Reply to Best age for child to have parents divorce?

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Reply to "Best age for child to have parents divorce?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The younger the better. Any time between about 7 and 25 is bad. Middle school or close to it (ages 10 to 15) is a total disaster and you are risking severe psychological consequences[/quote]

Yeah, sorry, that's not backed up by data at all[/quote]

Lol there are no “scientific” conclusory facts about these things, selection bias is far too great for “data” to tell you much. People are still arguing about whether the “data” tells you divorce is even bad for kids! (It is). You have to use your observational skills and knowledge about the world[/quote]

I'm sorry, you seem really uneducated about the sciences. There is in fact tons of research that looks at the impacts of divorce. There is plenty of scientific quantitative and qualitative data over decades, and most of it clearly shows that the majority of children of divorce do not suffer severe long term impacts. It's pretty clear. I'm sorry you don't know what research is in this field.[/quote]

I’m a PhD social scientist who is very familiar with this research. It is highly inconclusive because it is impossible to adjust for the numerous differences between families who divorce and families who do not. The simple correlations show that divorce is a disaster for kids - worse than the death of a parent, one of the worst things that can happen. On average children of divorced families perform much worse in almost every dimension of life than children from intact families. However the preexisting differences between families who divorce and families who don’t are so great that it’s very difficult verging on impossible to tell what would have happened to those kids had their parents stayed together. It’s for this reason that one shouldn’t expect the “data” to magically answer this question.

My own interpretation of the weight of the evidence is that it’s likely divorce is pretty bad for kids - if you look at the large absolute disadvantages associated with being a child of divorced parents, even for kids from otherwise advantaged families, it’s hard to imagine it’s all a selection bias. In addition common sense and the testimony of children of divorce supports this view. But the impact of divorce is probably pretty heterogenous across individual families. Ironically (or perhaps not) there’s evidence that it’s children from families who were already most disadvantaged / high risk who probably suffer least from divorce[/quote]

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