Children Are Impacted by Divorce:

¶ … children are impacted by divorce: Are there any particular preventative steps or recommendations that can be implemented to stymie the potential negative impact and enduring consequence of divorce on children.

Annotated Bibliography

Lansford, J.E. (2009). Parental divorce and children's adjustment Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4 140-152

The impact of divorce must be seen in both its short-term and long-term context. The author reviews the associations between divorce and children's adjustment in both a long-term and short-term context. The author first considers evidence regarding how divorce impact the child's externalizing behavior, her internalizing behavior, academic achievements, and social relationships. Secondly, she examines relevant characteristics associated with divorce such as timing of the divorce, demographic characteristics, stigmatization as consequence of the divorce, and child's adjustment and status of family life (socio-economic and emotional stability) prior to the divorce. Thirdly, the author investigates socio-economic status of family, parental conflict before and following divorce, quality of parenting before and following divorce, and parents emotional and physical well-being as mediators of divorce and the child's adjustment. Author proceeds to note the limitations of the research literature before concluding with policies that are related to grounds for divorce, child support and child custody and the possible impacts of these policies on children's adjustment to parental divorce. The thoroughness of this review study makes it valuable for my research question.

2. Potter, D. (2010). Psychosocial Well-Being and the Relationship between Divorce and Children Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, p933-946

The author proceeds by noting the huge quantity of studies that focus on explanations for the consequences that impact children following divorce. Explanations for negative consequence following divorce include: changes to family's finance, destabilized parenting, intensified parental conflict, and deterioration of the parent-child relationship. The author notes that little research is accorded to children's diminished psychosocial behavior following divorce. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort (n=10,061), he examines the associations between divorce and children's outcome and suggests that divorce is associated with diminished psychosocial well-being in children thereby explaining the connection between divorce and lower academic achievement.

The study is useful for my research since it mentions psychosocial factors. Nonetheless, I find author's conclusions shaky for at least three reasons: firstly, author limited his study to children of kindergarten age therefore conclusions cannot be generalized to children of all ages; secondly, many more variables must taken into consideration regarding resulting low academic achievement; thirdly, children's academic level prior to divorce must be considered too.

3. Amato, P. (2010). Research on divorce: Continuing trends and new developments Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 650-666 .

I found this article helpful for my research since it connects past and present material on divorce concluding with gaps and research questions that still need to be addressed.