Zacharias 1
Richie Zacharias
Professor Mouton
English 106
March 29, 2018
The Effects of Divorce on Children
When I was given this assignment, I knew I wanted to explore the effects of divorce on
children. Since my parents are divorced, I thought that this would be an interesting topic for me
to explore because I wanted to see what the effects of divorce are that research has shown and to
compare them with the effects that are present in my life. Another reason why I wanted to
explore this topic is because I wanted to know if the age of the child influences what kind of
effects that the child may experience while their parents go through the process of divorce.
As I began to research the effects of divorce on children, I came across an interesting
webpage on frc.org that was dedicated to divorce and the effects it has on parents and children.
This page states that “Divorce permanently weakens the family and the relationship between
children and parents. It frequently leads to destructive conflict management methods, diminished
social competence and for children, the early loss of virginity, as well as diminished sense of
masculinity or femininity for young adults” (Fanagan, 1). I felt a connection with this quote and
my own life because the divorce of my parents changed my life in drastic ways and weakened
my family’s relationship as a whole.
As I continued to read through the page, it broke up the ages of children into two groups;
young children and adolescents. During divorce, young children often become more reliant on
their parents and stop performing simple tasks that they used to do before the divorce. However,
Zacharias 2
adolescents often want to become more independent and try to do more things on their own
because they want to avoid the problem instead of accepting it.
After I read about how age affects how the child reacts when his or her parents are
divorced, I decided to take things a step further and look a little deeper into how the age matters
and why it does. This idea lead me to research how the age of the child plays a key role in the
effects that the child feels. The search led me to an article on extensionpublications.unl.edu about
the impact that divorce has on adolescents.
This article expresses how divorce requires adolescents and young children to become
independent even if they are not ready. “In many cases, divorce requires children, especially
adolescents, to assume independence and adult responsibilities” (Cruickshank, 1). As I continued
to read, the article states that a divorce either makes the child more independent or more
dependent on their parents. As I read this, I noticed the similarities between the two articles and
how the age of the child during a divorce does affect how the child is affected.
Every child that has gone through their parents being divorce has been affected in some
way. Young children tend to blame themselves for the divorce, and ask questions about the
future. As a result, they ans...
