DIVORCE - CHILDS PERSPECTIVE

There has been a marked rise in the rate of divorces involving children and in the number of children living in single parent homes. It is contended that much of the confusion in studying the impact of divorce on children has been a result of a failure to view divorce as a process involving a series of events and changes in life circumstances rather than as a single event. At different points in this sequence children are confronted with different adaptive tasks and will use different coping strategies. The diversity in children's responses to divorce in part are attributable to temperamental variables, past experience, and the child's sex and developmental status. In understanding the child's adjustment to divorce it is important to look not only at changes in family structure but also at changes in family functioning and at stresses and support systems in the child's extrafamilial social environment. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1979 American Psychological Association.