Anonymous wrote:I see a number of post where people say they are waiting a couple years for kids to get older before divorcing, but my understanding was the younger they are the less emotional disorders they end up having b/c of the divorce. Does any have good research papers etc that support older is better for divorce? Excluding your kids being 20+ adults when you divorce.

Anonymous wrote:From 10 months before they're born to any age after about 21 would be best.

Anonymous wrote:Best for child is to never have parents divorce.

Best for parents is to never have children.

Anonymous wrote:Excluding your kids being 20+ adults when you divorce.

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Anonymous wrote:Certain studies have shown that daughters of divorced parents have a 60 percent higher divorce rate in marriages than children of non-divorced parents while sons have a 35 percent higher rate.

Research shows that children of divorce are more likely to experience a divorce themselves. Personal skills theory and commitment and confidence theory are two dominant theories to explain this increased divorce risk.

It's definitely having some effect. Some families have legacies of divorce. Nearly every marriage down the line ends in divorce. I know families where the parents divorced and every single one of the children's marriages ultimately ended in divorce too.

The confidence and commitment theory states that children observing and experiencing their parents’ divorce leads to a reduced commitment to the institution of marriage and lower confidence in the ability of marriages to remain intact long-term. Considerable research supports this finding. Divorce researcher Judith Wallerstein explains the phenomenon this way: “...at young adulthood when love, sexual intimacy, commitment and marriage take center stage, children of divorce are haunted by the ghosts of their parents’ divorce and terrified that the same fate awaits them” (Wallerstein, 2005, p. 409). Interestingly, the finding breaks down by sex. One study found that while engaged women whose parents divorced reported lowered relationship commitment and reduced confidence in their own upcoming marriages, the same was not true for men. Researchers note that “experiencing a parental divorce appears to have a stronger impact on women’s than men’s desires and beliefs about the future of their own marriages” (Whitton, 2009, p.4). Women’s lack of confidence in marriage leads to higher divorce rates.

Children of divorce are at risk of responding to their fear of divorce in one of two ways. Some dive headlong into inappropriate, unformed relationships as a counter-phobic response to their fears. Others avoid relationships altogether, and when in relationships, maintain a mindset akin to waiting for the other shoe to drop. They struggle to believe in the strength of relationships to weather difficult stretches, and many arrive ill-equipped to address a relationship’s most potent challenges

Good for them! Single women live longer and healthier lives, there are studies about that too.

Please advise your daughter never to marry then.

I’m not the post you are responding to, but I am absolutely advising that my daughters never get married because it is not a good deal for them at all.

ARe you advising them not to have children as well, or to raise them as a single parent?

I am advising them to never get married. If they want a child, I would recommend that they use a sperm donor. Having a man control the rest of your life if that is the child’s father and you don’t get along is a freaking nightmare. We divorce laws are now you are tether to that person for life and you can never make your own decisions for 21 years at least. Absolutely do not recommend having a child with a father that you know because you don’t have any control over your life or how that child is raised. I would only suggest they have children if they truly truly want them and it’s absolutely not necessary to have a happy life.

Christ. You should never had children.

It was not the plan. But the problem isn’t the kids. The problem is a man.

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Anonymous wrote: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

And that’s when most midlife affairs occur. Selfish mother effers.

+1. We had a happy house and happy family. Sex too.

It isn’t enough for some.

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Anonymous wrote: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

Yeah, sorry, that's not backed up by data at all

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

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.

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