Implications of divorce

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Contents 1 Emotional implications 2 Financial implications 3 Medical and psychological implications 4 References 5 See also 6 References

[edit] Emotional implications

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Divorce is often one of the most traumatic periods in a person's life. Studies show it is the second-most stressful event in life, after the death of a spouse. Separation and Divorce is often associated with deep grief-based emotions over the loss of the desired-for relationship. Emotions may include sadness, lethargy, depression, anxiety, anger, and other emotions.

The emotional trauma can be exacerbated when the couples chooses an adversarial approach to the legal divorce, which itself adds additional stresses over and beyond the normal grieving. When in the anger-phase of grief, it can be tempting for a spouse to become adversarial, which can easily make things worse.

Mental health therapy can be extremely beneficial during a divorce, in order to address the many expectable emotions.

Non-adversarial methods of dispute resolution, such as mediation and collaborative divorce are less likely to add to the emotional trauma, and are better suited when an ongoing relationship is contemplated, such as for future parenting.

[edit] Financial implications

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Divorce leads to the creation of two households rather than one, with consequent increased costs. All parties suffer these effects. As more women are awarded child custody, many of the roles and difficulties described below may be reversed, although men who are awarded custody have historically been less likely to be awarded child support or alimony.

There are significant societal costs to divorce. By any measure or study, a significant percentage of societal ills are over-represented by individuals who have not been reared by both biological parents. This is true of all juvenile delinquency and the adult prison population, as well as measures of school drop-outs and unemployment. The rate of unmarried teen pregnancy is the highest among young women who have not been living with both biological parents. These facts are often not discussed openly or discussed in professional papers, as it does appear to diminish the valiant and successful efforts of many single parents, whether that has been initiated by divorce or widow(er)hood.

Women often financially suffer as a result of divorce due to lower earning potential in many countries, and to their greater historical role in rearing children, and there may be some relationship between these two factors. They more often obtain exclusive custody of children after the divorce, reducing their ability to pursue high-paying employment. Child support collection can be quite difficult: some fathers feel that they only have an obligation towards their children and not their mother (who may have initiated an unwanted divorce), some may not want to meet their obligation towards their children, and others, while intending to meet their obligation may not be able to fulfill it. Many national and local governments provide some kind of welfare system for divorced mothers and their children.

See also: single parent

Public family support for male headed households, in the absence of a disability, are far less common. It is important to note that divorce is the number one contributor to bankruptcy in the United States.

Men are also often victims of divorce, both financially and in other ways. Court-ordered alimony and child support can be beggaring, often pegged to large percentages of the higher-earning spouse's income. Such obligations can make it impossible for paying spouses to remarry, and if they do remarry, the law often puts the payor's prior obligations before his and his new family's needs. Groups such as Families Need Fathers claim that non-custodial spouses (more often men) are often blocked from access to their children. A novel, Blind Baseball, tells of a caring father whose family is ripped apart when his wife openly engages in adultery and leaves her husband to marry her paramour, knowing full well the courts are biased in her favor and the husband will be made to pay her alimony; her adultery is irrelevant in this case as they live in a State that practices no-fault divorce.

Currently in the United States, federal law makes non-payment of child support a felony, whereas refusal to honor court-ordered visitation decisions is not, and seldom results in any punishment or compulsion to change.

Most states in the US apply a standard of "equitable" division of property, attempting to address the many complexities involved in separating out years of financial sharing. In such states judges have greater power to balance various contributions to the marriage.

Another significant financial implication of divorce is the actual cost of the divorce itself. Attorneys fees are often an extreme hardship, particularly if the spouses choose an adversarial process rather than non-adversarial process, such as mediation or collaborative divorce.^[1]

A prenuptial agreement before marriage may reduce conflict over financial division should a divorce be undertaken later, although they can also lead to litigation over the agreement itself.

[edit] Medical and psychological implications

Recent sociological studies have pointed to a variety of long-term economic, social, physical, and mental health consequences of divorce, although the full extent of such effects remains hotly debated. All the studies to date suffer from an inherent methodological weakness which researchers have not yet found a solution to: establishing the relevant baseline for comparisons. By definition, all divorces are of unhappy couples; meanwhile, those who do not divorce are some mix of happy couples and of unhappy ones who stayed married. Comparisons of life outcomes or well-being along the simple divorced/not divorced axis will therefore always show poorer outcomes for the group which is composed entirely of unhappy couples, demonstrating simply that being part of a happy couple is better than being part of an unhappy one.

Any list of formal sociological articles on aftereffects of divorce would quickly become obsolete, but among the more accessible books are works by Wallerstein^[2] (reports long-term negative effects of divorce on children) and Mavis Hetherington^[3] (reports that not all kids fare so badly, and that divorce can actually help children living in high-conflict homes such as those with domestic violence).

Recent longtitudinal studies have reported that most divorced people are no happier after divorce. University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite analyzed the relationships between marriage, divorce and happiness using the National Survey of Family and Households. She reported that unhappily married adults who had divorced were no happier than those who had stayed married.^[4] Some studies report that cohabitation before marriage is correlated with an increased divorce rate.^[5]

Attempts to assess the impact of divorce on children are inherently compromised by the same methodological problem as with adults: establishing the relevant baseline for comparisons. By definition, virtually all children of divorce are from unhappy families; meanwhile, children whose parents never divorced are from some mix of happy families and unhappy ones (parents who stayed married despite an unhappy marital relationship). Comparisons of life outcomes or well-being along the simple divorced/not divorced axis naturally always show poorer outcomes for the group that is composed entirely of children of unhappy families, demonstrating simply that being the child of happy parents is better than being the child of unhappy ones. The actual question of interest is whether being a child of unhappy parents who divorce is better or worse than being a child of unhappy parents who do not divorce. Establishing data for that comparison would require being able to identify with reasonable certainty the subset of nondivorced parents who are nonetheless deeply unhappy with each other, something no researcher has found a way to do at a meaningful scale.

