‘How divorce damages children’

Children who have experienced divorce tend to exhibit behavioural and emotional problems that did not fade with time, an award-winning professor on family sociology said.

Paul Amato said they also faced symptoms of depression, lower academic achievements, issues with social relationships and weaker ties with parents, particularly fathers.

It was not true that they eventually adjusted, insisted Prof. Amato, adding that the differences between children of continuously married and divorced parents did not disappear gradually.

Statistics consistently showed they were more likely to drop out of school, ending up with lower-status jobs and incomes, more births outside marriage, the risk of poor health and suicide, and more instability in their own marriages, leading to repeated divorces.

Their standard of living inevitably declined, particularly because the economies of scale were lost, Prof. Amato, who has published over 100 journal articles and five books, explained.

He was addressing the Doha Colloquium on Strengthening Marriage and Supporting Families at the President’s Palace in Valletta, focusing on Children And Divorce: Similarities And Differences Between The US And Europe.

Prof. Amato spent six months researching the subject and has concluded, from referring to numerous European studies, that the effects of divorce on children are strikingly comparable in the US and Europe.

“It has nothing to do with the social welfare policies and benefits in place,” he insisted, dispelling the myth that the effects on children were not as bad in Europe.

The rise in divorce was a worldwide trend, and although it did not exist in Malta, local separations and annulments were also exhibiting the same movement, Prof. Amato said.

Statistics showed divorce was increasing in every European country, although the rates varied between them, he said, Ireland and Italy being at the lowest end of the scale and the Czech Republic and Lithuania at the top, with the latter drawing closer to the US, traditionally at the highest point worldwide.

While pointing out that not all children of divorced parents were “damaged goods” – and in cases of seriously dysfunctional two-parent families, they were actually better off with one – they still stood an increased chance of facing certain problems.

Studies showed they were also more prone to alcohol use, accidents, and injuries, he said.

The parents’ own psychological adjustment could not be excluded from the picture, with resident mothers being stressed, having their own emotional and financial problems.

“Parents may not be at their best after a divorce and their mental health affects their parenting skills, displaying less warmth, harsher and more inconsistent discipline,” Prof. Amato said.

“Children thrive on stability and do not like too many changes at once,” he continued, listing moving house and changing neighbourhood friends as some of the disrupting consequences.

After the divorce, the parents are single and the new partner moves in. Then they are kicked out and another comes into the scene. Then there is the marriage that lasts two years until the partner leaves, Prof. Amato chronicled.

Apart from the lack of a stable person in their lives, parents become “sexualised”, which kids find disturbing.

Speaking of programmes in the US to “clean up the mess”, he said that while some were successful, there was no data to prove that the children were actively benefiting from them and suggested a preventive approach through premarital education.

“Marriages will always break down, but focusing our energy on prevention is the most effective,” he said.

The two-day colloquium was organised by the Cana Movement in collaboration with the Centre for Family Studies at the University of Malta and held under the auspices of Parliament’s Social Affairs Committee. It has brought together global family scholars and practitioners from Europe, the United States and the Middle East. The funding body is the Doha Institute for Family Studies based in the Middle East (Doha, Qatar).