Many things could have the possibility to affect how likely a person is to get divorced in the future. This not only includes things that have happened in their adult life, but also things that happened when they were a kid. A recent study points to being exposed to a lot of family conflict when one is a kid being one of the things that could leave a person with higher chances of a divorce as an adult.
The study looked at data regarding American families. The data covered the time period going from 1987 to 2003. In this data review, researchers compared the divorce likelihood of individuals from different family backgrounds.
The study found that having a high-conflict family as a kid, generally, was associated with having a raised divorce likelihood as an adult. These results serve as a reminder of how impactful family conflict, such as conflict between parents, can be on a kid.
The study’s findings were noticeably different though for kids with high-conflict families but whose parents ultimately divorced. The study found that such kids did not see an increase in their adult divorce rate as compared to kids from low-conflict families whose parents didn’t divorce/separate.
As these findings point to, there are some benefits a parental divorce could have for kids, such as perhaps getting a child out of a high-conflict home environment.
Of course, it is possible for heated disputes to arise between parents during a divorce, such as disputes over child custody. Given the major effects being exposed to parental conflict and other family conflict can have for kids, it can be very important for divorcing parents to take efforts to reduce the amount of conflict their kids could be exposed to during the course of the divorce. This can include steering clear of contentiousness when it comes to divorce disputes and issues when possible and being very careful about how one acts around and towards the kids when divorce-related conflicts do come up.
Source: Tech Insider, “One parent behavior may affect kids of divorce more than divorce itself,” Rebecca Harrington, May 22, 2016
