Children – The Real Victims of Divorce

Yes, children are harmed by divorce:

It might be unpalatable to say it today, but divorce is certainly not in the best interests of children – at least in the great majority of cases. With divorce now seen basically as a universal human right that can never be questioned, and with the emphasis in the West on MY personal happiness and fulfilment, thoughts and considerations about how adult choices might negatively impact children are not put high on the list.

But for decades now the social science evidence on all this has been overwhelming: most children suffer, and suffer greatly, because of parental divorce. The facts and data are there for those open to letting the evidence speak. Indeed, for well over a half century now we have had a mountain of research on this.

Some of the earliest articles I penned were on issues surrounding marriage, divorce and the well-being of children. Consider just three such pieces. In early 1993 I reviewed a book looking in some detail at how children are impacted by their parents’ divorce. The book was Economic Consequences of Divorce: The International Perspective, edited by Lenore J. Weitzman and Mavis Maclean (Oxford University Press, 1992). I began my article this way:

In this volume 26 authors examine the social and economic consequences of divorce in a number of Western nations and in some Third World countries. Despite the differences which exist between these countries, the results of the studies undertaken show striking uniformity.

 

“Our collective research suggests that no society can continue to see divorce as a private matter between individual husbands and wives, or between individual parents and children. Instead, we must ask about its impact on the larger society and on the public purse. Indeed, we must ask about the costs of divorce for the society as a whole – and how those tremendous costs can be borne without destroying the fabric of either the family or the society.” https://billmuehlenberg.com/1993/02/01/a-review-of-economic-consequences-of-divorce-the-international-perspective-edited-by-lenore-j-weitzman-and-mavis-maclean/

In a 1994 article on “The Divorce Revolution” I quoted various experts on this. I said in part:

By the mid-1980s most Western countries had radically liberalised their divorce laws. In his Road to Divorce, the historian Lawrence Stone describes this transformation of Western societies from “largely non-separating and non-divorcing” ones to “separating and divorcing” ones as “perhaps the most profound and far-reaching social change to have occurred in the last five hundred years.” Consider the numbers. In the United States in 1960, there were thirty-five divorced persons for every 1,000 married persons. In 1990 there were 140 — a 400 percent increase in thirty years….

 

As Barbara Whitehead puts it, these numbers reflect two processes. The first is deinstitutionalization: the erosion of marriage as a social institution embodying widely shared moral values. The second is dejuridification: the shrinking of the legal regulation of marriage. “Together,” says Whitehead, “these processes have transformed marriage from a binding social commitment to an essentially private, freely terminable lifestyle option. In essence, divorce has become a “right” — less a judicial issue than an administrative procedure.” https://billmuehlenberg.com/1994/03/03/the-divorce-revolution/

And in 2000 I reviewed another book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Judith Wallerstein (Hyperion, 2000). My piece started this way:

This book will not make feminists and libertines happy, but it may result in happier children. Judith Wallerstein has been tracking children of divorce for over 25 years now, and she doesn’t like what she sees. Nor should we. Despite all the rhetoric and denial by the feminists and the detractors of marriage, divorce hurts children, and it hurts them even when they have long ago ceased being children.

 

Judith Wallerstein, from the University of California in Berkeley, first wrote of the effects on children of divorce in her 1980 Surviving the Breakup. Then in 1989 she authored Second Chances. In that book she documented how children still suffer, ten to fifteen years after parental divorce. In this book she covers a full 25 years of the children’s lives. Now, as adults, the harmful effects of divorce are still clearly discernible. Indeed, “the whole trajectory of an individual’s life is profoundly altered by the divorce experience”. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2000/09/15/a-review-of-the-unexpected-legacy-of-divorce-by-judith-wallerstein/

‘Yeah well, those are old studies,’ critics might complain. But these studies certainly did not stop appearing 25 years ago. There have been many hundreds of other studies on this topic, and one of the most recent studies – one that came out just this month – tells us more of the same. And this was no mere small sample-size research project. It involved over 5 million children!

I refer to the 68-page report, “Divorce, Family Arrangements, and Children’s Adult Outcomes” by Andrew C. Johnston, Maggie R. Jones & Nolan G. Pope. Josh Wood, the Executive Director of the pro-child group Them Before Us offers this brief overview:

Sobering and heartbreaking massive new study on the effect of divorce on children:

After divorce, kids face:

– 60% higher risk of teen pregnancy

– 40% higher risk of jail time

– 45% higher risk of early death

– 9–13% lower adult wages

– Lower chances of going to college

All compared to the kids whose parents stayed married.

