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Essay: The effects of divorce

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Divorce, a legal separation of a married couple that has profound effects on the people involved. There are both long-term and short-term effects that arise after a divorce occurs. When a married couple with children separates, not only are the two adults are affected by it, but more importantly, the children are affected largely as well. Divorce tends to have a strong emotional and psychological impact on the minds of children transforming their mentality of relationships for years to come, quite possibly forever. This impact that occurs causes the children to handle their future relationships differently, even if they don’t realize they are doing it. Some of the effects are visible immediately after the divorce while others may take several years to show themselves. Children who have grown up in split families show signs of negative, long-lasting effects in their own relationships, inside and outside the family, that are directly parallel to the influence their parents’ divorce on their lives. Divorce in a family affects everyone in the unit to some degree, no matter how big or small. It all begins with the immediate effects. Some of these short-term impacts are anger, depression, aggression, interpersonal conflict, economic hardship, life stress, lower academic achievement, and social adjustment difficulty. These are only a few of the countless effects that can occur in a situation like this. The range of the short-term results varies from family to family depending on the relationship the children have with both parents before and after the divorce. In many cases of divorce, the parents and children become disconnected emotionally. A few of the factors that play in to how strongly the children will be effected are ‘parental ability to resolve post-divorce conflict and anger, ability of the custodial parent to successfully resume the parenting role, ability of the non-custodial parent to maintain a mutually satisfying relationship with the child or children, [and] personality characteristics of the child and the ability to develop coping skills [‘]’ (Matthews 3). The parents are adjusting to their new, single lives and having to deal with several issues such as getting money, a place to live, or a job. The parents let up the reins they used to hold on their children and become more aware of their own problems rather than focusing on the connection they hold with their children and what their children are doing. If this happens, and the parents do not handle the situation well or cope positively with the situation, there is a higher probability that the short-term effects that impacted the children will turn into damaging long-term effects. There are countless outcomes of a divorce that can leave the children involved with serious and long-lasting difficulties in the upcoming years of their lives. Even if the divorce happened at an early age when the child did not completely understand what was happening, the trauma of growing up in a separated family takes its toll on the child’s mind whether he or she realizes it or not. A study was done on children of multiple different families where each child’s personal thought process was traced over a ten year period. When the first follow-up was taken after five years, the short-term effects that had remained were anger, specifically at the parent who asked for the divorce, a longing for the absent parent, a wish for the family to be put back together, and moderate to severe cases of depression (4). As adults, ten years after the divorce, the study followed up once again. The research showed that the children were not so much pushing for their parents to get back together as they simply expressed sorrow that their parents had not gotten back together. Any hope they once had that their parents may constitute their relationship once again had disappeared, and the children accepted their parents’ decision. Several of the students agreed that their lives would have been much happier if their parents had stayed together, and they were able to grow up in a strong family unit. The outcome was devastating, but they could do nothing about it, and had to respect it. This shows the maturity the children developed as they entered into adulthood, giving them a different outlook on the situation that would allow them to cope easier with what happened to them ten years ago and with all that has happened since then because of their parents’ decisions. Although this acceptance is extremely healthy for the healing process, children whose parents are divorced will never fully be healed. There are countless emotional, psychological, physical, and social concerns that have yet to be addressed. One of the emotional concerns introduced to children when dealing with a divorce is that they are more prone to being quick to anger and frustration, as well as pressure and stress. Anger can build up inside the child over the years and cause the child to lash out in small, and sometimes large, bursts of anger at parents or siblings over different thoughts. This anger that has risen up because of the parent’s divorce, also comes from the daily problems children deal with. These can have to do with anything from school to sports to family. It is especially evident in times of stress. Children not only have to deal with new issues that have come from the divorce such as separation from one parent for certain periods of time, and packing and transportation back and forth from each parent, but also the pressures of schoolwork, grades, work, sports, church, and other weekly activities. For a child trying to balance their life with such a big change, it becomes tiresome, difficult, and easy to let that frustration build up inside. Children can become so emotional that it starts to show through their actions and life choices they make as they get older. Adolescents whose parents are divorced tend to lash out more than kids who grow up in families that are intact (Fagan 1). The worse the relationship between the children and the parents after the divorce, the more the child will lash out simply searching for attention from their mother and/or father. They look for a way to let out the anger they hold against their parents for their decision, and look for attention and happiness anywhere they can find it. Several children lean towards drugs, sex, aggressive or violent behavior, committing crimes, running away, alcohol, and even skipping school (Rappaport 1). This leads into the physical problems that can be found in children with split families. Some do not take care of themselves like they should, and sometimes not all their needs can be met because of the parent’s concerns being placed elsewhere in their lives. These can be relatively small issues like laziness, but could also reach into more serious situations such as not eating or self-harm. These more serious problems could be a result of depression, which is extremely common during childhood, and even more so in children who are dealing with family separation. ‘[I]ts symptoms include irritability, worthlessness, depressed mood, difficulty concentrating in school, poor appetite (or overeating), insomnia (or too much sleep) and/or constant fatigue’ (1). The most horrifying result of depression is death. Although parent’s divorcing may not be the only cause for depression for all children separated families, it can definitely play a large role in it, especially if other traumatic experiences are happening in the child’s life at a similar time such as death of a close friend or family member. It is often said that people harm themselves when they are in a state of depression because they are crying out for help; however, this myth does not take into account that the people who are doing these things to themselves are trying to end their emotional pain in whatever way they can. For some, it may be an eating disorder while others may cut themselves, or even attempt suicide. Feelings and emotions that build up from family troubles should be taken seriously and let out in a healthy way whether that means getting a counselor for the children or keeping them busy until they find something that they are passionate about and want to continue pursuing. There are numerous other profound problems that can arise out of separated families such as: [T]he children of divorced parents are more likely to get pregnant and give birth outside of marriage [‘], and twice as likely to cohabit than are children of married parents. Moreover, divorce appears to result in a reduction of the educational accomplishments of the affected children, weakens their psychological and physical health, and predisposes them to rapid initiation of sexual relationships and higher levels of marital instability. It also raises the probability that they will never marry [‘]. (Fagan 1). The first point raised here is that these children are more likely to get pregnant outside of marriage. Not only that, but they are more likely to get pregnant as a teenager, or while in a cohabitated relationship. Percentage of teen births from 1960 to 1994 rose from 15% to 76%, not taking any abortions into account. In relation to these teen births there was also a spike in divorced couples in those years, especially when the divorce rate dramatically spiked 79% between the years 1970 and 1977 (Matthews 1). This shows a connection between the rise in divorces and the rise in teen births indicating the two intertwine on some level. People nowadays are less likely to get married first, and then have children. Much of the time, it is the other way around, and when a couple out of wedlock has a child, they usually do not have any intention of getting married. ‘It is not that the number of babies born to teens has changed; it is that marriage within this group has vanished’ (Fagan 1). People seem to have lost the meaning of marriage and children. There were several marriages at a young age in the mid-nineties and teens who were having children were a married couple. The number of births stayed still, but the number of weddings and marriages decreased. This can be traced back to the number of divorces that were occurring during that time. The mindset of children whose parents’ were divorced is that they don’t want to end up in the same situation. They are afraid to enter into a relationship that could lead to a marriage and subconsciously allow their mind and heart to stay detached from the idea of ever marrying a person. As adults, they still want their sexual needs to be met, and when in a relationship will act upon that, which could possibly lead to pregnancy. As a teenager whose parents are divorced, as stated before, they are searching for attention from their parents, and looking for a way to let out their emotions. Also, if lashing out with drugs and/or alcohol, and making bad decisions, sex and pregnancy is more likely to occur. If not careful, this could lead to teen pregnancy, and the girl would have to deal with that whole situation and figure out how she was going to handle it, especially in the areas of the father and school. Teen pregnancies and pregnancies out-of-wedlock are not the only results from fear of commitment. Cohabitation and development of purely sexual relationships are two things that are extremely likely to arise from someone who is afraid of commitment, which is almost always an effect of a child’s parents being divorced when they were young. ‘Today, the economic and social future of children in the poor and the middle class is being undermined by a culture that promotes teenage sex, divorce, cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock birth’ (Fagan 1). The way the government treats these situations, giving help rather than solving the issue at hand, makes it much easier for people to believe that teenage sex, pregnancy out-of-wedlock, divorce, and cohabitation are okay for anybody of any age. Many people cohabit who have no future plan of getting married. This does not apply to those who do not believe in marriage, and plan on spending the rest of their lives together as a couple. Children whose parents have divorced grow up to have relationships in which no marriage or future in general is seen in the eyes of that particular child, now an adult, yet they still decide to live with that person, or stay over at their house often. They may go from person to person cohabiting until they at last find that one person who they think they could develop a serious relationship with and possibly marry. Cohabiting does not only happen with children whose parents are divorced. Cohabitation is actually a relatively common part of living for many people; however, for some people, cohabiting occurs when a serious couple may be thinking of getting married and want to know what it is like to live with the other person, or when a couple has a child out-of-wedlock and both parents have decided they need to be there for the baby at all hours of the day. The action of two people living together before marriage who may be thinking of having a future together can actually cause more marital problems to occur and increase the likelihood of divorce (1). In the year 1990, 29% of people whose parents were together were cohabiting together, but 54%-62% of children cohabited whose parents were divorced. This doubled the rate of divorce for that 54-62%. For those whose parents were divorced that were cohabiting with someone who wasn’t going to be their future spouse, the rates of divorce in their own future marriage was doubled once again (1). Forty percent of these couples have children in the home with them, and eighty percent of these children will spend at least a portion of their life in a single-parent home.

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Causes and Effects of Divorce

Introduction, effects of divorce, works cited.

Since 1860 when the United States Bureau of statistics started keeping records of divorces, the frequency of divorce cases has continued to increase based on the same reasons. Reasons have remained relatively the same in comparison to the ever-increasing rise in cases. Studies have also highlighted that the reasons are as complex as extramarital affairs to mediocre reasons such as irritating small behaviors of the partner. It is widely accepted that divorce is part of life and separation between two persons is bound to continue (Wallerstein, p. 85). However, there have been some misinterpretations of the findings collected by current researchers. It is important to note that these findings are based on earlier conclusions based on research that was most likely liable to errors and mistakes. Such research findings and papers have been assumed as true thus setting the precedence of misinformation. It is thus the purpose of this paper to clarify earlier findings in order for us to present the true picture of the causes and effects of divorces.

Reasons for divorce have always remained sketchy as the real reasons can only be known by the two couples. However the most common forms of reasons that have led to the separation of couples include:

Money : This reason has always remained an emotive issue among couples as this is clearly manifested by ninety percent of the couples who surveyed, responded that they may have fought over money at least once during their relationship. 30% of respondents admitted to separating over other issues which were compounded by lack of money.

Sexual Problems : This reason in most cases has always been denied by couples as physical conditions or sexual malfunctions are considered to be uncommon (Wallerstein 101). Sexual problems are largely contributed to preconceived notions and ideas that are based on unacceptable attitudes towards sex. It was difficult for the couples to approach the topic of sex. Over fifty percent of couples admitted that a sexual problem was the root cause of infidelity within their marriages.

Immaturity: Many couples separated from each other after the couples exhibited behavior that the partner saw as inappropriate and childish. Such behaviors later behavior are then seen as intolerable making life difficult for both as there exists a lack of understanding between the couples.

Alcohol and substance abuse: This is also one of the most commonly cited issues among separating couples. Although data on abuse is not conclusive, many couples have often cited substance abuse as one of the reasons that lead to violent abuse that have even led to injuries and fatalities in worse-case scenarios.

In-laws: This is a prevalent reason used by young couples as meddling from external members and excessive hassles from external members of family.

Respect : Respect among couples is imperative as both come from different backgrounds. Having a different background often means that the couples have to come up with ways of living together and tolerating each other. Disrespect is manifested through physical and verbal attacks.

