Divorce and Children:  What Hurts, What Helps?

By Harriet Shaklee, Family Development Specialist
University of Idaho Cooperative Extension

Social commentators in recent years have raised a number of concerns about the number of children in America today who are growing up in single parent families.   As many as 45 percent of children born to married couples are expected to experience their parent’s divorce before turning 18.  In addition, children are increasingly likely to be born into single parent families as rates of out-of-wedlock births climb.  Furthermore, studies show that concerns about children in single-parent families are in order, with problems shown in academic performance, social behavior, and the transition to adulthood.  Amato and Booth review several trends in family life over recent decades and find marital conflict and divorce to be even harder on children than a life of poverty.  The fact that divorce and poverty go together all too often doesn’t help the prognosis for children in these families.

However, research also shows that child outcomes in divorced and single parent families vary tremendously, with some more successful than others in providing the support at home their children need.  What factors differentiate those families in which children are doing well from those having difficulty?   McLanahan and Sandefur take this as their focal question, as they explore data from four large scale studies to find which family variables are linked to what outcomes for children.  Information such as this, the authors argue, is critical to doing our best for children when separation and divorce loom ahead.

McLanahan and Sandefur focus their study on three areas of adolescence critical to future opportunity: academic behavior, teen parenthood, and the transition to work.   By comparing outcomes for teens in single parent, two (biological) parent, and stepfamilies, the authors are able to pinpoint some of the important factors of family life associated with positive and negative outcomes.  We begin by comparing adolescent behavior in single parent and two biological parent families.  Since outcomes differ for step-parent families, that group is considered separately to find factors important to developmental success in this family constellation.

 Single vs. Two - Parent Families

 A potent effect on family life for divorcing families is the drop in income when one house is spit into two.  Statistics for 1992 show that 2 parents and 2 children need $14,228 to live above the poverty line in 1 household, but the same family members housed in 2 households at the same standard of living would require $18,603.  In addition, parents and children commonly split family resources and earning potential so that the mother and children (the most common custody constellation) receive less than ½ of the family resources even though they have more people.  The situation is worse for children who don’t receive child support – 40% of children are never awarded support, while less than 1/3 of the children get the full amount of support they are awarded.

 What effect does this income reduction have on children when families divorce?  Controlling for other related factors, McLanahan and Sandefur find income loss to have a strong negative effect on adolescents in single parent families, with those who lose income through divorce more likely to drop out of school and to have a teen birth, compared to those whose family finances did not change.

 Parenting behavior is also affected when families divorce.  Contact with the noncustodial parent (generally Dad) is most strongly affected, with less and less time together as time passes.   However, McLanahan and Sandefur’s evidence shows children in single parent families have less time with Mom as well.  Mom’s time for children may be compromised as she works longer hours to make ends meet.  Academic support at home is also lower, with less help on homework, and fewer single parents expecting their children to go to college.   Single parents also exert less parental control, more often leaving their children alone, and initiating fewer house rules.

 McLanahan and Sandefur look at the extent to which these differences in parent involvement, supervision, and aspirations are related to teen behavior for children in single parent families.   Analyses shows these differences in parenting practices to have strong effects on all of the outcome measures,  with negative effects on academic behavior, early pregnancy, and idleness among adolescents in single parent families with weak parenting practices. 

 Children’s success depends on access to adequate community resources, including strong schools, peers with positive life goals,  and supportive adults in the neighborhood.  The impact of these out-of-home influences may grow as the children reach the teenage years, when so much of their time is spent out of the house and in the neighborhood.  However,  single parent children are more likely than those from two parent homes to reside in neighborhoods with questionable influences, with high rates of poverty, single parenthood, welfare use, and high school failure.  To what extent do these factors pose a risk for these young people?

 Mc Lanahan and Sandefur’s analysis shows that high school students going through a divorce begin to associate with friends who place less value on education.  Children in single parent families also experience more family moves,  further limiting access to community resources as neighborhood ties are uprooted.  While many families move to find better work or housing, single parents are more likely than others to move in search of cheaper housing, or because the family is being evicted, both by-products of the loss of income discussed earlier.   Further analyses show that these post-divorce moves play a key role in teen behaviors, with strong associations to the increased dropout rates and early childbearing of adolescents in single parent families.

