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How Divorce Affects Children

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Half of all American children will witness the breakup of a parent’s marriage. Of these, close to half will also see the breakup of a parent’s second marriage, and forty percent of children growing up in America today are being raised without their fathers. You may not believe this but for some kids divorce has more of an impact on children than death. Parents are going through divorces when children are too young to even understand what is going on, what will these kids be thinking when they're sixteen, and they do not have a dad. Children get affected by so many things at a young age, but what people don’t understand, is that children are smarter than you think. Diane McSweeney, a marriage, family, and child counselor for the San Diego Unified …show more content…
On one side of the debate people believe that divorce does not affect children because, when the parent are happy so are the children. Nevertheless, Divorce does significantly affect children dramatically because, divorce can affect the children's grades, behavior, and long term living.
The first reason that children are significantly affected by divorce is because divorce is seen to lower children's grades in school. While it is often argued that if the child's parents chose to stay together, the fighting and arguing in the house may be a …show more content…
Although some people argue that if the parents are happy the kids will be too. Certainly it makes sense that if the parents are no longer unhappy, or stressed the kids will react the same. However, when you're too busy thinking about what will happen next, happiness just is not something on your mind, some people hope that once the parents separate, and after a while the stress will die down, and kids will be happier but that does not seem to be the case. For example, Hyun Kim ran an experiment of how much lower grades are for children with divorced parents, like before and she found, “I found that children internalized more grief and anxiety during and after divorces, but weren't more likely to act out through fighting or aggression.” (Olson n.p) In other words, Kim believes that children to suffer from grief and anxiety, but didn’t take it out in aggression, unless they were going to before the divorce. Additionally, Karin Stark a divorced mother speaks out to Star Tribune and writes, “Stark said the key, whether separating parents are married or not, is to give children as much stability as possible--letting them know they are still loved, that they still will attend school and see friends, and that other children like them have experienced divorces.”(Olson n.p) What this meant was, that if you don't want your children to have a changed behavior

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