The above-mentioned reasons are just some of the most prevalent. It is also very difficult to establish the main reasons that couples may separate. We may never have a definite reason as to why the rate of divorce keeps on increasing but it may be easier to conclude on the effects divorce brings to society. This is because effects are much more profound in families, hence making it simpler to track. The family unit is facing numerous issues today as the effects of divorce are having a direct impact on the lives of children and how they will relate with others in the future. Research conducted by Lenor Weitzman confirmed that men were shown to heal faster and do well economically after separation. It was also found out that as opposed to the common belief that fathers were less interested in their families after separation, the research found out that fathers continued to be loving towards their kids and family (Wallerstein, p. 101).

Research also found out that both couples underwent intense emotional periods while seeking closure on the whole issue of separation. Depending on the number of years that they have been together, the couple may have to resolve all the underlying issues that may have led to the separations.

Wallerstein, Judith. The California Children of Divorce Study. California: University Of Southern California, 1999.

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When Love Hurts – Mental and Physical Health Among Recently Divorced Danes

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

The last decades of research have consistently found strong associations between divorce and adverse health outcomes among adults. However, limitations of a majority of this research include (a) lack of “real-time” research, i.e., research employing data collected very shortly after juridical divorce where little or no separation periods have been effectuated, (b) research employing thoroughly validated and population-normed measures against which study results can be compared, and (c) research including a comprehensive array of previously researched sociodemographic- and divorce-related variables. The current cross-sectional study, including 1,856 recently divorced Danes, was designed to bridge these important gaps in the literature. Mental and physical health were measured using the Short Form 36 (SF-36)-2. Analyses included correlational analyses, t- test comparisons, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses. The study found that the health-related quality of life of Danish divorcees was significantly worse than the comparative background population immediately following divorce. Across gender, higher levels of divorce conflict were found to predict worse mental health, and worse physical health for women, even when controlling for other socio-demographic variables and divorce characteristics. Among men, lower age and higher income predicted better physical health, while more children, more previous divorces, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict predicted better mental health. Among women, higher income, fewer previous divorces, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict predicted better physical health while higher income, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict predicted better mental health. The findings underscore the relevance of providing assistance to divorcees who experience higher levels of divorce conflict immediately following divorce, in seeking to reduce potential long-term negative health effects of divorce.

Introduction

The last 20 years of research have consistently found strong associations between divorce and adverse health outcomes among adults. Generally, divorcees report poorer physical and mental health and more symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression, and social isolation than the general population ( Amato, 2000 , 2010 ; Kessing et al., 2003 ; Hewitt and Turrell, 2011 ; Hewitt et al., 2012 ; Hald et al., 2020b ). Furthermore, divorce is associated with more frequent hospitalization ( Nielsen et al., 2014 ), substance use ( Waite et al., 2009 ), higher suicide rates ( Kposowa, 2000 ), lower levels of psychological well-being ( Bracke et al., 2010 ; Colman et al., 2012 ), and greater overall mortality risk ( Kposowa, 2000 ; Sbarra and Nietert, 2009 ). However, four limitations relate to a significant part of this research.

First, often studies include only one or two health-related outcomes per study (e.g., stress and/or depression) (e.g., Lindström, 2009 ; Hewitt et al., 2012 ; Knöpfli et al., 2016 ). While this is important in mapping out specific effects of divorce, it limits the ability to gain insight into more comprehensive physical and mental health profiles among divorce populations. These could be important for more accurate and comprehensive assessments and profiling of the effects of divorce on health. Second, most countries in the world require separation periods before juridical divorce is granted. This means that divorce studies able to employ “real-time” research are scarce and there has been a call for such studies (e.g., Thuen, 2001 ; Cipric et al., 2020 ). The concept of “real-time” research usually refers to the collection of data among divorcees with little or no separation periods before formal juridical divorce ( Hald et al., 2020a ). When studying health effects of divorce, this may be especially important since many health outcomes related to divorce may be sensitive to a “time heals effect,” whereby negative effects of divorce naturally decline over time ( Amato, 2010 ; Sander et al., 2020 ). Therefore, current research on adverse health effects of divorce may, in fact, underestimate negative health effects of divorce as data have often been collected after a divorce that was preceded by significant periods of separation and thus is likely to be subject to the “time heals effect” ( Sander et al., 2020 ). Third, studies employing thoroughly validated and population-normed measures are few. Validated measures are needed for accurate assessment of the health outcomes studied. However, these assessments may benefit from contextualization by having background population norms against which the results can be directly compared. This allows for more direct insights into the degree to which divorcees may differ from background population norms and thus the relative impact of the divorce on health. Fourth, studies are needed that include a more comprehensive array of previously researched sociodemographic- and divorce-related predictor or explanatory variables of mental and physical health. This would allow for a more thorough assessment of the individual and combined effect of these variables on mental and physical health. The current study was designed to bridge these four important gaps in health research related to divorce.

Divorce theory and divorce research suggest that there are sociodemographic variables and divorce-related characteristics that may moderate the effects of divorce on mental and physical health. Theoretically, Amato’s Divorce-Stress-Readjustment perspective (DSR; Amato, 2000 ) suggests that adverse effects of divorce depend on a number of risk and protective factors experienced during and following the divorce process. Examples of risk factors include lower standards of living, loss of benefits associated with marriage, and conflict with the former partner, whereas examples of protective factors include having a new romantic partner, adequate income, and holding positive views about the divorce. According to the DSR, it is the interplay between risk and protective factors that may be important in determining the effects of divorce on mental and physical health ( Amato, 2010 ).

From an empirical perspective, studies suggest that lower socioeconomic status, being unemployed, lower levels of education, and lower family income ( Barrett, 2000 ; Simon, 2002 ; Symoens et al., 2013b ) are associated with lower mental and physical health following divorce. In addition, younger age has been found to be associated with lower mental health following divorce ( Bulloch et al., 2017 ). In relation to divorce characteristics, mutual divorce agreement initiation ( Weiss, 1976 ; Gray and Silver, 1990 ; Wang and Amato, 2000 ; Sweeney and Horwitz, 2001 ; Sakraida, 2008 ; Cohen and Finzi-Dottan, 2012 ; Symoens et al., 2013a ), having a new partner ( Mastekaasa, 1994 ; Amato, 2000 ; Øygard, 2004 ; Blekesaune, 2008 ; Kulik and Heine-Cohen, 2011 ; Symoens et al., 2013b ; Symoens et al., 2014 ) and lower levels of divorce-related conflict ( Symoens et al., 2014 ; Petren et al., 2017 ) have been found to be associated with better mental and physical health. Both empirically and from an applied point of view, divorce conflict has been found to adversely affect or accelerate declines in mental health among divorcees. While the cross-sectional nature of the current study does not allow for investigation of the impact of divorce conflict on mental health over time, it does allow for an independent assessment of the explanatory value of divorce conflict on mental health, accounting for basic sociodemographic variables and other divorce-related characteristics. Compared with previous research, this allows for a more thorough and “independent” investigation of divorce conflict on mental health immediately following divorce.

The current study took place in Denmark, providing a unique perspective on divorce and divorce-related processes. First, in Denmark, there is high societal acceptance of divorce ( Uggla and Andersson, 2018 ), and in general, divorce is not associated with societal stigma, as it is in many other parts of the world. Second, Denmark is a country with high levels of equality, both in terms of gender equality ( European Institute for Gender Equality, 2018 ) and income equality ( OECD, 2018 ). As such, Denmark offers a unique context in which to study whether sociodemographic and divorce-related factors predict post-divorce mental and physical health.

Based on the above, the current study sought to investigate mental and physical health among recently divorced Danes using a well-known, comprehensive, and population-normed mental and physical health measure. Further, the study sought to examine the explanatory value of a comprehensive array of previously identified sociodemographic variables and divorce-related characteristics on overall mental and physical health. Finally, the study sought to compare overall mental and physical health to relevant population norms. Accordingly, the following two research questions and one study hypothesis guided the study investigation:

RQ1: What is the mental and physical health among recently divorced individuals and how does it compare to population norms?
RQ2: What is the explanatory value of sociodemographic variables (i.e., age, number of children, income, education) and divorce-related characteristics (i.e., marriage duration, number of previous divorces, divorce initiator status, new partner status, and divorce conflict) on overall mental and physical health among recently divorced individuals?
H1: Divorce conflict will significantly add to the explanatory value of mental health after accounting for basic sociodemographic variables (i.e., age, number of children, income, education) and divorce-related characteristics (i.e., marriage duration, number of previous divorces, divorce initiator status, and new partner status).

Materials and Methods

Participants.

The study sample comprised 1,856 participants of which 66% were women. The average age of women was 44.65 years ( SD = 8.34), while for men, it was 46.66 years ( SD = 9.31). The majority of participants had at least a medium educational level and earned at least the national average salary (see Table 1 ). The majority of the sample (88.3%) were parents, with an average of 1.88 ( SD = 0.99) children per participant. The average marriage duration for men was 12.22 years ( SD = 8.11) and for women 13.0 ( SD = 7.98), and for approximately 88% of the sample, this was their first divorce. A majority of women (52%) reported to have initiated the divorce, with 29% of men reporting to be divorce initiators. The majority of both male and female participants did not have new partners following their divorce (65% men, 64% women). The mean legal divorce duration before survey completion was 4.47 days ( SD = 6.97) for men and 5.23 ( SD = 7.66) days for women. Of note, there were some gender differences in sociodemographic and divorce-related characteristics. Specifically, compared to men, women were younger, had been married slightly longer, were more highly educated, earned less than men, had initiated the divorce more often, and had a different partner status than men [age ( t (1854) = 4.74, p < 0.001); duration of marriage ( t (1854) = −1.972, p = 0.049); education (χ 2 = 32.61, p < 0.001); income (χ 2 = 107.41, p < 0.001); initiator status (χ 2 = 90.50, p < 0.001); new partner (χ 2 = 14.82, p = 0.002)].

Participant demographics ( N = 1,856).

Data on all people who divorced in Denmark during the study period were obtained from Statistics Denmark and compared to the study sample. The study sample was found to be representative in terms of age, income, and marriage duration ( p > 0.05). There were statistically significant differences between participants and the comparison population in terms of gender (more women participated: χ 2 = 208.45, p < 0.001), educational attainment (study participants were more highly educated: χ 2 = 1135.23, p < 0.001), and the number of previous divorces [participants had on average fewer previous divorces than the average Danish divorcee: t (1855) = −8.47, p < 0.001].

During the study period (January 2016 to January 2018), those seeking divorce in Denmark initiated formal legal divorce and separation procedures by submitting an application to the Danish State Administration (DSA). Legal divorce was granted immediately when there was a mutual agreement to the marital dissolution. However, if there was disagreement regarding the divorce itself or its terms, a 6-month separation period was instituted, after which divorce was granted even in the absence of mutual agreement. The DSA reports that approximately 30% of couples underwent the 6-month separation period. The average processing time required by the DSA to issue divorce decrees was 2–3 weeks.

Invitations to the present study were sent by the DSA along with the divorce decree. The invitation letter described the 12-month Randomized Controlled Trial intervention study entitled “Cooperation after Divorce” that sought to investigate the effects of a digital intervention platform called “Cooperation after Divorce (CAD)” on divorcees’ mental and physical health. As the DSA sent out invitations, we were unable to send re-invitations to those who did not respond to the initial invitation sent out by the DSA. Those who completed the baseline survey received invitations from the intervention platform to complete surveys at 3, 6, and 12 months; for each of these time points, two reminder e-mails were sent out, one after 3 days and one after 14 days, if no response had been provided.

Cooperation after Divorce covers three main areas: (1) the divorce, (2) children, and (3) cooperation following divorce, employing 17 learning modules delivered through an online platform. This paper reports only the baseline results of the study, therefore, please also see Hald et al. (2020a) for a more thorough description of the CAD platform. The letter also described the procedure for participation, which consisted of clicking on a web-link in the invitation letter, provide informed consent, and respond to the baseline questionnaire anonymously. The research received approval from the Danish Data Protection Agency and was exempt from further ethical evaluations following the rules and regulations as set forth by the Scientific Ethical Committees of Denmark.

