Children and Divorce
Judith S. Wallerstein PhD1
1 The School of Social Welfare, University of California at Berkeley
Children and adolescents experience severe stresses during the process of parental divorce. As a consequence, the pediatrician can expect to be called upon frequently to provide information and counsel to the divorcing parents, to the children, or to other family members directly, as well as to the physicians in other branches of medicine and concerned members of related disciplines whose professional work brings them into significant contact with these troubled families.
INCIDENCE
The number of children and adolescents who are caught in the process of marital dissolution has soared to more than 1 million new children each year since 1972. It has been estimated that between 32% and 46% of all children who grow up in the 1970s will experience either the separation or divorce of their parents.
Although research about the effects of divorce on children and adolescents is limited, some of the findings are worrisome. Our five-year study of the effects of divorce on a group of 131 California children and adolescents found a significant number at risk during the postdivorce years. Five years after the marital separation, 37% of these youngsters, who were drawn from a normal population, were considered to be suffering with various manifestations of moderate to severe depression, including learning below capacity in school, difficulties with peers, sexual acting out, minor delinquency, explosive anger, continued preoccupation with the divorce, and a general pervasive neediness.
