Divorce Impacts a Child Emotionally, Mentally and Academically Essays

Divorce Impacts a Child Emotionally, Mentally and Academically Over 60 percent of couples seeking a divorce have children still living at home. ( 6) What some parents don’t realize when they file for a divorce is the great impact that it will have on their kids. Divorce affects children in many ways. It affects kids emotionally and causes them to experience feelings such as fear, loss, anger and confusion. Divorce also hurts a child’s academic achievement. Children whose parents divorce generally have poorer scores on tests and a higher dropout rate. (3) Children react differently yet similarly in divorce. Every child caught up in the distress of divorce has a hard time coping with it and imagining their life without a parent. Their anxiety levels peak as they feel they are going to be abandoned. They experience feelings of loneliness due to the loss of the other parent. Different children go through these emotions at different levels and at different times depending on the child’s age. How bad or how well children handle the divorce depends on how the situation is handled. It can throw the child's entire life into a whirlwind. Young children, up to age five or six, are the most confused and the most disoriented by their parents’ separation. They often fear they are going to be abandoned by their parents, which causes great anxiety. The loss of a parent is extremely sad to a child of this age because they feel that their needs are not going to be attended to as well as they had before, when their needs are not going to be attended to as well as they had before, when their family was together. Many of the children in this group are worried that they will be left without a family or their parents might have money troubles and they will be deprived of food and toys. These thoughts that children of this age have cause them to have feelings of guilt, being unloved and fear of being alone. Some children will be extremely sad and show signs of depression and even sleeplessness. They might feel rejected by the parent who left and think that it is all their fault, that they weren’t good children and th eir parents stopped loving them. They also sometimes have increased tantrums, or may cry more easily than usual. Children at this age may develop physical complaints, like headaches, or stomachaches due to this depressing situation and time they are going thr... ...ng up in a single-parent home (usually female-headed) is seven times as likely to be a delinquent. The rate of violent crime and burglary is related to the number of single parent households with children aged twelve to twenty. (1)In a new study of 72 adolescent murders and 35 adolescent thieves, researches for Michigan State University demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of teenage criminals live with only one parent. Fully 75 percent of those charged with homicide had parents who were either divorced or had never been married at all.( 5) So, in conclusion, divorce is very bad for children. It ruins their lives and happiness. Losing a parent destroys a child emotionally, mentally and even academically. They would rather live with both parents because both of them are an important part of their lives. Two parents are better than one! Bibliography: 1) http://www.alfra.org/risks2.htm 2) http://www.canadianparents.com/articles/feature08b.htm 3) http://www.divorcereform.org/crime.html 4) http://www.ksu.edu/psych/bartel/adolescence/divorce-yes.html 5) http://www.theallengroup.com/members/Fr_flammer.html 6) http://www.womentodaymagazine.com/family/kidsdivorce.html