A Study of the Effects of Divorce to Children
Bruce Reyes
De Vry University

Children who experienced Divorce

Specifically in the United States of America, approximately 50% of marriages end up in divorce. Much more of that, we often disregard the negative effects of divorce among children who do not grow up with both biological parents at their side. Hyun Sik Kim (2011) believes that “compared to children with continuously married biological parents, children with divorced parents are disadvantaged regarding various life outcomes, including likelihood of dropping out high school, cognitive skills, psychosocial well-being, and social relations” (Consequences of Parental Divorce for Child Development p.1). There are various effects on cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills on children.

Hyun Sik Kim has proposed a 3 stage model to examine the effect of divorce to the child’s psychological trait and its development on various areas. The three models were namely pre-divorce, in-divorce and post-divorce. This model was made to reach a certain understanding that other behavioral studies and articles cannot. This is to overcome its limitation and to have a better understanding in order to recognize some of the failures of the past analysis. The study’s reference was from the Early Childhood Longitudinal study – Kinder garden class 1998-1999 and kinder through 8th grade.

The study shows that some of the children who are experiencing and after divorce had setbacks in math tests. There are negative effects at the in-divorce phase such as the poor performance regarding their interpersonal skills and some combined effects during in and post divorced periods.

The Author, Hyun Sik Kim, published an article in June and was issued by the American Sociological Review. He makes use of data from the “Early Childhood Longitudinal study describing more than