The exact response rate is not possible to report because the DSA could not provide the precise number of study invitations sent during the study period. There were 32,487 legal divorces in Denmark during the RCT enrollment period; however, it is unknown whether all individuals who divorced received an invitation along with their divorce decree. In total, 1,882 people began the study and due to impossible or invalid responses, 26 were excluded (i.e., those who did not report gender, reported to be married less than 1 day, or to have married the same year as they were born). Thus, 1,856 participants were included in the final analytical study sample.

Sociodemographic Variables

(a) Age at divorce was measured in years and months. (b) Sexual identity was determined by answering: “Are you a man or a woman?” with the response options: 1 = “Man” 2 = “Woman.” (c) Education level was assessed by answering: “What is the highest education you have completed?” with the following response options: 1 = “low level of education” (e.g., primary school, high school, business high school, vocational education), 2 = “medium level of education” (e.g., medium-length tertiary education, bachelor’s degree), and 3 = “high level of education” (e.g., master’s degree or higher). (d) Income was measured with the question “What is your monthly income before tax?” in Danish Crowns (1 USD = 6.35 DKK). The response options were: 1 = “Below 10,000DKK,” 2 = “10–20,000DKK,” 3 = “20–30,000DKK,” 4 = “30–40,000DKK,” 5 = “40–50,000DKK,” 6 = “50–60,000DKK,” 7 = “60–70,000DKK,” 8 = “70–80,000DKK,” 9 = “More than 80,000DKK.” These categories were reduced for descriptive purposes for Table 1 so that 1–3 = “Below average,” 2–4 = “Average,” 5+= “Above average”; however, in all analyses the original scale was used. (e) The number of children was obtained by asking how many children participants had from 0 to 8.

Divorce-Related Variables

(a) Marriage duration was calculated in years and months from marriage date to divorce date; (b) legal divorce duration was calculated in days from the legal divorce date to survey response date; (c) number of divorces was obtained by asking, “How many time have you divorced?” with response options including 1 = “One time,” 2 = “Two times,” 3 = “Three times,” and 4 = “More than three times”; (e) divorce initiator status was ascertained with the question “Who initiated your divorce” and 1 = “Me,” 2 = “Mostly me,” 3 = “We mutually agreed,” 4 = “Mostly my former spouse,” 5 = “My former spouse,” 6 “Not sure.” Initiator status responses were reduced so that 1–2 = “Me,” 3 = “We mutually agreed,” 4–5 = “My former spouse,” and 6 = “System missing” [only seven participants (0.4%) responded “not sure”]; (f) New partner status was obtained with the question “Do you or your ex have a new partner?” with the following response options: 1 = “Yes, we both have a new partner,” 2 = “No, none of us have a new partner,” 3 = “I have a new partner, but not my ex,” 4 = “My ex has a new partner, but not me”; (g) Divorce conflict was assessed employing the six-item self-report Divorce Conflict Scale (DCS). The DCS measures six dimensions of divorce-related conflict: communication, co-parenting, global assessment of former spouse, negative and pervasive negative exchanges and hostile, insecure emotional environment, and self-perceived conflict ( Hald et al., 2020d ). The internal consistency of the DCS scale was high (α = 0.88).

Physical and Mental Health

The second version of the Short Form 36 (SF-36) Health Assessment was used for the core outcomes of this study. The SF-36 is a 36-item self-report measure that is a widely used instrument to assess health-related quality of life over the previous 4 weeks among general populations and diverse patient groups ( Maruish, 2011 ). The instrument includes the following eight domains which are measured using 35 items: physical functioning, role physical (role participation with physical health problems), bodily pain, general health, vitality, social functioning, role-emotional (role participation with emotional health problems), and mental health. The final item is not included in the domains subscales and addresses self-evaluation health transition. The responses are given with a Likert scale or a yes/no format. Domain scores are reported in 0–100 transformed scores and t -scores that are calculated from the raw scores and higher scores indicate better health status (see Maruish, 2011 for more information). The physical health and mental health summary variables are calculated using all eight health domains based on their relative factor analytical weights. Many language versions of the SF-36 exist and the instrument has been determined to be a valid and reliable instrument for a wide range of populations ( Bjorner et al., 1998 ; Maruish, 2011 ). In this study, all of the eight health scales demonstrated high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.85–0.93).

Data Analyses

Missing data were less than 5% for all variables in the present paper, which is below the proportion of missingness that may bias results ( Schafer, 1999 ; Bennett, 2001 ; Dong and Peng, 2013 ). Thus, the data were omitted “listwise” in analyses. For the legal divorce duration variable, outliers were changed to missing values using the moderately conservative ± 2.5 times the median absolute deviation (MAD) threshold, as recommended by Leys et al. (2013) . To assess gender differences, sociodemographic and divorce-related characteristics were compared using two-sample t -tests and chi-square tests.

Prior to any other data analyses, a rake weight was constructed and applied to the data. The rake weight was based on gender, education, and previous number of divorces and adjusted for sample representativeness (see section “Participants”). When constructing rake weights, a set of variables for which the distribution is known are chosen, and the statistical program creates weights for each case until the sample distribution aligns with the population for those variables. The resultant weight was applied to the data. Thus, all following data analyses (correlations, comparisons to norms, cut-off score comparison, and hierarchical regressions) reflect results with the weight applied.

One-sample t -tests were employed to compare our sample with the available Danish normative data from the Danish SF-36 user’s manual, which comprise a random population sample of 4,080 Danish adults (52% women) from the SF-36 Health Assessment Danish Manual study (for more information regarding this normative population sample, see also Bjorner et al., 1998 ). For comparisons, the SF-36 0–100 transformed scale scores were used.

Pearson correlation analyses were used for assessing bivariate correlations between variables. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to assess the independent contribution to the explanation of the variance SF-36 physical and mental health summary t -scores. In a first step, age, number of children, income, and education were entered as predictors; in a second step, marriage duration, number of previous divorces, divorce initiator status, and new partner status were entered as predictors. DCS scores were entered as a predictor in the third step. This approach allows for an assessment of the unique contributions of sets of variables (i.e., demographics and divorce-related variables), and specifically, allows for an assessment of the unique contribution of divorce conflict, beyond the contribution of demographics and divorce-related factors.

When compared with Danish normative data, male participants reported lower role physical scores [ t (878) = −9.38, p < 0.001, d = 0.32], worse general health [ t (878) = −5.66, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.19], lower vitality [ t (875) = −31.88, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.08], decreased social functioning [ t (878) = −23.51, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.79], lower role emotional scores [ t (878) = −25.63, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.87], and worse mental health [ t (875) = −40.79, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.38], but better physical functioning [ t (879) = 6.66, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.23] and lower levels of bodily pain [ t (878) = 2.34, p = 0.020, Cohen’s d = 0.08], than the Danish normative male population.

Statistically significant differences were found on the SF-36 domains for women. Compared with the Danish normative female population, female participants reported lower role physical scores [ t (880) = −3.00, p = 0.003, d = 0.10], worse general health [ t (883) = −7.25, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.24], lower vitality [ t (878) = −33.00, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.11], lower social functioning scores [ t (880) = −23.19, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.78], decreased role emotional capacity [ t (880) = −25.86, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.87], and worse mental health [ t (878) = −38.31, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.29], but better physical functioning [ t (883) = 9.94, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.33] and lower levels of bodily pain [ t (880) = 2.92, p = 0.004, Cohen’s d = 0.10] (see Figures 1 , ,2 2 ).

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SF-36 physical health domain means compared to normative data.

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SF-36 mental health domain means compared to normative data.

Comparison cut-off scores were created such that those with t -scores below 44 were categorized as poor functioning, those with t -scores between 44 and 56 (i.e., average) were categorized as normal functioning, and those with t -scores above 56 (i.e., above) were categorized as superior functioning. The comparisons revealed that for the intervention group, 8.3% fell below the cut-score on physical health (normal = 23.8% and superior = 68%) and 73.6% fell below the cut-score on mental health (normal = 19.9% and superior = 6.6%). Similarly, for the control group, 8.0% fell below the cut-score on physical health (normal = 22.5% and superior = 69.5%) and 72.6% fell below the cut-score on mental health (normal = 23.8% and superior = 3.6%).

Among men, bivariate correlation analyses demonstrated that lower age, higher income, higher education, shorter duration marriages, fewer previous divorces, and lower mental health scores were significantly associated with better physical health ( p < 0.05). Among women, lower age, higher income, higher educational level, fewer previous divorces, new partner status, lower divorce conflict, and lower mental health scores were significantly associated with better physical health ( p < 0.05). Among men, higher age, longer marriage duration, more previous divorces, initiator and new partner status, and lower divorce conflict scores were significantly associated with better mental health, while for women higher income, fewer previous divorces, initiator status, and lower divorce conflict scores were significantly associated with better mental health ( p < 0.05; see also Table 2 ).

Correlations among sociodemographic variables, divorce conflict scale scores, physical and mental health summary scores ( N = 1856, men n = 617, women n = 1239).

Force enter hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to assess whether socio-demographic and divorce characteristics predicted mental and physical health and whether divorce conflict added to the explanatory value of mental health after controlling for sociodemographic variables and divorce characteristics. The first step of the analyses included the sociodemographic variables of age, number of children, income, and education, and the second step included the divorce-related variables of marriage duration, number of previous divorces, divorce initiator status, and new partner status, while the third and final step included divorce conflict. The variables (Step 3) explained 14.6% of the variance of the physical health summary scores for men [ F (12,875) = 12.33, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.146] and 8.8% for women [ F (12,878) = 6.96, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.088]. Among men, lower age and higher income significantly added to the prediction of better physical health ( p < 0.05). Among women, higher income, fewer previous divorces, new partner status, and lower divorce conflict added to the prediction of better physical health ( p < 0.05) (see also Table 3 ).

Multiple regression analyses predicting SF-36 physical health summary t -scores.

For mental health, sociodemographic and divorce-related variables, as well as divorce conflict (Step 3) accounted for 19.3% of the explained variance among men [ F (12,875) = 17.15, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.193] and 9.9% among women [ F (12,878) = 7.89, p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.099]. Factors that significantly added to the prediction of better mental health for men were more children, more previous divorces, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower divorce conflict, while for women, higher income, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower divorce conflict significantly added to the prediction of better mental health.

Regarding the study hypothesis, among both men and women, divorce conflict was found to significantly add to the explanation of mental health after controlling for basic sociodemographic variables and divorce characteristics (see also Table 4 ).

Multiple regression analyses predicting SF-36 mental health summary t -scores.

Pertaining to research question one, across gender, the study found that the mental health of Danish divorcees was significantly different from and worse than the Danish background population immediately following divorce. Further, across all mental health indicators, the magnitudes of these differences were large [i.e., Cohen’s ( d ) = 0.78–1.38]. The results for physical health were more equivocal. While both male and female divorcees reported better physical functioning in everyday life than the Danish background population, both genders also reported worse general health than the background population immediately following divorce.

The results for mental health corroborate existing research in the field and, notably, the effect sizes here were large, which may mainly reflect the timing of the collection of baseline data. With the unique opportunity to collect data very close to the juridical divorce (on average less than five days from juridical divorce) and the fact that the majority of the sample divorced without any prior separation period, data may have been less subject to a “time heals effect” ( Hald et al., 2020a ). Following Amato (2000) DSR, this means that time has not yet had a chance to mitigate the adverse effects of the divorce. Further, although caution needs to be taken regarding the generalizability of the sample, due to the non-probability sampling process, the results offer some of the first insights into how adverse the impacts of divorce on mental health may be immediately following divorce, using a range of common mental health indicators ( Sander et al., 2020 ).

