Rows Between Divorcing Parents Hurt Kids More Than The Actual Divorce – Study
It is widely known that divorce hurts children badly, but new research conducted in the U.K. shows that the fighting that usually occurs before the actual divorce hurts even more.
Study author Gloria Moroni of York University said that while conventional wisdom says having parents divorce is bad for children, her research shows that the rowing that occurs before divorce has a significant detrimental impact on the children as well, the Express reported.
In the study, which will be presented at the Royal Economics Society's annual conference this month, Moroni analyzed the data of 19,000 children in the U.K. born in 2000.
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She found a significant skills gap between children of divorced parents and children who have both parents staying together when she looked into the children's cognitive abilities such as reading and math skills, as well as behavior, emotional issues and social skills.
Children with parents staying together performed 20 percent better in cognitive skills compared to children with divorced parents. This gap is believed to be caused largely in part by the parents' educational attainment and financial status.
For non-cognitive skills, children whose parents stayed together are also 30 percent ahead of children whose parents are divorced.
Moroni said her research suggests that the reason for the gap between the cognitive and non-cognitive skills of these children is not necessarily due to the parents' divorcing itself.
"Most of the damage is given by pre-divorce circumstances and characteristics of the family,"Moroni explained. "For example, parents who decide to divorce may also be lower-educated, may also be poorer, or they may have more conflictual relationships.
"And indeed, inter-parental conflict may be even more harmful to a child's development than parental dissolution itself," she added.
Expert opinion
E. Mark Cummings, a psychologist at Notre Dame University, says that such parental conflict is inevitable, but with the right response, conflicts can be transformed into moments benefiting children, the Huffington Post reports.
Speaking with Developmental Science in 2014, Cummings said that when kids witness their parents fighting and then eventually resolving the issue, "they're actually happier than they were before they saw it."
When parents are able to resolve conflicts, their children are assured that they can work things out. When parents fight each other and come out of the room pretending everything's fine, however, the children will notice that both parents are merely acting. Thus, parents should learn to work things out.
"Kids can tell the difference between a resolution that's been forced versus one that's resolved with positive emotion," Cummings said, "and it matters."
