that getting a divorce is the best idea to keep their immediate family happy and healthy, however, they do not realize that they are ruining their children’s future and losing their first-degree relatives’s happiness forever. Those parents should find a way to fix their issues while they are still together in the same household in order to avoid a divorce. As a result, if the parents make the decision to divorce, it is going to harm their children in many different ways as Marta J. Papa, a divorce attorney, and mediator claims in her podcast on “Latest Research on the Impact of Divorce on Children.” My own view is that divorce is detrimental to most children and it is so harmful. Therefore, if some parents do not take into consideration the crucial impact of their divorce on their young children, these young children will be more likely to have a different way to perceive the world and the marriage than intact children. Also, their parent’s divorce would give them a hard time in their quotidian life while growing up. On the other hand, if the parents confirm to keep on their decision in order to get a divorce, these parents should have a deep conversation with their young children. This can be the best remedy, and it will be helpful for the kids. 

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the divorce rate had considerably increased and was very high in the United States. This is due to many reasons. For example, the feminist revolution motivates most wives who were not satisfied with their marriage to leave their unhappy households in order to find a better life. So, most of the time women were more likely to take the resolution to divorce. By the 1970s, many Americans replaced the institutional model of married life that prioritized the welfare of children to the soul-mate model of married life. This gives advantages to the emotional welfare of adults and permits them to divorce for any reason. As a result, most adults were determined to find their soul mate, instead of having a homemaker or a breadwinner. 

Moreover, choosing to get a divorce in the United States can be fairly simple. Consequently, the way people perceive marriage is slightly different, as well as the culture, compared to other countries. On the opposite side, getting divorced in the Democratic Republic of Congo, my hometown, is not very common because the marriage is not only the union of the bride and the groom, but also the union of their family. 

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, if a couple would like to get a divorce, they should inform their family about it. The divorce process takes a long time because both families must discuss it and find a way to fix the couple's marriage. However, if the couple does not change their decision of getting divorced, the bride’s family would have to refund the dowry money that they received from the groom’s family during the wedding. It is evident that the divorce rate in the Congo is low compared to the one in the United States. Furthermore, marriage in the United States does not always involve both families. It seems like Americans tend to have a desire for freedom. In the United States, it can be simple to get divorced. Tamara Afifi, a Professor in the Department of Communication at UCSB, explains in her Ted Talks on “The impact of divorce on children” that people are getting divorced today for personal happiness. Based on this perspective, some couples decide to divorce in order to a better husband or wife for their own happiness even though they have some children. It is very sad to see how some people still think about their joy first instead of their children. Consequently, parents should be aware of the consequences of their acts while deciding to get a divorce. 

Claire Cain Miller, a correspondent for The Times, declared in her article that the divorce rate has not increased for the past 30 years. Miller proved that 50 percent of marriages do not end in divorce, however, the divorce rate was high in the 1970s and 1980s in America. Since then it has been going down. Miller stated different reasons for the divorce to decline over the last decades. These reasons are women’s financial independence, birth control, more educated people with college degrees, get married later, sharing incomes, etc. 

Furthermore, based on all this history, it appears that some adults tend to think more about themselves. It comes to be questionable whether they really think about their children or not. The young children must have been affected to see their parents fighting and no longer live together.