 These findings suggest that when a family divorces, resources available to the children are often too limited to meet the need.  The drop in income so commonly experienced by custodial parents and their children presents only one of several life changes which put the children at risk.  Resources for adequate parenting are stretched to the limit as well.   The noncustodial parent frequently withdraws from active parenting, while work demands and the stress of the divorce may compromise the custodial parent’s childrearing practices.  Finally, access to community resources may be undercut by family moves, in many cases fueled by less money available for housing.  With each move, children lose valuable resources of friends, neighbors, and school which could help them with the adjustments ahead. 

 What about Stepfamilies?

 Single parenthood may not be a permanent family status, with many divorced parents marrying to form a new two parent family.  Step-family formation does effectively address the income issue, with step-family incomes comparable on average to that of two biological parents.  Furthermore, adding another adult to the family group may fill the deficit in parental attention, so that the children once again get the guidance and supervision they need. 

 However, outcome data show that remarriage may help parents, but does little to reduce risks for children in step-families, who show many of the same adverse effects as children in single parent families.   But, also like single parent families, children in some step-families are doing very well, while others are struggling.  What factors account for these differences?   McLanahan and Sandefur turn to the data on stepfamilies in their samples to answer this question.  

 These studies show that, while two adults now live with the children, parental resources available to children in stepfamilies may be even more limited than those in single-parent families.  Children get less attention from Mom when she remarries, since she now shares her time with her new spouse and step-children.  Step-dads could fill the gap, but step-parents tend to spend less time with the children than would a second biological parent in the home.  At the same time, noncustodial dads often withdraw when their children acquire a step-dad.

 However, the authors found the strongest negative influence on teen outcomes in stepfamilies when looking at residential mobility.  That is, children in step-families move even more often than children in single-parent families.  Children and teens have many adjustments to make when a new parent (and possibly new siblings) joins the family, a transition which can be smoothed by a familiar set of friends, neighbors, and school personnel. Study results show that residential mobility is strongly linked to the higher school dropout and pregnancy rate of adolescents in stepfamilies.  This finding points to the extent to which young people need to be able rely on a stable community around them to carry them through hard times at home. 

 What’s a Mother (and Father) to Do?

 McLanahan and Sandefur argue that data such as this can help us make a blueprint to minimize risks to children going through marital transitions.  And just what would that blueprint look like?

 1)           Share family financial resources equitably.  Family assets are easy to divide into two equal portions, but when one member sets up house alone while the other houses the children, an equal split is hardly equitable.  In addition, earning power of the two parents is rarely the same, with women most likely having the lower income.   Adding the burden of additional child expenses to an already-lower income, mom-custody households can take a sharp drop in income, with negative consequences for the children. Trickle-down effects follow, including moves in search of cheaper housing which cut strong ties to school and community.  The lowered educational aspirations single parents hold for their children may also reflect their income shortfall, as well as the tradition for child support to stop when the children are 18, just when higher education expenses begin.  Single parents’ shortage of time for children may also reflect their need to work extra hours to make ends meet.  Divorcing parents should keep these issues in mind as they consider how to use their family resources  to protect their children from negative fallout.  Children’s access to family resources can be assured through adequate property and child support settlements, or by arranging for shared custody.

 2)           Ensure adequate adult supervision for children.  The adjustments children make to their parent’s divorce will not always bring out the best in their behavior.  Boys frequently respond with aggression and noncompliance, adolescent girls may tend toward early sexuality.  Other children show stress through depression, regression, or sleeplessness.  Unfortunately, divorced parents may have less time to spend with their children, despite the fact that their children need them even more.   Parents should take care to provide the attention children need by continued involvement of both parents, and by reaching out to other well-loved relatives and adults to provide care.   Make sure that children and adolescents also have adequate after-school supervision, whether by a parent, a quality child care program, a neighbor, or friend. 

 3)           Preserve community ties.      Divorce is at least as hard on children as it is on parents.  Even children who don’t show outward negative signs are likely to be stressed as they come to terms with family developments.  Divorcing parents should give their children the best break possible by allowing them to keep up the ties of familiar faces and places by minimizing family moves at this time.  Their friends and neighbors can provide them the support they need for the transitions ahead.  Stepfamilies may want to take special note of this message as they determine where their new family will be housed.

 Unfortunately, dynamics between spouses at divorce time make some of these prescriptions a challenge to follow.  However, McLanahan and Sandefur offer all of the evidence we need of the importance of divorce arrangements to child well-being.  Divorcing parents should plan well now for the future of the children they both love so much. 

Book reviewed in this article:   Growing up with a Single Parent:  What Hurts, What Helps,  by Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur,  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,  1994.