The equivocal findings concerning physical health among divorcees immediately following divorce, we speculate, mainly have to do with (a) the study sample, (b) the content of questions of the outcome measure, and (c) the timing of measurements. Accordingly, the study sample comprised relatively younger individuals as compared to the background population sample used for comparisons. The majority of the items from the physical health scale include responses to tasks most non-elderly individuals would easily be able to accomplish, but which may prove increasingly difficult with age (e.g., walking one block, dressing and bathing, or lifting or carrying groceries), and this may account for the better physical health among our study sample as compared to the background population. Further, as first suggested by Sander et al. (2020) , when it comes to physical health, a “time hurts” effect may also be at play, whereby physical health is more adversely affected over the course of time following divorce than immediately after the divorce. A causal mechanism may be that reduced mental health increasingly adversely affects physical health over time ( Sander et al., 2020 ). We encourage future studies to further investigate this.

From an applied point of view, across diverse samples and patient groups, better health-related quality of life as measured by the SF-36 has been found to be associated with lower risk of morbidity, mortality, cancer as well as the recurrence of cancer, anxiety, and depressive symptoms (e.g., Lacson et al., 2010 ; Saquib et al., 2011 ; Folker et al., 2019 ). Further, multiple studies have found that worse health-related quality of life as measured by the SF-36 instrument is predictive of higher occurrence of work absence due to sickness, hospitalizations, and higher health care costs among both general populations and across multiple subpopulations (e.g., Lacson et al., 2010 ; Laaksonen et al., 2011 ; Pymont and Butterworth, 2015 ). In conjunction with the study results, especially for mental health, this means that there is sound human and financial reasoning in developing interventions that may help divorcees cope with adverse (mental) health effects of their divorce and, that among many divorcees, the need for help may be especially pronounced immediate following their divorce.

Pertaining to research question 2 and the study hypothesis, it was found that for men, lower age and higher income added to the prediction of better physical health. Among women, higher income, fewer previous divorces, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict added to the prediction of better physical health. For mental health, among men, it was found that more children, more previous divorces, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict added to the prediction of better mental health, while for women, higher income, participant divorce initiation, new partner status, and lower levels of divorce conflict were found to add to better mental health. Moreover, our study hypothesis that divorce conflict would add to the overall prediction of mental health, even when other sociodemographic variables and divorce characteristics were controlled for, was supported. Of note, lower divorce conflict also predicted better physical health for women.

The current study indicates that, already at the time of or close to juridical divorce, higher degrees of divorce conflict are associated with worse mental health, even after accounting for other sociodemographic variables and divorce-related factors. This may not be surprising, given that higher degrees of divorce conflict are likely to negatively interfere with or complicate important decisions and life choices around the time of juridical divorce, like division of property, co-parenting, and child custody. This study finding accentuates the need to focus on divorce conflict levels already at divorce onset ( Hald et al., 2020d ).

Amato’s DSR theory stipulates that the adverse effects of divorce depend on the interplay between risk and protective factors ( Amato, 2010 ). These factors include many of those found in this study to significantly predict both mental and physical health, including income (DSR = economic security, standards of living), new partner status (DSR = having a new partner), and levels of divorce conflict (DSR = conflict with the former partner). Accordingly, the results of this study may be seen as support for Amato’s DSR theory, in that DSR theory views divorce “not as a discrete event, but as a process that unfolds over months and even years” ( Amato, 2010 , p. 10). Moreover, it follows that mental and physical health may already be adversely affected prior to the juridical divorce as a consequence of a prolonged stressful and/or unsatisfactory relationship ( Hald et al., 2020c ). Therefore, the measurements of mental and physical health employed in this study, done immediately after juridical divorce with little or no prior separation period, may “capture” the mental and physical health consequences of this “…process that unfolds over months and even years” ( Amato, 2010 , p. 10).

Notably, even in an egalitarian society such as the Danish one, with a large public sector, a well-developed welfare system, and fewer differences between rich and poor as compared to most other Western countries, higher income still significantly predicted mental well-being among women and physical well-being among both men and women. In accordance with DSR theory, this suggests that income may be a key protective factor against negative divorce-related health impacts ( Leopold, 2018 ), even in highly egalitarian societies. Even more so, income may be more important than level of education, a variable previously found to be related to post-divorce psychological and physical health outcomes ( Cohen and Finzi-Dottan, 2012 ; Perrig-Chiello et al., 2015 ), but which was not found to significantly predict mental or physical well-being in this study.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to include a large sample of very recently divorced individuals, employ standardized and validated mental and physical health measures consisting of multiple health-related indicators with available background population data for direct comparisons, and a multitude of sociodemographical and divorce-related variables previously shown to be associated with health-related outcomes. However, when evaluating the results, the following study limitations should be taken into consideration. The study used a non-probability sample of divorcees and employed self-report measures, which may limit the generalizability of findings. Specifically, the study sample may have consisted of individuals with more conflicts and more mental and physical problems than those who did not participate in the study, as these individuals may have believed that the intervention platform would be particularly helpful to them. Conversely, it may also be that people with more conflicts and more mental and physical problems may have decided not to participate because it may have felt threatening to their sense of self ( Howell and Shepperd, 2012 ; DiBello et al., 2015 ), and thus, are underrepresented in the current study. Additionally, we were unable to determine if both partners in a prior marriage participated in the study, which may affect the assumption of independence of data in the analyses. Further, due to the cross-sectional nature of our data, the results preclude causal inferences. Lastly, while the Danish context is interesting for several reasons, including the minimal societal stigma surrounding divorce and the presence of greater gender and income equality, there is also great acceptance of non-marital cohabitation, such that many couples choose to not get legally married. As the study targeted formerly legally married individuals, individuals who cohabitate were not recruited, and thus, it is unclear whether the study results may generalize to this group of individuals. However, we expect that the relationship dissolution process is similar for married and cohabitating individuals, to the extent that there can be children involved and shared assets (e.g., house). Therefore, we do not have reason to expect that non-married individuals differ from married individuals; however, future research should seek to examine this point.

In conclusion, the study found that the health-related quality of life of Danish divorcees immediately following divorce was significantly different from and worse than the comparative Danish background population. Further, higher levels of divorce conflict predicted worse mental health even after controlling for other sociodemographic variables and divorce characteristics often targeted in research on the interplay between divorce and health. The findings underscore the relevance of providing divorce interventions for divorcees as early as possible following their divorce to improve health-related quality of life.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency and the Regional Scientific Ethical Committee of Copenhagen, Denmark. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

This original research report is part of the doctoral thesis for SS. SS and GH were responsible for the design of the intervention and the study protocol and also responsible for the manuscript writing. JS was responsible for data analysis. CØ and AC were responsible for feedback and editing. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

For due diligence, we would like to declare that the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where the authors work, owns the digital intervention platform “Cooperation after Divorce (CAD)” while two of the co-authors (GH and SS) hold the commercial license and intellectual property rights to the platform through the Company “CAD” (Samarbejde Efter Skilsmisse ApS). The reviewer LL declared a shared affiliation, with no collaboration, with the author to the handling editor at the time of the review.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the Egmont Foundation for support with the development of the digital platform “Cooperation After Divorce,” the Danish State Administration for help during the data collection process, and the Carlsberg Foundation for their funding of the research project “When Marriage Fails.”

Funding. This work was financially supported by “The Carlsberg Foundation Distinguished Associate Professor Fellowship” (the last author) under Grant No. CF16-0094.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Relationships Articles & More

When is divorce good for women, recent research and memoirs have a message: ending bad marriages can dramatically improve women’s mental and even physical health..

Divorce is having a moment—for women.

For example: Actor Drew Barrymore, who recently divorced for the third time, shared on her talk show that divorce is liberating.

I had so much shame around divorce and, for some reason, something happened, and I said, “I’m no longer willing to feel this way.” And it just lifted from me. When you find yourself in a situation that isn’t working out the way you hope and want, you accept it and improve the quality of life by moving forward. And for me, divorce is no longer a reason for shame. I am totally free.

For her part, model Gisele Bündchen says it takes “courage to leave an unhealthy relationship” and sees her divorce from football star Tom Brady as a new opportunity for her —“when a door shuts, other doors open.” Model Emily Ratajkowski marked her recent divorce from Sebastian Bear-McClard by turning her engagement ring into a divorce ring and praising how transformational a divorce can be , especially for women.

Women, who are overwhelmingly the ones to initiate divorces , actually are feeling better about it. In fact, they are celebrating it. A few years ago, those celebrations looked like divorce parties, divorce cakes, divorce registries, and divorce selfies.

More recently, Gen X women have turned to writing memoirs that put their marriages, as well as the institution of marriage, under the microscope and magnify just how toxic heterosexual marriage can be. These memoirs, from Australian author Clementine Ford ( I Don’t ), and American authors Leslie Jamison ( Splinters ) and Lyz Lenz ( This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life ), not only skewer heterosexual marriage but also praise breaking free.

As someone who has been divorced twice—once after a short-lived marriage when I was in my early 20s, and once at midlife with two tween children—and who has written extensively about marriage and divorce, I know a thing or two about both.

I don’t regret either of my divorces. As weird as it may sound, divorce was the best thing that happened to me (besides having my children). In fact, I would never have become an author if I had not left my last marriage, which lasted 14 years.

Divorce is much more commonplace and accepted nowadays—a recent Pew Research Center survey reveals that 55% of Americans believe unhappy spouses tend to stay in bad marriages longer than they should. But should we be celebrating divorce, especially if young children are involved?

The answer can be yes. There is a positive, research-based case for divorce—if the split happens under the right conditions.

What can be good about divorce?

Paul R. Amato is a sociologist at Penn State University whose research focuses on marital quality, divorce, and family issues. In his 2000 review of research on the consequences of divorce for adults and children, he notes that numerous studies have found that many people flourished after divorce. They experienced higher levels of autonomy and personal growth once untethered from their marriage. Many women had a boost in self-confidence and a better sense of control. Divorced moms tended to see improvements in their career opportunities and their social life, as well as an increase in happiness.

While most studies of the past tended to focus on the negative consequences of divorce, he writes, “If more studies explicitly searched for positive outcomes, then the number of studies documenting beneficial effects of divorce would almost certainly be larger.”

Some more recent studies have done that.

“There is a societal assumption that divorce is always negative,” says Connie R. Wanberg, a professor at the University of Minnesota who recently co-authored a study on how divorce impacts people in the workplace . Still, even Wanberg was surprised how many said they were better at their jobs after their split . “Some of these individuals had been in very dysfunctional relationships,” she says.

Like the recent divorce memoirs reveal, women tend to thrive post-divorce, not necessarily financially (in fact, many women suffer unnecessary financial hardship in a divorce ), but emotionally and physically.

Women are “significantly more content than usual for up to five years following the end of their marriages, even more so than their own average or baseline level of happiness throughout their lives,” according to a 2013 study from London’s Kingston University .

One reason women feel happier than men after a divorce, despite the financial repercussions, could be that “women who enter into an unhappy marriage feel much more liberated after divorce than their male counterparts,” according to Yannis Georgellis, director of the university’s Centre for Research in Employment, Skills and Society, who co-led the study.

Women are more likely than men to get mental health support while divorcing, more likely to depend on supportive relationships, less likely to rely on drugs or alcohol post-divorce, and more likely to turn to experiences that enrich them, such as travel, researchers observe.

San Francisco Bay Area therapist and author Susan Pease Gadoua has been offering groups for women in transition since 2000, mostly to divorcees and soon-to-be divorcees. For many years, a consistent theme she heard was how ashamed they felt as well as experiencing a sense of failure.

If “until death do us part” is how society measures a successful marriage, a union that ends in divorce, instead of death, is seen as a “failed marriage,” even if the marriage was loveless, sexless, lonely, and full of anger and perhaps contempt.

While some gray divorcees—boomers in their 60s and older, a cohort that is divorcing faster than any other age group —Gadoua counsels still feel those pressures, most of her younger clients do not.

