Parental separation and divorce are common features of contemporary society. In the past, divorce was seen as wrong, even though it was legal. Those who divorced were looked at negatively.
While divorce is no longer a stigma in today’s society, the experience of parental separation or divorce is nevertheless significant. For younger children, it evoked strong feelings, tears and profound sadness.
In many cases, mainly where there have been high levels of conflict between spouses, divorce brings relief from the stress of the toxic environment at home.
However, divorce does damage children, especially where the parents had relatively low levels of conflict. Now, research findings show that conflict between divorced parents can lead to mental health problems in children.
They experience fear of being abandoned when their divorced or separated parents engage in conflict. Worrying about being abandoned predicted future mental health problems in children.
According to a new study from the Arizona State University Research and Education Advancing Children’s Health (REACH) Institute, marital breakup increases the risk of children developing physical and mental health problems.
To understand how children with divorced or separated parents interpreted the conflict between parents, the researchers surveyed families participating in the post-divorce programme between 2012 and 2015, asking 559 children aged 9 to 18 years about their exposure to conflict. Parents and teachers were also interviewed.
The questions included topics like whether their parents fought in front of them, spoke poorly of the other parent or asked children to carry messages. They also answered questions on how frequent and intense the conflict between their parents were.
They found that exposure to conflict predicted children’s fear that they would be abandoned by one or both parents. The link between parental conflict and fear of abandonment was evident regardless of a child’s age, though it was more prevalent among younger ones. The findings published in the journal Child Development said exposure to parental conflict predicted fear of abandonment three months later.
Worrying about abandonment predicted mental health problems, as reported by the children themselves and their teachers, 10 months later. Also, having a good relationship with their parent didn’t protect kids from fearing abandonment in the face of high conflict.
Similarly, children who reported higher fear of abandonment was more likely to report more mental health problems 11 months later,” based on interviews with both the kids and their teachers. These problems included bottled-up feelings of distress and/or general feelings of anxiety or fear. It was not clear how long psychological ramifications might endure since the assessment lasted for 11 months. Dr Jibril Abdulmalik, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, said children often blame themselves for parental conflicts, that they had done something wrong and then they are unsure of what to do or how react and this ends up affecting their self-esteem. He added that due to worries about what will happen if the crisis results in divorce, who will look after them, how will they function, if their education would be sustained as well as their financial upkeep, many of them go through anxiety.
They may become depressed or even start to experiment with the drug, along with increased delinquent and aggressive behaviour. Dr Abdulmalik declared: “adverse childhood experiences, including child abuse, violence in the home, death of a parent, or divorce or separation of a parent, are traumatic events to the young child that may affect them even subsequently in their adult life. So, the effects are not just immediate, they are also long term.”
Besides, he said: “The more adverse childhood experiences a child is exposed to, the higher the chances that the child may develop a mental health problem as he grows older.”
Moreover, Dr Funmi Salami, a paediatrician and special advisor to Governor Seyi Makinde on health, said “parents tend to forget that children are not adults, they feel that the way they can handle emotional conflicts and trauma is the same way a child can handle such.” According to her, “as a parent, you may feel that by abusing the other spouse, you are actually making a child like you more, but by actually degrading that other spouse, you are actually degrading that child because the child’s feeling is affected. “Just those few years of their formative stage is probably going to be what will determine the rest of their lives. So if we let them grow up in an environment of hate and toxicity, it is going to affect the rest of their lives.” Lead author Karey O’Hara, an assistant research Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University in Tempe said: “But it is already clear that simply being a good parent didn’t appear to protect kids from the impact of exposure to parental conflict.
“This was the most surprising finding for us. Good parenting is a very strong and powerful protective factor for all children, especially after a separation or divorce. But based on prior research, we know that the effect of good parenting is complicated in separated/divorced families.”
Howbeit, some researchers suggest that the significant differences between children of divorced and non-divorced parents are not the result of separation or divorce per se, but a consequence of the reduced social support from parents and the children’s perception of the destructiveness of inter-parental conflict.
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