Posted on 08/02/2025 7:37:40 PM PDT by DoodleBob
In May of this year, the Institute of Family Studies reported on groundbreaking research about the effects of divorce on children and families.
The short version? It’s not good. But that shouldn’t surprise those of us who believe there’s a reason that marriage is among the oldest human institutions.
The study by Andrew Johnston, Maggie Jones, and Nolan Pope used tax records for more than 5 million children born between 1988-1993 to study the long-term effects of divorce, including its affects on income, teen birth rates, incarceration, child mortality, and college residency. Intentionally tracking sibling groups, the study compared the way divorce can affect different members of the same family and different aged children. As Grant Bailey explained in his write-up on the study, “Far from being a mere change in legal status, Johnston, Jones, and Pope demonstrate that divorce has a tangible negative impact on factors relevant to child outcomes.”
Let’s start with the economic effects of divorce, which can be devastating for a family. Prior to divorce, the average income for families in the study was between $90,000 and $100,000. Yet average household income plummeted to $42,000 after divorce. These incomes usually rise again, but generally never reach their pre-divorce levels.
Unsurprisingly considering the economic turmoil involved with divorce, the study found that parents must work more afterwards, with fathers working 16% more hours per week and mothers working 8% more. One of the parents, at least, will also need to find a new home post-divorce, thus bringing more instability to the children. Thirty-five percent of children change addresses in the year of the divorce, often moving to a lower-quality neighborhood, due, again, to the decline in family income.
The economic effects of divorce are long-lasting. The study further found that children who experience divorce in early childhood will earn 9% less at age 25 than the average earnings for that age, and the gap grows to 13% at age 27.
But financial woes aren’t the only problem tangled up with divorce. Teen birth rates balloon for children whose parents divorced: prior to divorce, the number of teen girls giving birth hovers around 7 per 1,000. After divorce, the number grows to 13 per 1,000. Even more shocking, in the aftermath of divorce, child mortality rises from 10 to 15 deaths per 100,000 children annually.
Summarizing these findings, the authors of the study comment:
These results reveal substantial effects of divorce on children’s outcomes. The absence of pre-trends in both outcomes supports a causal interpretation. The magnitude of the effects—a 35 to 55 percent increase in mortality and up to a 63 percent increase in teen births—underscores how divorce can dramatically reshape children’s outcomes, potentially through changes in resources, supervision, and family dynamics.
Defenders of divorce once argued that child-divorce outcome research isn’t that accurate because children from such families are different than children from families that remain intact. Divorce is a symptom of other underlying issues, they said, not a cause. But by tracking sibling groups and looking at outcomes for children within the same family – and how they differ based on the child’s age – this new study challenges that line of thinking, lending credence to the idea that the divorce itself is the root of many of the negative outcomes children experience in the ensuing years.
None of these negative statistical outcomes are surprising. It would be far more shocking to learn that divorce doesn’t cause significant and long-term damage to the life of a child.
Divorce is a tragedy that shatters a child’s world. According to the nonprofit Family Means, it’s common for children of a divorcing couple to feel anger, confusion, guilt and anxiety because of the divorce. They may manifest a decline in academic performance and loss of interest in social activities. And they’re more likely to engage in destructive behavior, including crime and drug use. These children are also more likely to divorce in their own marriages, losing faith in the institution of marriage completely, thus perpetuating a tragic cycle.
But children aren’t doomed to follow their parents’ footsteps. Resilient children can overcome the hurdles cast their way by the divorce of their parents, and they can go on to have stable, intact families of their own one day. But none of that means we, as a society, should take lightly the immense trauma we’re putting children through via divorce and the ways it undercuts their own future flourishing.
You presumably also had a passel of step-siblings.
I wish that there were clinical studies and reports we could read on the impact of step-siblings on the lives of children of divorce.
Regards,
Your parents shouldn't have involved you in their domestic disputes. You shouldn't have been allowed to witness that incident, whatever it was (I am assuming that it was some hurtful remark that your father made to your mother).
Marital disputes should be conducted behind closed doors.
Regards,
Divorce is harmful to children, but marriage to a violent person or a cheater is worse. Sometimes, you must divorce to try to protect the children.
Nope. Reflecting on it, I recall that it was a holiday. My dad had a temper and he would always be in a bad mood each holiday for some reason and would blow up over some little thing.
I remember my mom crying and saying that he was like that every holiday and ruined every holiday.
They never argued in front of us nor even where we could overhear them. That much I do remember. I mentioned once about how they didn’t argue or disagree and she said they disagreed plenty but not in front of us. Sometimes they’d go for car rides, just for something to do, they said, but now I think it was to discuss things they didn’t want us to overhear them fighting or arguing about.
52 years of marriage this year with my highschool girlfriend. Got married 4 months out of highschool and no.... our first kid was 4 years later and another 7 years after the first. Life is good.
I sometimes wonder how many American parents decide to have children for their own amusement.
I see a lot of fathers go on income strikes at least until the divorce is settled.
Destroys kids, but “parents” do not care.
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. Personally, of all the people I’ve known getting divorced my entire life; there’s only been 1 man who filed out of 10-12. It’s a fact that women file for divorce more than men. Why is that? Are there just so many abusive men out there or is there something else going on?
Feel free to respond with a good reason or 2 why women file more often than men.
Hen-pecked husbands and bullied boyfriends need love too. /s
I can tell you that my parents divorce when I was only 2yrs old, has had a seriously damaging effect on me. Both parents re-married and had children, which always made me feel like I didn’t know where to belong. Don’t get me wrong, both were very loving parents. But I never understood why things were the way they were until much later in life.
“They dont vet people being married“
As far as I know the Catholic Church does. They want to know you understand what you’re getting into . The two of you have to go to a prescribed number of meetings with the church, I forget the details now.
I don’t know the stats and even claims of abuse or other misbehavior can be suspect, but personally I know two women who filed for divorce because of being hospitalized from beatings.
I suspect that abuse and cheating are the leading causes. And there are reports of women who try to make the marriage work but can’t. If the guy won’t stop abusing her or the kids, or refuses to be faithful, I don’t see many more options.
Actually I did not know them...even tho my Dad married several times, and lived only 7 miles away...we did not see he and spouse(s) enough to know of them...until at a class reunion I got introduced to a “brother”...and my mother married childless men
that and because our culture has been in generational decline for awhile, a lot of men are carrying childhood wounds and psychological complexes...so even if they're well to do on the "provider" front -- they have a lot of personality issues to deal with.
And addictions...
Shameful - on the part of your father!
I am familiar with cases in which the father (post-divorce) married another woman with children of about the same age as his own children (from the first marriage), and began assuming the role of "father" to these new kids (taking them to Cub Scout meetings, etc.) - while his "previous" children languished.
Shameful!
Regards,
Many (not all) men in younger generations especially those who experienced the divorce of their own parents or fatherlessness, battle childhood trauma (sometimes severe) and even the most seemingly functional/financially/spiritually sound ones on paper, have hidden addictions — namely to pornography.
BUMP for later
My father had “issues”.. after his death I learned 1) his father committed suicide by hanging himself somewhere on family property when he was 14...2) a year later his grandfather was murdered by the hired hand...so..he joined Navy and was in Battle of Leyte at age 17...made a lot of stuff fall into place. My mother was her own special piece of work...
One in 4 American women are on psych meds and another 1/4 need to be but aren’t. Tell me again which gender is screwed up.
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