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The Aftermath of Divorce on the Kids

By Megan Butter

blogWhen I was 4, my parents divorced. I don’t have any memories of them, my brother and me together as a family, but I do remember what was my “normal,” which was living with my brother and my mom and seeing my dad on the weekends. 89.4% of children live with primary live with their mother (Bowles III) My parents never talked about their divorce nor did they bad mouth each other in front of my brother and me, in fact they usually only talked about the good times with us. They would come together on Sundays for soccer games, and for holidays and some birthdays, but other than that my parents didn’t speak or see each other. I decided for this blog post to research the affects that divorce has on children, after watching the movie “A.C.O.D. Adult Children of Divorce”, starring Adam West Scott.

The divorce rate in America is 50%, and in many of those failed marriages, children are involved. First I want to take a look at Bowles III’s work because he had an interesting take on how children are affected by their parent’s divorce. For me when I see marriage, I see it as just a piece of paper. If you love somebody and are happy then who cares if you have a certificate saying that you’re mr. and mrs. so and so, that doesn’t matter, what does matter is how you feel about each and a piece of paper doesn’t determine that. Hell I could rip that piece of paper up easily and nothing would change, the feelings are still the same. Bowles III’s research seems to agree with my statement because he says that most children whose parents have divorced are a bit weary towards marriage themselves. Also according to Bowles III, we don’t fear of having successful relationship, we just fear about having successful marriages. We don’t want to follow in our parents’ footsteps. He says that we have gaps in our “relationship template” which is true since the only marriage we would be able to compare our own relationship too, would have been a failure, and who wants that. Children whose parents have divorced can also have trust issues, especially if one of the parents had completely vanished from the picture. I know from my own personal stand point that I have a closer relationship with my mother because she was the primary custodian of me and my brother. As I got older and got into relationships of my own, I noticed that I didn’t  have trust issues my with partner but I wouldn’t take him home and introduce him to the family. The only person to ever meet any one that I dated was my cousin and I feel I did that because I may not have felt secure in those relationships, as Bowles III has pointed out children of divorce parents don’t have a “relationship template.” A lot of the marriages in my family, expect my cousin’s have mainly ended in divorce. Which that could be why I only introduced my boyfriend at the time to my cousin because she has a successful relationship, one that  I can look up too and have an example of, one that I was lacking as child.  Bowles III goes on to say in his research that sons are more likely to resonate their absentee father and daughters are more likely to have “daddy issues.” Speaking from personal life, my brother does hold a grudge against our father for leaving and making promise that he couldn’t keep. I on the other hand did not hold a grudge over my father but I did do things that I knew he wouldn’t like to get a rise out of me. Children in divorced families tend to show more feelings than other kids and are more attached to their primary parent (Bowles III).  Now while all this research may seem daunting, it doesn’t mean that children of divorced parents are any less successful than those who come from intact families.Divorce mainly effects kids in the short term but in the long run they’ll be okay and can/will find someone were there not afraid they will become just another statistic with.

Source:

http://www.mckendree.edu/academics/scholars/issue6/bowles.htm