From work that has been done along the flawed axis described above, it was until recently generally assumed that children's difficulties with divorce, while common, were short-lived. However, recent authors have argued that a major cost to children comes long after: when they attempt to form stable marriages themselves. There is extensive and heated debate over just how much harm, just how many children are harmed to what extent, what factors mediate the harm, and so on. Mavis Hetherington (a University of Virginia professor) reports that 70% of children coming from divorced families consider divorce an adequate answer to marital problems (even if children are present), compared to only 40% of children from non-divorced families.

Children of divorced parents (those entirely from unhappy families) are reported to have a higher chance of behavioral problems than those of non-divorced parents (a mix of happy and unhappy families). Studies have also reported the former to be more likely to suffer abuse than children in intact families, and to have a greater chance of living in poverty.^[6] A 2002 article in Clinical child and Family Psychology Review discusses a variety of health consequences for children of the unhappy couples that do divorce.^[7] Constance Ahron, who has published books suggesting there may be positive effects for children, interviewed ninety-eight divorced families' children for We're Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parents' Divorce.^[8] Since by definition all children of divorced parents had lived in unhappy homes, they unsurprisingly reported numerous unhappy experiences. Numerous subjects said things like "I saw some of the things my parents did and know not to do that in my marriage and see the way they treated each other and know not to do that to my spouse and my children. I know [the divorce] has made me more committed to my husband and my children." Ahron's method of asking adult children of divorce how they feel about it also has the well-known weaknesses of "self-report" studies.

Researchers have reported that in cases of extremely high conflict, divorce can be positive. An article in the Oklahoma Bar Journal defines "high conflict" in terms of ongoing litigation, anger and distress, verbal abuse, physical aggression or threats of physical aggression, difficulty in communicating about and cooperating in child care, or other court-determined factors.^[9] studies have claimed that people who have been in divorced families have higher rates of alcoholism and other substance abuse compared to those who have never been divorced. Robert H. Coombs, Professor of Behavioral Sciences at UCLA, reviewed over 130 studies measuring how marital status affects personal well-being. ^[10]

• have higher rates of clinical depression. Family disruption and low socioeconomic status in early childhood increase the long-term risk for major depression.^[11]
• seek formal psychiatric care at higher rates. Studies vary, suggesting from 5 to 21 times the risk, and vary over whether men or women are more seriously affected.^[12][13]
• in the case of men, are more likely to commit suicide at some point in their lives, according to a study by Augustine Kposowa, a University of California at Riverside sociologist.^[14]

This study quantified earlier work that estimated an increased risk of 2.7 times for men.^[15] (cited in^[16])

• have lower life expectancies overall.^{[17][18][19][20][21][22]}

Studies have also claimed positive correlations between divorce and rates of:

• stroke^[23]
• cancer. Married cancer patients are also more likely to recover than divorced ones.^[24]
• acute infectious diseases, parasitic diseases, respiratory illnesses, digestive illnesses, and severe injuries. See the article Black Men And Divorce: Implications For Culturally Competent Practice.^[25]

In support of these particular claims, that article cites the U.S. Bureau of the Census Population profile of the United States in 1991^[18] and an article by S. L. Albrecht on Reactions and adjustments to divorce.^[26]

• heart problems. Some research suggests that childhood trauma, including parental divorce, can lead to much greater risk of heart attack in later life.^[27]

Combined with job stress, divorce led to a 69% increase of death rate among men with above average risk of heart disease. ^[28] Cites as source^[29]

• rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. A 2002 article in the Journal of Rheumatology shows a 30% increase in risk at any given age.^[30] A 2003 article in the Canadian Journal of Public Health finds that parental divorce leads to increased risk of arthritis for children later in life.^[31]
• sexually transmitted diseases. For example, in Uganda "Results from a baseline survey of HIV-1 infection in the cohort of over 4,000 adults (over 12 years old) showed a twofold increase in risk of infection in divorced or separated persons when compared with those who are married."^[32]

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Divorce

[edit] References

• Amato, Paul R. and Alan Booth. A Generation at Risk: Growing Up in an Era of Family Upheaval. Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-674-29283-9 and ISBN 0-674-00398-5. Reviews and information at [1]
• Gallagher, Maggie. "The Abolition of Marriage." Regnery Publishing, 1996. ISBN 0-89526-464-1.
• Lester, David. "Time-Series Versus Regional Correlates of Rates of Personal Violence." Death Studies 1993: 529-534.
• McLanahan, Sara and Gary Sandefur. Growing Up with a Single Parent; What Hurts, What Helps. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994: 82.
• Morowitz, Harold J. "Hiding in the Hammond Report." Hospital Practice August 1975; 39.
• Office for National Statistics (UK). Mortality Statistics: Childhood, Infant and Perinatal, Review of the Registrar General on Deaths in England and Wales, 2000, Series DH3 33, 2002.
• U.S. Bureau of the Census. Marriage and Divorce. General US survey information. [2]
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Survey of Divorce [3] (link obsolete).