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From One Child to the Next
Stay together for the children-a quite common phrase referring to a somewhat old- fashioned option for an unhealthy, failing, or dysfunctional marriage. In the past four and a half decades, divorce rates have more than tripled due to the questioning of whether or not this option of staying together is actually beneficial and not harmful to the children. Through many studies, researchers have found that divorce often impacts children emotionally, academically, and psychologically and in some cases, children not at all. Several factors can key into the individual and varying manners in which children react to divorcing parents-the age of the child at the time of the divorce, the gender of the child being affected by the divorce, and the emotional and financial stability of the parents post divorce.
The age of a child plays a huge role in their reactions to a divorce. Generally, the younger the child, the more limited the "?cognitive ability to understand the divorce?" is (Richardson and Rosen 21). If a divorce occurs while the child is still an infant, researchers believe that the child is least affected. The emotional state or status of the child is directly related to the "primary caregivers' emotional status and adjustment" in reaction to the divorce (21). Once a child reaches six or seven years old, an age where social interaction aside from the immediate family occurs regularly, the effects of divorce on the child are often amplified. Common reactions in the social and developmental aspects of children this age include "depression, withdrawal, grieving, fear, fantasies of responsibility for the break-up and of possible reconciliation, ...