Some will say “an unhappy household is worse than divorce” but this study found zero evidence that divorce helps kids.

In fact, the younger a child is at divorce, the worse the outcomes.

Post-divorce life is the real damage.

What causes this damage?

Not just the divorce but the chain reaction that comes after:

• Income drops
• Parents live apart
• Kids move to worse neighborhoods
• Stepparents enter
• Stability shatters

These aren’t minor shifts.

They blow up a child’s entire world.

The research presented in this report is quite significant. The Abstract of the study says this:

Nearly a third of American children experience parental divorce before adulthood. To understand its consequences, we use linked tax and Census records for over 5 million children to examine how divorce affects family arrangements and children’s long-term outcomes. Following divorce, parents move apart, household income falls, parents work longer hours, families move more frequently, and households relocate to poorer neighborhoods with less economic opportunity. This bundle of changes in family circumstances suggests multiple channels through which divorce may affect children’s development and outcomes. In the years following divorce, we observe sharp increases in teen births and child mortality. To examine long-run effects on children, we compare siblings with different lengths of exposure to the same divorce. We find that parental divorce reduces children’s adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births. Changes in household income, neighborhood quality, and parent proximity account for 25 to 60 percent of these divorce effects.

And in the conclusion to the report, three main findings are listed. Here is just one of them:

Second, we show how divorce affects a range of child outcomes. We find that teen births and child mortality increase following divorce and remain elevated throughout the observation window, suggesting that divorce represents a turning point in the trajectory of children’s outcomes. When estimating long-run effects, we find that early childhood divorce reduces adult earnings by 9 to 13 percent, similar to the effect of obtaining one less year of education or moving to a one-standard-deviation lower quality neighborhood for all of childhood. Our results indicate that approximately 15 percent of the cross-sectional gap between the children of unmarried and always-married parents is attributable to the causal pathway of family structure. Experiencing a divorce at an early age increases children’s risk of teen birth by roughly 60 percent, while also elevating risks of incarceration and mortality by approximately 40 and 45 percent, respectively.

You can read the study here: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w33776/w33776.pdf

In the light of this growing stockpile of social science research, one would think we would take more seriously the wellbeing of children. Certainly governments should in terms of law, legislation and public policy. How children are impacted by political and legislative decisions should be a paramount consideration.

We already do this in other areas. For decades now we have had things like environmental impact statements which examine proposed bills and laws in terms of how the environment will be affected. We desperately need family impact statements, or children impact statements.

But as I say, we live in a culture today that really undervalues children, their needs, and their well-being. We have concentrated solely on adult whims and desires, no matter how much that might mean loss and harm to children. A society focused on SELF at the expense of the next generation is quickly on the way to dying out.

To say these sorts of things will of course get some folks hopping mad. But let the facts and data speak here. The evidence should determine how we approach these matters, not our feelings. And I am not saying there is never a reason for divorce, but clearly we have made it far too easy, and we have left out the most vulnerable ones in the equation: the children.

Moreover, I am not saying that every child who has experienced parental divorce will turn out to be a serial killer, nor suffer all the negative outcomes documented by the research. But a very large majority of children DO suffer in various ways. The simple truth is this: where possible, the best thing we can do for a child is have them raised by their own mother and father, preferably cemented by marriage. These truths have also been detailed in thousands of studies now. See just these two pieces for starters:

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2013/05/17/the-facts-on-fatherlessness-part-one/

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2009/05/05/the-importance-of-motherhood/

I mentioned above the American group Them Before Us founded by Katy Faust. Here is how they describe themselves:

We Strive to Make A Difference

 

Our Mission

Them Before Us is a global movement defending children’s right to their mother and father.

 

Our Vision

Them Before Us strives to put children before adults in every conversation about marriage and family. We seek to prioritize the rights of children in the culture and courtroom, the personal and the public.

 

Our Goals

1. Educate the public on a child-centric perspective of marriage and family.

2. Represent the rights of children on policy matters.

3. Translate core TBU messages into every language. https://thembeforeus.com/whoweare/

They are a group well-worth supporting. That is because children are well worth supporting. The research on the well-being of children and the impact of parental divorce has been loud and clear for decades now. It is time we started listening to it.

It is time we started putting children first.

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