“There’s definitely less stigma and it’s not uncommon to hear from women who come to see me that they’re on their second divorce, even third. That’s quite prevalent. Those numbers don’t seem to matter anymore,” she tells me.

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Boomers grew up in an era when there was little to no help for parents going through a divorce, or their children. And the influential books penned by therapist Judith Wallerstein—1989’s Second Chances and 2000’s The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce —convinced millions that divorce was more harmful than previously thought and with lifelong consequences for young children caught in the crossfire. Her methodology and research, however, have since come under scrutiny and been criticized .

“The idea that divorce is bad, and kids are going to be damaged, those are really outdated beliefs. We have the choice to have a different kind of divorce today, for people to think, ‘Oh, I have the power to make this a good divorce,’” Gadoua says. “It can bring out the worst in people, but it doesn’t have to.”

Coming back to life

Still, mothers who leave their marriages while their children are still young, as Barrymore, Bündchen, Ratajkowski, and all the memoirists did, are often judged harshly.

“Mothers in almost every culture are programmed to bury their needs in the greater needs of family. Acting on their own desires, following their hearts, searching out their own private happiness—all of this is still perceived as transgressive and profoundly selfish,” British author Lily Dunn writes of her decision to leave her husband for another man while her two children were young.

As famed therapist Esther Perel writes in her book The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity , “Home, marriage, and motherhood have forever been the pursuit of many women, but also the place where women cease to feel like women.”

Which is why divorce often kickstarts a woman’s libido.

“For women who appear to have ‘low desire’ in long-term marriages, many times when they get divorced they’re sleeping around with everyone,” sexologist Tammy Nelson and author of The New Monogamy: Redefining Your Relationship After Infidelity , tells me. “People confuse the loss of sexual interest with the loss of sexual interest with a specific person.”

And for some heterosexual women, a divorce leads them into the arms of another woman for the first time, as described by authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Glennon Doyle in their bestselling memoirs. In fact, some 36% of women in their 40s in a same-sex relationship had been previously married to men. It’s higher for women in their 50s and older.

“[M]any women report feeling a ‘second adolescence,’ with many of the associated feelings and behaviors. She is not crazy if she suddenly has sex on the brain all the time!” writes Nancy C. Larson in her 2006 study “ Becoming ‘One of the Girls’: The Transition to Lesbian in Midlife .” Larson herself came out as lesbian after 19 years of marriage to a man.

No one would promote divorce as a path to sexual pleasure. Still, a 2018 study of middle-aged hetero, bisexual, and trans divorcees found that while some of the women had regrets about the end of their marriages, divorce got them out of their comfort zone and opened them up sexually.

“Women sometimes have to break rules to find sexual pleasure for themselves in a society which is not consistently supportive of female sexual pleasure,” the researchers wrote. “It also takes seriously women’s right to seek pleasure and to overcome barriers to pleasure even if those barriers are socially sanctioned.”

Mothers and children

Of course, divorced moms aren’t just focused on their sexuality. They focus on their children, too.

According to a 2019 U.S. Census Bureau report that culls numerous studies in the States and overseas, divorce laws can hugely benefit divorced moms, who often invest more in their children’s schooling. They also have more time to spend on leisure as well as work, and spend less time on chores.

That’s what Lyz Lenz discovered, in part because she had 50-50 shared custody with her former husband, as an increasing number of divorced parents in the United States do, according to a 2022 paper, “ Increases in shared custody after divorce in the United States .” As Lenz writes in an essay for Glamour magazine :

I had more time to write and more time to work. I started making more money. I was able to do things I’d never been able to do before: a set at open-mic night at a local comedy club; drive to Minneapolis to see my friends. I had less housework, and I didn’t have to worry about having a fight if I made vegetarian food for dinner, or just didn’t cook dinner at all, or if I swore, or if I wanted to stay out late at a book reading (yes, all real fights we had). I had more friends because I could be a better friend.

In a 2020 study, “ Families in Later Life: A Decade in Review ,” sociologist Deborah Carr found that although divorce has long been described as among the most stressful of life transitions, more recent studies indicate that many older adults adapt and even thrive post-divorce, from finding new romantic partnerships, to spending more time volunteering, to strengthening ties with their adult children.

Typically, it’s the mothers who have more contact with their adult children after divorce. For dads, later-in-life divorce cuts the odds of frequent contact by nearly half, at least for a while, especially with their sons, mostly because adult children often blame their fathers for the divorce. And while a father’s re-partnering often contributes to those fractures—they’re seen as “swapping families”—a mother’s re-partnering “has no appreciable effects on their relationships with their adult children,” according to a 2022 study .

As Carr shares with AARP , despite some emotional bumps right after a split, most older adults eventually “fare quite well” after a few months. “Whether you’re depressed or not depends upon what the relationship was like and the context in which it ended. If it was a conflictual marriage and not emotionally satisfying, there are fewer symptoms of depression and loneliness.”

Lenz believes divorce is a cause for celebration. She celebrated hers by burning her wedding dress—“a reminder of all my failed dreams”—that had been hanging in her closet for the 12 years of her marriage.

“In response to news of divorce, people often reply, ‘I’m sorry.’ But I think we should say ‘congratulations.’ Congratulations for prioritizing yourself. For being brave. For the self-knowledge to know when to leave,” she writes in the Washington Post .

Gadoua thinks rather than celebrate divorce—although individuals are certainly free to do so—what’s really needed is a way for former spouses to honor the exit from their marriage.

“It’s a personal choice to celebrate,” she says. “I do think that we lack in our culture a rite of passage out of marriage. The women who come to my retreat are so grateful to have a sense of closure and some kind of ceremony around honoring what they had but looking forward to what is in front of them.”

About the Author

Vicki Larson

Vicki Larson is a longtime award-winning journalist, author of Not Too Old for That: How Women Are Changing the Story of Aging (Rowman & Littlefield, April 2022), coauthor of The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists, and Rebels (Seal Press, 2014), named a Best Book of 2014 by PopSugar , and author of the upcoming book, LATitude: How You Can Make a Live Apart Together Relationship Work .

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Persuasive & Argumentative Essays about Divorce: Free Tips

A divorce is a life-changing experience that affects spouses and their children (if there are any). Since divorce rates are relatively high in modern society, more and more people face this problem nowadays.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

When you are assigned to compose an argumentative essay about divorce, you should be as careful as possible. Remember that the split-up of marriage can be a painful experience for everyone involved.

The article will give you useful advice on how to write an outstanding paper on the topic. Learn the essential features of the following types:

persuasive essay about divorce,
for and against essay,
causes and effects of divorce essay,

Check tips from Custom-writing.org below and write the best paper!

💍 How to Write It
📂 Essays by Type
✒ Causes and Effects

✍️ Divorce Essay Topics

💍 how to write a divorce essay.

The general structure of essays on divorce is quite common:

introduction;
conclusion.

Yet, there are some variations of what info to include in the body, depending on the essay type. The following structure is applicable for divorce argumentative essay. To learn about the features of other types, keep on reading our article.

Just in 1 hour! We will write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour

Argumentative divorce essays are composed according to the standard structure:

1. Thesis Statement about Divorce

A divorce essay introduction isn’t anything extraordinary as you have to introduce your topic and position.

You should always give broad information about the issue and state the main problems you will discuss in your writing.
Make a general statement about the consequences of divorce or the common divorce effects on people.
Then write your thesis statement on divorce. Clearly explain to the audience the topic you’re going to discuss and your position on that topic. In case you find this task difficult, try using a thesis generator for argumentative essay . This will save you some time.

That’s it! Now your divorce essay introduction is ready.

What’s next?

2. Main Body

This section presents all of your ideas and arguments related to the topic of divorce.

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Here you can write about the adverse effects of divorce on children or the most common reasons people divorce.
Use compelling arguments and support your ideas with examples.

There are tons of surveys and statistics about divorce on the internet, so it won’t be too challenging to gather the information you need.

3. Conclusion

In the last paragraph, you have to sum up your paper and leave a final expression.

Summarize every idea presented in your divorce essay.
Restate your thesis statement on divorce, relying on your reasoning.
Then list your concluding thoughts on this topic.

Make your sentences clear and easy to follow. Use synonyms to improve your writing style. Such an approach will help you convince the readers and express your thoughts better.

📂 Divorce Essays by Type

The content and reasoning of each paper on divorce depend primarily on the type of essay . See the following sections to understand how to write each of them.

Here are a few types you can consider:

Get an originally-written paper according to your instructions!

Argumentative Essay about Divorce

When it comes to divorce, there are many disputable topics—for example, the reasons people separate or its impact on children. It’s easy to find support and statistics for both issues. And you’ll need them as facts are a crucial part of a divorce argumentative essay.

As a starting point:

Research your idea and choose a side to support. Make sure that among all argumentative essay topics about divorce, you selected the most interesting for yourself. In your thesis statement, concisely express your position, so the reader can quickly get it.

Then, start writing the entire essay. Regardless of what type of paper you are writing—anti or pro divorce argumentative essay—your writing should meet these requirements:

Base your points on logic;
Present both sides of the arguments, but support only one;
Take into consideration counterclaims;
Support all the arguments by valid evidence;
Use a calm, informative tone.

Don’t forget to incorporate quotes and figures to convince your readers.

Persuasive Essay about Divorce

What is the goal of writing persuasive essays ? It’s to convince your reader that your position on a particular problem is true.

Therefore, writing this paper means that you should identify an individual problem related to the topic. In the introduction of your persuasive essay about divorce, you should choose your side and deliver it to the reader.

Crucial note:

Similarly to an argumentative essay, you have to provide credible facts to support your position. Yet here, you use them to back up your opinion and persuade your reader.

While composing your persuasive essay about the legalization of divorce, remember its distinctive features:

Based on emotions;
Presents only one side of the argument;
Ignores counterclaims;
The tone is dynamic, emotionally-charged, and aggressive to some extent.

Cause and Effect Essay on Divorce

Whether it concerns old parents or a young couple, divorce typically has the same causes and effects. You can often see them clearly, even in books or movies.

The essay outline for the causes and effects of divorce essay is quite common:

Introduction.

In your divorce essay introduction, provide a general background and compose a clear thesis statement. For example, your thesis might look like this:

A divorce, caused by the spouses’ expectations mismatch, results in a lack of communication between children and one of the parents.

In this part of your essay, investigate the cause and effect of divorce, you stated before.

For the given thesis, the main points would be the following:

The primary cause of divorce is the mismatch in the spouses’ expectations from the marriage.

The divorce often results in a lack of children’s interactions with one of the parents.

Conclusion.

Synthesize all of your arguments and give your audience a space for a further investigation of your issue.

Narrative Essay about Divorce

If your assignment is to write a family essay, you can choose from a wide range of topics. For this purpose, a marriage essay or a divorce essay would be perfect.

In a short paper about your family, it isn’t easy to cover many topics. So choose only one.

Look through some narrative essay topics and select the one you like:

The story of my divorce: how did I decide to break up with my spouse?
My life completely changed after my parents divorced.
How my life looked like before the divorce with my wife/husband and how it looks now.
The way divorce destroys healthy communication between children and parents in my family.

For and Against Divorce Essay

As you know, both the negative and positive effects of divorce are disputable, making them appealing to discuss. There are many recent studies and relevant statistical data on the topic to help you write such an essay.

This topic would also be great for a speech on divorce.

Wondering what are the for and against divorce arguments? Take a look at the following:

✒ Divorce: Causes and Effects

We have a pleasant bonus for you! Below, you can find useful arguments and insightful ideas that you can use in your papers on divorce. Apply our concepts in any type of essay, adjusting them to your topic.

Divorce essays can cover the following issues:

Generally Known Facts on Divorces

When covering this issue in your persuasive essay on divorce, you will have to cover the problem altogether. Include the common marriage problems that psychologists all over the world study. Use their statistical data on divorces when crafting your argument.

Divorce is quite a broad topic, and you may want to narrow it down. With so much information available, you could write a research paper on divorce without any difficulty.

