2.3. Predictors of a child’s post-divorce adjustment
Most children initially experience parental divorce as stressful and display disruptions in emotional, social and cognitive developments, but why some children continue to manifest divorce-related difficulties or develop behavioural or social problems long after the marital separation is mostly unexplained (Hetherington et al. 1985).
Kalter et al. (1989) presented six hypotheses to explain the ways how divorce may affect a child’s development (Table 1). In statistical analyses the parental adjustment hypothesis received the strongest support. When the custodial parent is psychologically able to provide a loving effective parent-child relationship, children will be buffered from stresses the divorce can engender. If the custodial parent is deeply distressed by economic hardship, interparental hostility, and the role of being a single-parent without help and support, the child may be negatively affected (Kalter et al. 1989).
Table 1. Hypotheses explaining long-term effects of parental divorce on child development (Kalter et al. 1989).
Hypothesis | Explanation |
|---|---|
Father absence | - the child needs a regular, ongoing, positive relationship with the father in order to develop into a well-adjusted person |
Economic distress | - poverty accounts for various troubles of children of divorced single-mother families |
Multiple life stresses | - an accumulation of multiple stressful circumstances (for example residential shifts, loss of job, remarriage) can cause adjustment problems |
Interparental hostility | - parents who fight and blame each other stimulate anxiety and anger in their children, so that they may later copy aggression as a way of resolving problems |
Parental adjustment | - a well-adjusted parent can continue to provide effective care, guidance and support for his/her children. The continuity of effective parenting is seen as facilitating a child’s development into a healthy adult. |
Short-term crisis | - turmoil of the initial marital disruption gradually diminishes, and a new equilibrium is achieved eventually. |
Recently, Hetherington and her colleagues ended up in their review (1998) proposing five theoretical perspectives (i.e. individual vulnerability and risk; family composition; stress, including socioeconomic disadvantage; parental distress; and disrupted family process), which parallel the hypotheses of Kalter et al. (1989), to explain the links between divorce and a child’s adjustment. They concluded that a transactional model of risks associated with marital transactions is most appropriate (Figure 2). For example, maternal depression does not necessarily have a direct effect on a child’s adjustment, but instead the influence is mediated through family processes (i.e. mother’s diminished ability to effective parenting). And yet, some variables moderate the relationship between other variables. Children with difficult temperaments (i.e. unresponsible, socially and psychologically immature) are expected to be more adversely effected by disruption in family life than children with easy temperaments. Thus, individual variables such as temperament can moderate the effects of the family process on a child’s adjustment and well-being (Hetherington et al. 1998).
Figure 2. A transactional model of the predictors of the children’s adjustment following divorce and remarriage (Hetherington et al. 1998).
It has been hypothesised that children whose parents later got divorced exhibited poorer adjustment even before the parental break-up (Block et al. 1986). Further, temperamentally difficult children might contribute to the risk of parental divorce and might also manifest psychological problems independently of the family background. This hypothesis received support from a follow-up study in which it was shown that particularly boys whose parents eventually got divorced, were more aggressive and exhibited problems with control of impulses years before the divorce. Moreover, they were seen as emotionally unstable, stubborn and restless (Block et al. 1986). This finding was replicated later in a large longitudinal study in the United Kingdom and the United States (Cherlin et al. 1991). The researchers concluded that much of the effect of parental divorce on children can be predicted by conditions (such as family difficulties, achievement levels, and behavioural problems of a child) that existed well before the break-up occurred.