By Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch. (photo: Caleb Woods/Unsplash)
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.”