Children Suffer for the Sins of Their Parents
Tim Jordan, M.D.
Linus: “Your shoes are squeaking, Charlie Brown, because your parent’s haven’t paid
for them yet.”
Charlie Brown: “It’s always the children who suffer for the sins of the parents.”
When it comes to divorce, Charlie Brown is certainly spot on. By the time kids
reach the age of 21 years, 40% will have experienced a divorce. That is a lot of kids. In
a high school classroom of 25 teens, that’s 10 kids. I don’t think we take these statistics
seriously enough; we’re kind of numb to the realities of divorce that kids face everyday.
Divorce affects children negatively in many ways. Longitudinal studies have
pointed out negative risk factors that most adversely affect children’s adjustment to
divorce: parental conflict, children’s sense of guilt, financial hardships, and significant
relocations of one or both parents. Most experts agree that the level and intensity of
parental conflict is the most powerful factor in children’s adjustment after divorce.
The kids I see whose parent’s still argue, fight, and hate each other have the
hardest time moving on emotionally and psychologically. They get stuck and it affects
their ability to freely go about the business of being a kid and growing through
developmental tasks. They worry on the way home everyday after school about what
kind of house they will walk into; i.e. tension, fighting, coldness. The worries can keep
them up at night and make it hard to focus in school.
A recent study showed that 29% of kids in dual-parent households (about 15.5
million kids) had been exposed to intimate partner violence in the previous year and 13%
saw severe partner violence. These children are at high risk for Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder, child abuse, behavioral and mental health problems, substance abuse, and
becoming sexual predators.
Parents who keep involving the court system with financial and custody battles
even years after divorces really stress kids out. They feel they have to choose sides, feel
confused and conflicted, and are often inappropriately pulled into adult issues they have
no business in.
The biggest hurts I deal with is kids who don’t get to see parents very often or at
all after divorce. Ten year old Mary didn’t see her mom for about 4 months last fall.
Her mom was out partying with friends and living out her lost teenage years. What Mary
decided this meant about her was that her mom’s friends were more important than her,
therefore she wasn’t important or lovable. She became depressed and lost her self
confidence.
Fifteen year old Katie saw me because she was having problems setting
boundaries with boys. Her parents divorced when she was four, she saw her dad
sporadically for a while, then he began missing his scheduled times with her. When she
was seven years old, he called her one Thursday, to tell her he’d pick her up Friday at
5:00 p.m. and take her all weekend. Katie was so excited. At 4:30 she was sitting
expectantly out on the curb with her little suitcase. 5:00 came and went, then 5:30 and
then 6:00 p.m. Finally, at 6:30 p.m. she trudged back inside, devastated. What Katie
decided was that she was unlovable; that there must be something wrong with her; that
she wasn’t good enough or pretty enough. Thus, her low deservability put her at risk for
letting boys use her.
The best predictor for whether or not dad will be involved with his children after
divorce? His relationship with their mother. Every divorcing parent I’ve met always
says that their children’s needs are most important, yet many parents don’t act out of that
belief. And they need to. If they can stay friendly, respectful and cooperative with each
other, everything falls into place. They can stay flexible with visitation so both parents
see their kids a lot. They can be at sporting events together, make parenting decisions
together. And thus they can provide the emotional space for kids to work through all the
feelings they have because of the divorce and adjustments.
Better yet, work on the marriage! A 2002 study by sociologist Linda Waite
showed that unhappily married couples who divorced were not happier than unhappily
married couples who stayed together. And 2/3’s of unhappily married spouses who
stayed together reported their marriages were happy five years later.
For the sake of your children, make it work. Go at it 110%. Give kids the home
they deserve.