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Is it Time to Admit That Divorce Hurts Kids Big Time?
Intellectual Takeout ^ | July 29, 2025 | Walker Larson

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.


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: children; divorce
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To: Secret Agent Man

In the Bible the fall of Man is ascribed to Adam, not Eve even though she ate from the tree first. And only another man, Jesus could pay the sacrifice. SO: God would argue his sons of Adam needs to step it up and become sons of Christ instead.

And the porn and other addictions need to be dealt with. Childhood traumas, the wounds of fatherlessness.

God is father to the fatherless.


41 posted on 08/03/2025 12:04:50 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege ( )
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To: Secret Agent Man; vpintheak

is porn addiction acceptable grounds for divorce?

https://www.gotquestions.org/pornography-addiction-divorce.html


42 posted on 08/03/2025 12:07:02 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege ( )
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

The women of today are rebellious and do not properly submit as Christian wives, and whore about in the twenties, expecting men to wife them up after they see their looks going and eggs drying up. They, like you, demand men to “step up” be traditional, and wife up the town bicycle, yet are not traditional themselves.

So theres no point getting involved with them.


43 posted on 08/03/2025 12:52:07 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

I don’t know where your bitterness comes from. There are plenty of quality men AND women left...but the saddest stories are of women who DID devote their lives to their home, to pleasing their husbands — and yet their husbands still chose pornography.


44 posted on 08/03/2025 12:54:55 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege ( )
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

As a woman you do not understand men.

Porn is not the cause of problems with women. Porn is the solution to problems with women.

If you know anything about marriages, the large majority of women entrap men into marriage and the sex falls off drastically. Research some on the stats of sexless marriages. This is done by the women in almost all cases. Straight men do not get married to not have sex.

Shutting off sex is disrespedting the marriage contract and duties of a spouse, as marriage inherently has sex in it as long as both people are able to (union of husband and wife). Refusing to or shutting it down to a sexless marriage, is rejection of the marriage vows. That spouse has abandoned the vows and effectively left the union.

Men would rather have regular sex with their wives. The ones who dont want to divorce for withholding of affection, or stay married and have affairs, may well trun to porn to deal with their sexul needs since the wife has turned away from the vows and his needs.

But as a woman I know you will never understand this, even having it explained and spoonfed to you. So don’t bother me ever again, I’d rather talk to a door.


45 posted on 08/03/2025 1:05:57 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Secret Agent Man
but the saddest stories are of women who DID devote their lives to their home,to pleasing their husbands (<< I'm not talking about the ones who withhold!)
46 posted on 08/03/2025 1:08:20 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege ( )
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To: Secret Agent Man

As a jilted husband manu years ago, your post has much truth.

3 kids...12, 6, 5....and she used the “family court” and a completely immoral and untruthful “family law attorney” to get what she wanted ($$$$).


47 posted on 08/03/2025 1:16:45 PM PDT by nesnah (Infringe - act so as to limit or undermine [something]; encroach on)
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To: Secret Agent Man

there are women aplenty who initiate, do not withhold, etc... but the men can’t be receptive because they have ONGOING soul wounds, childhood traumas, insecurities that they need to address with coping mechanisms other than pornography and the like.

that all being said, so many marriages are thriving beautifully and praise God for that. :)


48 posted on 08/03/2025 1:19:01 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege ( )
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To: Secret Agent Man

And lets not forget, women watch porn and enjoy it. They also are heavily into erotic books/graphic romance novels, which is also fantasy porn. They also have a large array of vibrators and dildos and little lipstick buzzers they use all on their own too. So men do not hold any monopoly on this kind of thing whatsoever.


49 posted on 08/03/2025 1:57:45 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

Some people bring pre-existing addictions INTO the marriage, and are under the impression that marriage will solve their problems — then they’re in it, and they have a partner who is more than willing to meet their needs — but because their brains have dopamine receptor issues, and other traumas remain embedded, the addictions re-emerge!


50 posted on 08/03/2025 5:48:55 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege ( )
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To: CondoleezzaProtege; Secret Agent Man

If your spouse is not trustworthy, you’d better withhold.


51 posted on 08/03/2025 6:38:55 PM PDT by Tired of Taxes
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Yep. Saw a Mark Driscoll short where he said pretty much all men struggle with sexuality and pornography. He said those who say they aren’t are either lying to themselves or others.
Us men are visual creatures. Some struggle more than others.


52 posted on 08/03/2025 7:52:46 PM PDT by vpintheak (Screw the ChiComms! America first!)
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To: vpintheak

Yes Mark tends to hold men accountable even as he addresses the role of wives from a Biblical standpoint. (Following the lead of the husband.)

But it’s one thing to be visual, it’s another to have grown up in this modern era with all its social dysfunction, explosion of technology, fractured families and communities m, isolated nature of 9-5 jobs (when family farms used to be the norm for millennia.) etc…

And so there’s a lot more to pornography addiction than just “men being men.”


53 posted on 08/03/2025 8:15:16 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege ( )
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Absolutely. I have also felt bad for young boys and men these days as well. Tue girls dress so provocatively, it’s crazy. I never let my daughters dress like too many of their friends did.


54 posted on 08/04/2025 7:21:17 AM PDT by vpintheak (Screw the ChiComms! America first!)
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