Don’t always stay together for the kids, study says
82 per cent of 14- to 22-year-olds would prefer that their parents separate, recent research found
When you’re grappling with the decision to end a marriage with the mother or father of your kids, nothing causes more grief than the question of whether doing so will devastate the children.
But a study conducted by ComRes on behalf of family law organization Resolution in the U.K., recently found that 82 per cent of 14- to 22-year-olds would prefer that their parents separate than stay together for their sake. It’s important to note that those finding don’t represent the views of younger children, but it’s useful context about the impact of divorce a few years down the road.
“Of course, children usually find their parents’ separation extremely upsetting, but as this research demonstrates, eventually many come to terms with the situation and adjust to changes in family life,” said family counsellor Denise Knowles in a statement released by Resolution.
Family therapist Alyson Schafer, author of Honey, I Wrecked the Kids, says kids can thrive with divorced parents, just as they do in all kinds of different sorts of families. “Some kids do very well living with grandparents and with single parents. And some kids do very well with divorced parents who co-parent under one roof, assuming the relationship is not in conflict and that the kids feel a sense of security and safety, and a feeling of acceptance and belonging. It’s about how we get those core conditions met that’s really important,” she says.
Schafer says it’s misguided to assume that the only way kids can be happy is if their parents are together under one roof, especially since not all marriages are good ones. “Listening to you fighting all the time is very uncomfortable,” she says. She likens it to waiting in nervous anticipation of a bandage being ripped off. “They’re unable to settle into what the next reality is.”
Unfortunately, this waiting game also increases the likelihood that the kids will blame themselves for the discord in the home. “Kids are egocentric just by the design of the human psyche; they will attribute the conflict to being about them. ‘If I was a better kid they wouldn’t be fighting.’ ‘If I was nicer they wouldn’t be fighting.’ ‘If I didn’t drop out of hockey they wouldn’t be fighting.’ They’ll make up all kinds of reasons.”
Social worker Sarah MacLaughlin, author of What Not to Say: Tools for Talking with Young Children, says that so much of how kids fair after a relationship ends comes down to how the grown-ups treat one another. “Find a way to be kind, and if not kind, at least civil. It really is so hard for children to try to navigate the two primary relationships in their lives if there is strife.”
This leads to what social workers and therapists refer to as “incongruence,” says MacLaughlin, who is also the director of parent education at the Center for Parenting and Play in Biddeford, Maine, which offers resources and supported visitation for separated and divorcing families. The experience for a child caught in the middle is like this, she says: “I feel attached to my mom, but my mom is saying stuff about my dad, and I feel attached to my dad, too.” It causes confusion that children have no skills to work through on their own, says MacLaughlin.
Besides, when parents get along it’s better for them as well. “You’re going to have so much less stress and worry and upset.” Brandie Weikle is a parenting expert and the host of The New Family Podcast and editor of thenewfamily.com.