--Original published at Kirsten's Kreations
For my spotlight post I chose to do option #1, how divorce affects children. Going into the research I believed that divorce affects children in a bad way. However, after doing some reading on the articles I have found, I am beginning to believe divorce may be more beneficial for the children than bad. Out of the four articles I have found, only one gives solid argument how divorce is bad for children, one article discusses how there are bad outcomes for the children but how they don’t last long or turn into the good, while the other two give all benefits the children get after going though divorce.
“The Impact of Divorce on Young Children and Adolescents”
This article is the best article to give a negative review on the affect of divorce on children. Throughout the article, the author discusses the impact on children at two different stages of life: childhood and adolescence. Children who deal with divorce during childhood and adolescence have very different reactions. When a child has parents who divorce while they are a still going through childhood they can continuously fantasize their parents getting back together which can make their emotions unstable, especially when parents try to do joint family events because that will increase their hope of the family being reunited but the fact they have to travel between parents rocks that hope making them angry. During the childhood stage, children are dependent on their parents but when the parents are divorced their trust in their parents shakes making them have a tendency to lose that dependence. During the adolescence stage the child has a tendency to become more aggressive towards their parents. This makes them become more independent so they don’t have to rely on the parents because they now see their parents as failing to be able to keep commitments to the family. The adolescents are also aggressive towards their parents because they want to get back at their parents for tearing the family apart.
“Divorce Doesn’t Harm Children-Parent’s Fighting Harm Children”
This article is the most interesting of them all. In this article the authors say divorce itself doesn’t affect children. The parent’s attitude surrounding divorce is what affects children. When parent’s fight, there is a relief in the child when the parents get divorce. The more the parents fight the more the child will get angry and resent them being together but when those parents divorce the child is relieved they don’t have to deal with the fighting. On the other hand, children who have parents that rarely or never fights in front of them can cause them to resent their parents for blindsiding them or for tearing the family apart. The affects the child have from divorce do not stem from divorce itself but rather the way the parents act in front the children leading up to the divorce making divorce not harmful to the children.
These two articles are reliable because they’re from Psychology Today. Psychology Today is a credible source due to it has articles and blogs written by psychologists themselves rather than people without a psychology background. For the second article, they refer back to “The Truth About Children and Divorce”, which was written by Dr. Robert Emery who is also a credible source because he is a psychology professor. The first article based their information from a novel the author, a psychologist from Texas wrote.
“Is Divorce Bad for Children?”
This article is one that gives both good and bad thoughts about how divorce affects children. In this article the author discusses how most of the bad affects people talk about are usually only short-term and is rarely a long-term outcome. A psychologist at the University of Virginia found that children have anxiety, anger, and disbelief as short-term negative affects which typically disappear by the second year. A study in the article showed children from divorced parents show little to no differences than children from intact families. This article shows more how children from divorced parents who fought a lot adjusted better to the divorce than those who’s parents rarely fought in front of them. This article mainly emphasized there are some negative outcomes but are short and the children are mostly affected by how much their parents fought.
This article is credible because it is from the Scientific American which is a website, similar to a newspaper, that is dedicated to having scientific articles weather about actual science or psychological science. This article uses many facts from studies done by other psychologists as evidence in the article.
“Divorce and Kids: 5 ways Divorce Benefits Kids”
This article not only lists five reasons why divorce helps the kids but they also discuss why those reasons help. The reasons are individually different but they all revolve around how the attitude of the parents and the fighting between the parents affects the children. The happier the parents are going through the divorce the better the children are going though it. This article mainly shows how the children are the product of the environment their parents create for them.
This is a credible source because it is written by someone who works for the Huffington Post which is a news paper similar to the New York Times. The article itself is credible because it is written by a doctor who studies the topic of divorce on children.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/surviving-your-childs-adolescence/201112/the-impact-divorce-young-children-and-adolescents
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/contemplating-divorce/200911/divorce-doesnt-harm-children-parents-fighting-harms-child
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for-children/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/divorce-and-kids-5-ways-d_n_1519485.html