New study sheds light on controversial reason many modern relationships fail
by Suzanne Venker, Washington Examiner:
There’s more than one reason why marriage in the United States is down and why dating is all but dead, but a new study sheds light on one factor that has rarely, if ever, been addressed: how being a product of divorce affects one’s ability to love.
“Studies of children experiencing parental divorce find effects on mood disorders, substance abuse, and other behaviors in adulthood,” write the study’s authors. “Here, we examine the effect of divorce on adult urine oxytocin levels. Results suggest that oxytocin levels are adversely affected by parental divorce in humans and may be related to attachment measures in adulthood.”
In other words, those who were children when their parents divorced showed lower levels of oxytocin, known as the bonding hormone, compared to those whose parents remained married.
This finding will almost certainly step on some toes, so you won’t hear about it in the media. But that doesn’t change the uncomfortable fact that when the two individuals to whom a child is most attached stop loving one another, it disrupts that child’s ability to bond later in life. Without a model for how love and commitment work, he or she will be shooting blanks down the line.
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