Statistical Data on Divorces

Good divorce essays should include enough statistical data. It will add more scientific value and reveal your research abilities. Besides, facts and figures present many exciting topics to comment on.

For example:

You can do significant research concerning divorce causes and consequences. Draw a contrast between divorce in several countries, or examine the age and education of people who officially separate more often.

Reasons for Divorces

What does an essay on divorce mean without discussion of its reasons?

Find out different sociologists’ viewpoints on the reasons for divorces. Then underline the cause you consider to be the most truthful one.

You can also provide your own theory on the grounds for divorces in your persuasive essay on divorce. The key point is to prove the accuracy of your statement.

Divorce Prevention Ideas

If there is a problem, there must be some solution. So, think of the possible ways to make a marriage work.

Investigate divorce causes from a scientific point of view. Examine the primary studies that reveal why people actually break up. Also, discuss the precautions that can help married couples avoid significant conflicts.

Effects of Divorce on Children

Parents sometimes forget that their divorce isn’t only about them but also about their children. It causes psychological problems for kids, which you can classify in your paper. Don’t forget to add some statistical data on divorce to support your arguments.

Every child reacts differently to their parents’ breakup. It’s a rare case when divorce consequences are positive, making the effects on kids an urgent topic to discuss.

Positive Effects of Divorce

Sometimes divorce isn’t a catastrophe but rather the only way to heal wounds and begin a new life. Often, people don’t recognize that they need to change their lives for the better. This situation is primarily related to abusive marriages or those with regular cheating.

In these cases, the positive effects of divorce may seem easy to understand. However, psychologists have to make great efforts to persuade people to end their relationships. Write a paper making this same argument.

Negative outcomes of divorce on children .
Connection between divorce and antisocial behavior of children.
Family crises and the issue it causes: divorce, remarriage, stepparents, adoption.
Effect of divorce on teenagers ’ academic performance.
Causes and consequences of divorce .
What can be done to decrease divorce rates in America ?
Does parental divorce affect the rates of juvenile delinquency ?
The most widespread reasons for divorce .
Analyze marital success factors and Gottman’s predictors of divorce.
Impact of divorce on child’s mental health .
Change of divorce law throughout history.
Positive and negative changes in children’s behavior after divorce.
Divorce : a disaster or a benefit?
Is cheating one of the main reasons of divorce?
Gender stratification impact on divorce trends.
Effect of divorce on family relationship .
Do divorced parents change their child-rearing styles ?
List of factors typically associated with higher divorce rates .
The support required for all the members of divorced and single-parent families .
Analyze the reasons for high divorce rates .
Does divorce only impact adolescent in a bad way?
Effect of poverty on divorce rates.
Specifics of divorce in the UAE .
Does divorce lead to depression ?
Family therapy and its role in decreasing divorce rates.
The impact of divorce on children-parents relationship.
Evaluation of child custody in divorce proceedings.
How to manage the stress of divorce.
Effect of divorce on children’s self-esteem.
How to minimize the devastating consequences of divorce .
Addiction as the reason for divorce.
Effective communication in marriage and its role in preventing divorce.
Divorce as the only way out of an abusive relationship .
Financial issues of divorce and how to overcome them.
Parental support is the best way to help children to go through divorce.
How do adolescents adjust to parental divorce?
Do boys and girls react to the parental divorce the same way?
Social media can destroy relationship and lead to divorce.
Can Christian counseling help couples to resolve their issues and avoid divorce?
Poverty among divorced women.
Young marriage has more chances to break-up.
Respect is the best way to get marriage satisfaction and avoid divorce.
Is interfaith marriage doomed to divorce?
Why a successful marriage may end in divorce?
Marriage contract will help to facilitate the legal side of divorce process.
Reduction of the number of divorces .
Personal development after divorce.
How family relationships influence future marriage and divorce chances of children.
Child support in case of marriage divorce.
Will lack of family and work balance definitely result in divorce?

If you are stuck on writing, you can always ask us for help! Whether you need a persuasive essay on divorce or any other paper, we are here and ready to assist.

Thanks for reading the article! Share it with friends who may need our tips or assistance.

🔗 References

Essay Introductions
Transitional Words and Phrases
Argumentative Paper Format
The Writing Process
Divorce Argument Essay: Bartleby
Cause and Effect Essay: The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Roane State Community College and UNC at Chapel Hill Writing Center
Counterargument: Gordon Harvey, the Writing Center at Harvard University
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The Impact of Divorce on Children

Why growing up in two homes is so hard, and what can help..

Posted August 4, 2022 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

The Challenges of Divorce
Find a therapist to heal from a divorce
Ongoing conflict between parents after they split up is deeply unsettling for children.
Except under extreme circumstances, children are much better off keeping regular, ongoing contact with both parents.
Divorced parents should try to co-parent together in a constructive, cooperative, and respectful way.

Nearly half of married couples in the United States eventually get divorced , according to some estimates. Because it occurs so often, it’s easy to forget just how difficult and traumatic divorce can be for children. Research published by sociologist Lisa Strohschein showed that, even before marital breakup, children whose parents later divorce exhibit higher levels of anxiety , depression , and antisocial behavior than peers whose parents remain married. There is a further increase in anxiety and depression in children when parents do divorce. U.S.-based psychologist Sharlene Wolchik and colleagues found that parental divorce is associated with significant risks for children and adolescents, including substance abuse and addictions, mental and physical health problems, and poor educational outcomes.

Traumatic Loss of Divorce

There is not always enough support or even acknowledgment of what a traumatic loss divorce can be for couples and their children. Whatever the reasons for the split, there are usually feelings of grief , sadness, anger , betrayal, guilt , and shame . Marital breakdown can leave both parents feeling devastated, and the stress can evoke primitive and powerful feelings of abandonment, isolation, and fear . This can lead to anxiety or depression. It's not easy to give your children what they need when you are highly vulnerable and emotionally fragile. Practically and logistically, things can be harder for you and your children when a marriage breaks down. Divorce often brings financial strain and social difficulty. Children can believe themselves to be the cause of their parents’ divorce. Guilt and shame can make them feel worthless, anxious, and depressed. Every part of their lives—living arrangements, extra-murals, decisions about schooling, and holidays—can be fraught with conflict if the parents are not able to co-operate with one another.

You might not like or trust your ex, especially early on in the separation and divorce process. It can feel deeply painful and upsetting as well to be separated from your children while they are in the care of their other parent—quite possibly your least favourite person under the circumstances. There may be realistic concerns—sometimes related to the use of drugs or alcohol —about the safety of children in the care of your ex. Some parents even worry about different kinds of abuse when their children are with the other parent. But, for the most part, the children have to find a safe place for themselves in two separate homes. It is essential that they are helped to feel at home in both places. It can sometimes even be a relief, after a divorce, for children to be in an environment where there is peace and an absence of tension.

Parents at War

When their mother and father are in enemy camps, a child has to try to figure out who is right and who is wrong, who is "good" and who is "bad." If a mother believes, for example, that her ex-husband is dangerous or evil, a child might feel unsafe and mistrustful of his father. The child might reject the father to keep himself and his mother psychologically safe. It can be hard for a child to love and trust a parent who is hated by the other.

Kate Scharff, author of Divorce and Parenting Wars , writes that the legal system often brings a highly adversarial tone to divorce. Unless your circumstances are such that you can't avoid it, try not to enter into a win/lose battle with an ex. Children are almost always victims in this conflict. They can feel torn apart when their parents cannot manage a civil, amicable, respectful dissolution of their marriage. Canadian psychologist Arthur Leonoff explains in his book The Good Divorce why divorce is so difficult for children and what parents and their therapists can do to help them. Preserving the child’s treasured mental image of herself with her two biological parents is vital, according to Leonoff, because this mental image forms the basis of the child’s identity .

An important message for parents after marital breakdown is to try to preserve, as much as possible, the ongoing relationship with your ex—who will always, for better and for worse, be your children's other parent. For the sake of your children, try to co-parent together in a constructive, cooperative, and respectful way.

Lisa Strohschein, ‘Parental Divorce and Child Mental Health Trajectories’, Journal of Marriage and Family 67, no. 5 (2005): 1286–1300, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2005.00217.x .

Sharlene A. Wolchik, et al., ‘Developmental Cascade Models of a Parenting-Focused Program for Divorced Families on Mental Health Problems and Substance Use in Emerging Adulthood’, Developmental Psychopathology 28, no. 3 (August 2016): 869–888, doi: 10.1017/S0954579416000365.

Scharff, Kate. ‘Divorce and Parenting Wars’. In Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy: Foundations of Theory and Practice, edited by David E. Scharff and Jill Savege Scharff, 279–294. London: Karnac, 2014.

Arthur Leonoff, The Good Divorce: A Psychoanalyst’s Exploration of Separation, Divorce, and Childcare (London: Routledge, 2018), 71–199.

Jenny Perkel is a clinical psychologist and the author of Children in Mind and Babies in Mind.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Divorce — Divorce, Its Causes, Effects, and Solutions

Divorce, Its Causes, Effects, and Solutions

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Divorce Essay: Causes and Effects

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Divorce in a family

Why did not they manage to create happy family?

Causes of divorce in a family issue is relatively new, but already urgent problem. It became widespread only a couple of decades ago. According to the statistics, in 1950s only 3% of families got divorced, in ‘60s it was already 10%. In 1980s due to different reasons 33% of family could not avoid divorce. Today the number of divorces is about 45%. So there is no need to explain why this essay about divorce has much importance and must be read. Besides, young generation starts to forget what value family has and why they should try to save it.

Usually young families that exist for less than a year get divorced, also 1/3 of divorces happen in families that exist for 1 – 5 years. That is why the problem of divorces is the problem of young people.

Of course, there are cases when divorce is necessary, when husband and wife do not respect each other, do not love each other and do not take into consideration the opinion of each other, so in this case a man and a woman in a family are almost enemies. So how can it be possible to avoid divorce in such a family? Is it necessary at all? Trying to save the image of a happy family, parents may hurt emotionally their children.

There are about 120 children on a hundred divorced families. And in the most of cases children stay with their mothers. Besides, more than half of women do not marry for the second time, it means that there is no male influence on a child in the process of upbringing.

And our school much feminized lately can not replace the role of the father in a family. This fact leads to bad consequences.

One of the main reasons of unhappy family life and as a consequence of divorce is the fact that future husband and wife do not each other well enough before they decide to get married. When a young man and a young woman with similar opinions and interests meet each other, we can say that they are lucky. However, in most of cases people have to learn to live together, to adapt to family life. Unfortunately, not everyone has patience, desire and knowledge to do that.

Let’s look at the example of two families. In both families husband and wife are talented people. In both families they love each other. But the first family gets divorced, and the second one does not. What did lead to the divorce in the first family? In this family the wife did not see friend in her husband, did not consider him head of the family. She treated him as an enemy and used to think that children were a trap that her husband purposely made to become more successful in the life. So when he studied his postgraduate education, the wife decided to get divorced. In the second family the married couple supported each other. The wife decided not to chase after the husband. The husband continued to get education while she took café of the family. She said she did this for the family’s sake. The husband thanks to his wife’s support became professional and perspective scientist. As a result, the whole family got the benefit, what can not be said about the first one.

In the past you could often hear such a phrase: “On the family council we decided…” Why do we hear it so seldom today? Instead we can often hear about the competition between husband and wife, that they do not want to give way to their second half. And after that they naively think that they can create happy family and get family happiness.

About 40% of women and half of men after divorce create second marriage, so it means that the reason of divorce becomes the reasons of women’s loneliness.

Women after divorce in most of cases do not give birth again. So divorces have negative impact on the demographical situation. Young people so easily decide to get divorced and have very unserious attitude to the marriage, that it seems that divorce is a new fashion trend, and this is another unusual cause of divorce. Nowadays it is so easy to divorce, especially when a couple does not have children. Such a simple way of marriage annulation leads to irresponsible attitude to marriage itself.

Fashion in the sphere of family life is very dangerous. And not everyone realizes it. People often hide their own egoism behind love. It is so easy to blame love and jealousy, wife’s or husband’s bad temper.

Most of cases of divorce due to various reasons happen in the cities-millionaires. In such cities the family social control of relatives, grandfathers and grandmothers, neighbors, etc. is less strong. And young people more often and usually without much thinking get married. Also there is much higher number of venal and fictitious marriages, which very soon come to their end. Also many young girls and boys have to get married because they wait for a child.

Very often young people say that the family is destroyed but they can not say the exact reason. And you want to ask them: “Who were you in love : creators or destroyers? Whom did you become in fact?”

Causes of divorce

Research of the most common divorce reasons among young family gave the following result:

1st place. Cause of divorce is harmful habits, in particular the problem of alcoholism in a family (in most cases husband’s alcoholism);

2nd place. Cause of divorce is adultery of one of the spouses;

3rd place. Cause of divorce is light-minded, thoughtless decision to get married;

4th place. Cause of divorce is living conditions, problems related to them and lack of money;

5th place. Cause of divorce is conflicts in a family because of the parents.

There is another reason that should be mentioned. Everyone knows such a term as marriage of convenience. And everyone understands that the ground of the marriage is not love, but certain benefit of one of the spouses. In such a family in the first years or eve months of marriage the basic rules of mutual respect and moral principles are violated. And it is logically, because what is the base of marriage (material interest instead of feelings), that is the result of marriage. Conflicts in such a family begin from the very beginning, because there is no love and respect between the couple. People often forget that it is not possible to build happy marriage basing on material interest. Such spouses divorce because they have the material aspect, but the spiritual is absent.

The consequences of divorce

What does divorce for the married couple mean? Divorce is a painful phenomenon that leaves marks on a human soul, it is always catastrophe, tragedy that affects people sometimes for years. Divorced spouses sometimes miss each other, feel anxiety, despite the fact that they were the initiators of divorce and considered their family life unhappy. Even if they manage to keep good relationships, for a child divorce is always a catastrophe, it is a tragedy for the whole life, because child can be absolutely happy only having both of parents. Besides, scientists discovered that children of divorced parents in their adulthood divorce more often than children raised in full families.

Divorce is the process that causes much harm to a child, affects the mental health. Moreover, gils raised without father often begin to hate men in general. Divorce also has negative influence on the child’s discipline and the personality development. Children often start doing what they want, they usually have problems with friends, memory and school. Since the child is between parents, he /she will always suffer more than the parents.

Most of divorced men and women become supporters of free relationships because of their previous negative family experience. They also are afraid of the repetition of the situation, that is why they do not get married again.

So, now you see how much important it is to consider all the possible negative consequences of divorce before taking such a decision. Also young people should understand the whole responsibility when they decide to get married. Anyway, I hope that the situation with divorces will improve soon and that people will be more serious about marriage and family relationships.

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Parent–Child Relationships Following Gray Divorce: Stronger Ties With Mothers, Weaker Ties With Fathers

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Zafer Buyukkececi, Thomas Leopold, Parent–Child Relationships Following Gray Divorce: Stronger Ties With Mothers, Weaker Ties With Fathers, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B , Volume 79, Issue 5, May 2024, gbae004, https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbae004

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With rising gray divorce rates, older individuals face heightened risk of social isolation, highlighting the significance of adult children as a vital source of solidarity in the absence of a spouse. Simultaneously, gray divorce may undermine parent–adult child relationships and weaken the core of the family safety net of older persons. This study examined the consequences of gray divorce for parent–child relationships.

We used longitudinal data from the German Family Panel (Pairfam), a large-scale panel study collecting detailed information about family relationships and family structure. We focused on adult children aged 18–49 ( n = 9,092) whose parents were married at first observation. During an observation period spanning up to 13 years (2008–2020), 606 individuals experienced parental divorce. Using fixed-effects models, we estimated changes in contact frequency, emotional closeness, and instrumental and emotional support provided to parents.

Consequences of gray divorce varied strongly between mothers and fathers. Adult–child solidarity intensified for mothers but eroded for fathers. This impact was strongest for changes in contact frequency, moderate for changes in emotional closeness, and smaller for changes in support. The persistence of gender role differentiation was evident, as daughters displayed closer ties and provided greater support to their mothers following a gray divorce.

Divorce alters relationships with adult children. A gray divorce tilts adult–child solidarity toward mothers and puts fathers at a higher risk of social isolation. Moreover, the observed gender dynamics underscore the continued influence of gender roles on family dynamics in the aftermath of gray divorce.

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Sophia Bush confirms relationship with Ashlyn Harris: ‘The universe had been conspiring for me’

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Sophia Bush finally feels like she can breathe after coming out as queer and opening up about her long-rumored relationship with soccer star Ashlyn Harris.

“When I take stock of the last few years, I can tell you that I have never operated out of more integrity in my life. I hope that’s clear enough for everyone speculating out there,” the “One Tree Hill” alum wrote Thursday in an essay for the April issue of Glamour .

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‘One Tree Hill’ alum Sophia Bush and retired USWNT goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris reportedly ‘went out on their first dinner date a couple of weeks ago.’

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The 41-year-old detailed how her one-year marriage to Grant Hughes felt phony and fell apart amid her grueling fertility issues. She also explained how her recovery from that relationship led her to Harris, who simultaneously had been going through her own divorce from former teammate Ali Krieger.

Bush wrote that after her storybook wedding — which she doesn’t regret — she found herself “in the depths and heartbreak of the fertility process.” She kept all that private as she endured months of ultrasounds, hormone shots, blood draws that led to scar tissue in her veins and numerous egg retrievals, “while simultaneously realizing the person I had chosen to be my partner didn’t necessarily speak the same emotional language I did.”

The “Work in Progress” and “Drama Queens” podcast host said she felt something in her “seismically shift” about six months into that journey and “knew deep down that I absolutely had made a mistake,” ultimately filing for divorce after about 13 months of marriage. Her separation from Hughes, an entrepreneur and real estate investor, saw Bush moving to London “to get out of our house” and doing a play to “jump-start the joy” she had been chasing. (She withdrew from “2:22 A Ghost Story” in July 2023 due to illness.)

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The “Love, Victor” and “Chicago P.D.” actor moved back to her empty home in L.A. last summer and said that an ever-expanding group of women in her life started opening up about their own issues. That group included the “kind ear” of the U.S. Women’s National Team goalkeeper, whom she’d first met in 2019. She didn’t expect to find love there.

“I don’t know how else to say it other than: I didn’t see it until I saw it. And I think it’s very easy not to see something that’s been in front of your face for a long time when you’d never looked at it as an option and you had never been looked at as an option.”

It took other people in their “safe support bubble” to point out to Bush that she and Harris would finish each other’s sentences or be deeply affected by the same things, she wrote.

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In her essay, Bush shed light on that purported first date, which she described as a 4½-hour meal that was “truly one of the most surreal experiences of my life thus far.”

“I do know that for a sparkly moment I felt like maybe the universe had been conspiring for me,” she wrote. But navigating the judgment she felt in the public eye was disheartening.

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Actress Sophia Bush, right, and her fiancé Grant Hughes, left, take a public tour of the White House, Friday, April 29, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

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Sophia Bush Pens Essay on Experiencing 'Real Joy' After Coming Out: 'I Finally Feel Like I Can Breathe'

Bush also opened up about her divorce from Grant Hughes and the start of her relationship with former women's soccer player Ashlyn Harris

Brendan Le is an Editorial Intern at PEOPLE with three years of experience working as an editor and writer.

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Sophia Bush is opening up like never before.

Penning an essay as Glamour ’s April 2024 cover star, Bush, 41, publicly came out as “queer” for the first time. “I finally feel like I can breathe. I don’t think I can explain how profound that is,” she wrote.

"I don't think I can explain how profound that is. I feel like I was wearing a weighted vest for who knows how long," she continued. "I hadn’t realized how heavy it was until I finally just put it down. This might sound crazy—but I think other people in trauma recovery will get it—I am taking deep breaths again. I can feel my legs and feet. I can feel my feet in my shoes right now. It makes me want to cry and laugh at the same time."

In August 2023, the One Tree Hill alum filed for divorce from entrepreneur Grant Hughes after a year of marriage. Two months later, PEOPLE broke the news that the actress began seeing former American soccer player Ashlyn Harris . The retired athlete had also filed for divorce from then-wife and fellow soccer pro Ali Krieger in September 2023.

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Although rumors arose of an affair between Bush and Harris, a source told PEOPLE “there was no salacious story” to their relationship, “though the public may want there to be.”

Addressing the “home-wrecker” allegations in her essay, Bush wrote, “The idea that I left my marriage based on some hysterical rendezvous—that, to be crystal-clear, never happened—rather than having taken over a year to do the most soul crushing work of my life? … It feels brutal.”

At the end of what she called a “long and thoughtful and exhaustive” journey, the former Chicago P.D. star said she now has “real joy” in coming to terms with her sexuality.

“It took me 41 years to get here,” she shared. “When I take stock of the last few years, I can tell you that I have never operated out of more integrity in my life. I hope that’s clear enough for everyone speculating out there, while being as gentle as I possibly can be.”

Bush first met Harris in 2019, but during the summer of 2023, she recalled how they became close friends while consoling each other through recent splits from their respective spouses. Eventually, she asked Harris to have a “non-friend-group hang,” leading to a four-hour dinner that she described as one of “the most surreal experiences” of her life.

“Maybe it was all fated. Maybe it really is a version of invisible string theory. I don’t really know,” she wrote. “But I do know that for a sparkly moment I felt like maybe the universe had been conspiring for me. And that feeling that I have in my bones is one I’ll hold on to no matter where things go from here.”

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Since Bush and Harris’ relationship went public, the couple have stepped out together in December at Art Basel in Miami and last month at Elton John ’s Oscars party. On March 20, the two celebrated Ruby Rose ’s 38th birthday at Magic Castle in Los Angeles.

“They were very affectionate and shared kisses throughout the night,” an insider shared of the pair. “They seem very, very happy.”

Given their side effects, weight-loss drugs might not be good for all

The injectable drug Ozempic. Credit: AP/David J. Phillip

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When will we see through the haze of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy?

Hopefully soon. These drugs might reach 30 million U.S. users by 2030. Surging, off-label demand has come with unintentional overdoses, rising prices and medication shortages. Further expansion seems likely with the Food and Drug Administration’s recent approval of another class of medications to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack, and stroke in adults with cardiovascular disease and either obesity or overweight.

These medications, called GLP-1 receptor agonists or semaglutides, have gotten the attention of the New York City Council. One member has proposed a law requiring the city health department to release information on the consequences of off-label use of these medications for weight loss.

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There is no denying: Semaglutides are a powerful class of drugs helping push back on the obesity epidemic. They offer weight loss, reduced appetite, and slower emptying of the stomach that makes patients feel full faster.

I’ve also seen at my Great Neck-based practice what can happen when patients stop taking semaglutides. It can trigger weight (re)gain, a greater appetite, a surge of blood sugar, and lean muscle mass loss with body fat percentage gain. There can be withdrawal symptoms.

Data, physician awareness, and patient education can help us assess what’s best for each patient, medication or bariatric surgery. The lack of knowledge translates into only about 200,000 patients per year pursuing weight-loss surgery — about 1% of those who qualify for it.

Physicians need to share that bariatric surgery remains an effective, long-term tool that has become safer and less invasive. It can be highly effective for weight loss and management of obesity-induced complications, especially when surgeons use minimally invasive procedures. This approach, used in 90% of bariatric surgeries, results in shorter hospital stays, less blood loss during procedures, less postoperative pain, and fewer pulmonary complications and wound infections.

We need to review data comparing outcomes for patients who have undergone gastric bypass, sleeve gastrectomy, and intensive medical therapy alone. Of patients who underwent medical therapy, 12% achieved the desired diabetes targets after a year, but positive effects of metabolic surgery lasted longer and also improved cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Those advantages must be considered against potential post-surgical drawbacks like anemia or gastrointestinal problems.

It’s clear semaglutides have tremendous potential, though we don’t yet know their full impact. If we can find optimal ways to wean patients off those them, perhaps they might help patients maintain weight loss after bariatric surgery.

Semaglutides also have opened the door to reframing obesity as a medical condition — without shame. When we can consider weight-loss options without stigma, patients are better positioned to receive information from their doctors and make decisions. The less starry-eyed we are, the better we can focus on the positive, long-term health outcomes each patient deserves.

THIS GUEST ESSAY reflects the views of Dr. Aurora Pryor, system director for bariatric surgery at Northwell Health and surgeon in chief at Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

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How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward

Journalists, researchers and the public often look at society through the lens of generation, using terms like Millennial or Gen Z to describe groups of similarly aged people. This approach can help readers see themselves in the data and assess where we are and where we’re headed as a country.

Pew Research Center has been at the forefront of generational research over the years, telling the story of Millennials as they came of age politically and as they moved more firmly into adult life . In recent years, we’ve also been eager to learn about Gen Z as the leading edge of this generation moves into adulthood.

But generational research has become a crowded arena. The field has been flooded with content that’s often sold as research but is more like clickbait or marketing mythology. There’s also been a growing chorus of criticism about generational research and generational labels in particular.

Recently, as we were preparing to embark on a major research project related to Gen Z, we decided to take a step back and consider how we can study generations in a way that aligns with our values of accuracy, rigor and providing a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue.

A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations.

We set out on a yearlong process of assessing the landscape of generational research. We spoke with experts from outside Pew Research Center, including those who have been publicly critical of our generational analysis, to get their take on the pros and cons of this type of work. We invested in methodological testing to determine whether we could compare findings from our earlier telephone surveys to the online ones we’re conducting now. And we experimented with higher-level statistical analyses that would allow us to isolate the effect of generation.

What emerged from this process was a set of clear guidelines that will help frame our approach going forward. Many of these are principles we’ve always adhered to , but others will require us to change the way we’ve been doing things in recent years.

Here’s a short overview of how we’ll approach generational research in the future:

We’ll only do generational analysis when we have historical data that allows us to compare generations at similar stages of life. When comparing generations, it’s crucial to control for age. In other words, researchers need to look at each generation or age cohort at a similar point in the life cycle. (“Age cohort” is a fancy way of referring to a group of people who were born around the same time.)

When doing this kind of research, the question isn’t whether young adults today are different from middle-aged or older adults today. The question is whether young adults today are different from young adults at some specific point in the past.

To answer this question, it’s necessary to have data that’s been collected over a considerable amount of time – think decades. Standard surveys don’t allow for this type of analysis. We can look at differences across age groups, but we can’t compare age groups over time.

Another complication is that the surveys we conducted 20 or 30 years ago aren’t usually comparable enough to the surveys we’re doing today. Our earlier surveys were done over the phone, and we’ve since transitioned to our nationally representative online survey panel , the American Trends Panel . Our internal testing showed that on many topics, respondents answer questions differently depending on the way they’re being interviewed. So we can’t use most of our surveys from the late 1980s and early 2000s to compare Gen Z with Millennials and Gen Xers at a similar stage of life.

This means that most generational analysis we do will use datasets that have employed similar methodologies over a long period of time, such as surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau. A good example is our 2020 report on Millennial families , which used census data going back to the late 1960s. The report showed that Millennials are marrying and forming families at a much different pace than the generations that came before them.

Even when we have historical data, we will attempt to control for other factors beyond age in making generational comparisons. If we accept that there are real differences across generations, we’re basically saying that people who were born around the same time share certain attitudes or beliefs – and that their views have been influenced by external forces that uniquely shaped them during their formative years. Those forces may have been social changes, economic circumstances, technological advances or political movements.

When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

The tricky part is isolating those forces from events or circumstances that have affected all age groups, not just one generation. These are often called “period effects.” An example of a period effect is the Watergate scandal, which drove down trust in government among all age groups. Differences in trust across age groups in the wake of Watergate shouldn’t be attributed to the outsize impact that event had on one age group or another, because the change occurred across the board.

Changing demographics also may play a role in patterns that might at first seem like generational differences. We know that the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse in recent decades, and that race and ethnicity are linked with certain key social and political views. When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

Controlling for these factors can involve complicated statistical analysis that helps determine whether the differences we see across age groups are indeed due to generation or not. This additional step adds rigor to the process. Unfortunately, it’s often absent from current discussions about Gen Z, Millennials and other generations.

When we can’t do generational analysis, we still see value in looking at differences by age and will do so where it makes sense. Age is one of the most common predictors of differences in attitudes and behaviors. And even if age gaps aren’t rooted in generational differences, they can still be illuminating. They help us understand how people across the age spectrum are responding to key trends, technological breakthroughs and historical events.

Each stage of life comes with a unique set of experiences. Young adults are often at the leading edge of changing attitudes on emerging social trends. Take views on same-sex marriage , for example, or attitudes about gender identity .

Many middle-aged adults, in turn, face the challenge of raising children while also providing care and support to their aging parents. And older adults have their own obstacles and opportunities. All of these stories – rooted in the life cycle, not in generations – are important and compelling, and we can tell them by analyzing our surveys at any given point in time.

When we do have the data to study groups of similarly aged people over time, we won’t always default to using the standard generational definitions and labels. While generational labels are simple and catchy, there are other ways to analyze age cohorts. For example, some observers have suggested grouping people by the decade in which they were born. This would create narrower cohorts in which the members may share more in common. People could also be grouped relative to their age during key historical events (such as the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic) or technological innovations (like the invention of the iPhone).

By choosing not to use the standard generational labels when they’re not appropriate, we can avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes or oversimplifying people’s complex lived experiences.

Existing generational definitions also may be too broad and arbitrary to capture differences that exist among narrower cohorts. A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations. The key is to pick a lens that’s most appropriate for the research question that’s being studied. If we’re looking at political views and how they’ve shifted over time, for example, we might group people together according to the first presidential election in which they were eligible to vote.

With these considerations in mind, our audiences should not expect to see a lot of new research coming out of Pew Research Center that uses the generational lens. We’ll only talk about generations when it adds value, advances important national debates and highlights meaningful societal trends.

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Kim Parker is director of social trends research at Pew Research Center

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Bob Heil, Whose Innovations Enhanced the Sound of Rock, Dies at 83

A groundbreaking audio engineer, he provided the large-scale systems that brought tours by the Who and the Grateful Dead to life.

A black-and-white photo of Bob Heil, a man with shoulder-length hair and a light-colored short-sleeved shirt, stands next to a piece of audio equipment.

By Alex Williams

Bob Heil’s career as a groundbreaking sound engineer who brought thunder and rich sonic coloring to tours by rock titans like the Grateful Dead and the Who began behind a pipe organ in a 1920s movie palace.

Mr. Heil, who helped usher rock into its arena-shaking era by designing elaborate sound systems that allowed rock juggernauts of the late 1960s and ’70s to play at volcanic volumes, first learned to appreciate the full spectrum of musical tones as a teenager, when he took a job playing the massive Wurlitzer pipe organ at the opulent Fox Theater in St. Louis.

“We had to voice and tune 3,500 pipes, from one inch to 32 feet,” he said in a 2022 video interview with the audio entrepreneur Ken Berger. “Voicing taught me to listen. Very few people know how to listen. Listening, you’ve got to mentally go in and dissect.”

Mr. Heil died on Feb. 28 of cancer in a hospital in Belleville, Ill., his daughter Julie Staley said. He was 83. His death was not widely reported at the time.

Although he worked behind the scenes, Mr. Heil was enough of a force that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland credited him with “ creating the template for modern rock sound systems” In 2006, the Hall installed a public display containing his mixing boards, speakers and other items.

“The concert business became what it is today because he made the experience so much better for the customers,” Howard Kramer, who at the time was the Hall of Fame’s curatorial director, said in an interview that year with The Houston Chronicle. “No one made the leaps in live sound that he did.”

Mr. Heil got started in the business in 1966. Up to that point, top rock ’n’ roll bands often had to rely on feeble sound systems that were drowned out by screaming fans. That roar, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones wrote in his 2010 autobiography, “Life,” was often so deafening in the band’s early days that audiences could hear nothing more than the drums: “We used to play ‘Popeye the Sailor Man’ some nights, and the audience didn’t know any different.”

Mr. Heil gave rock shows the sound arsenal they needed. “We were the first company back then to build a package P.A .,” he said in a 2008 interview with the audio magazine TapeOp. “You could come to Heil Sound in 1972 and leave the facility with a complete system: snakes, road cases, everything — even a modular mixer.”

He also put a distinctive stamp on 1970s rock with the Heil Talk Box, an effects pedal that transformed guitar parts and vocals into an interstellar drone. Joe Walsh used it in memorable fashion on his hit “Rocky Mountain Way” in 1973, and the Talk Box was a signature of Peter Frampton’s monster-selling 1976 double album, “Frampton Comes Alive!”

Mr. Heil’s career took a major turn in 1971, he told Mr. Berger, when a manager for the Who frantically called him in St. Louis, asking if he could get his crew to Boston the next day. The opening show there, part of the band’s tour in support of its hallowed album “Who’s Next,” had been a disaster, with one newspaper noting that the band’s “soaring brand of rock could not be heard” under the venue’s “miserable conditions.”

Roger Daltrey, the band’s lead singer, threatened to fly back to England until Mr. Heil arrived with his rig. When Mr. Daltrey “did the sound check,” Mr. Heil recalled, “it was OK, because it was a monster P.A.” He would work with the Who for the next decade.

Robert Gene Heil was born Oct. 5, 1940, in St. Louis, the elder of two children of Robert and LaVerna (Bills) Heil. His parents owned a clothing shop in the small town of Marissa, Ill., about 40 miles east of St. Louis.

As a youth, Bob not only played the accordion and the organ but also became a ham radio enthusiast, which gave him an early opportunity to fiddle with electronics. After graduating from Marissa Township High School in 1958, he spent time studying at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and the St. Louis Institute of Music.

In 1966 he opened Ye Olde Music Shop in Marissa, where he rented Hammond organs and repaired instruments for professional musicians. He also began to design his own audio systems.

Before long, he was supplying them to country acts like Dolly Parton and Little Jimmy Dickens as they came through St. Louis. His big break came in 1970, when management of his old employer, the Fox Theater, called him and told them of a crisis: The Grateful Dead was set to play there, but the band’s P.A. system had been confiscated by authorities in a drug raid.

On a subsequent call with Mr. Heil, Jerry Garcia, the band’s lead guitarist and vocalist, “almost dropped the phone” when he learned that Mr. Heil had a sophisticated system featuring an amplifier by McIntosh, the high-end audiophile brand, Mr. Heil told Mr. Berger. Performing Musician magazine later called the resulting concert “the night that modern live sound was born.”

In addition to his daughter Ms. Staley, Mr. Heil is survived by his wife, Sarah (Benton) Heil; another daughter, Barbara Hartley; a stepson, Ash Levitt, the president and chief executive of Heil Sound; a sister, Barbara Schneidewind; and seven grandchildren. Both daughters are from his first marriage, to Judy Mortensen, which ended in divorce.

By 1980, Mr. Heil had grown weary of life on the road, so he created a new line of headsets and microphones for the ham radio industry. At one point, Joe Walsh, another ham enthusiast, told him he wanted to use one of his microphones onstage.

Mr. Heil protested that the microphones were not concert quality. Mr. Walsh disagreed. “I was at his house and went downstairs to his little studio and he proved it to me,” Mr. Heil told TapeOp. “So I had to start listening all over again.”

Alex Williams is a reporter in the Obituaries department. More about Alex Williams

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