These days, divorce is a fact of life. Estimates are that 45% of all marriages end in divorce.
Usually, a relationship comes to an end after years of unhappiness. Individuals then face the daunting, expensive, and unpleasant tasks of untangling their years of togetherness, including housing, kids, money, and belongings. Aside from making the marriage work in the first place, what can we do to make this wrenching transition healthier?
Understanding the challenges and risks of divorce can help you deal with those challenges if you are divorcing. A few of the top challenges include:
A parent moving out, moving to a new location or school, seeing parents less, even seeing a parent date somebody new—the effects of divorce on children are huge. Children may fantasize about their parents getting back together, or they may have trouble sleeping.
Challenges for children:
Custody: minimizing the hurt
There are many ways that parents can help their children cope with a divorce. How custody issues are managed makes all the difference. Studies have shown that children do best with predictable visiting schedules that are free of conflict.
Helping a child through a divorce
By respecting your children and providing a fair and reassuring presence, you can strengthen your relationship with them and help them handle this difficult time.
Tips for helping a child handle a divorce:
Even if your marriage is unhappy, you should stick it out for the sake of the children.
Research has found that while parents’ unhappiness has a negative effect on children, so does divorce—and in fact children’s situation and outcomes are generally worse after divorce. However, it isn’t so much the divorce itself that seems to be harmful for children as the volatility and conflict in the family. What matters the most is the quality of your interactions with your child and how you handle conflict with your partner or ex in the presence of your child, whether you stay together or divorce.
If you become unhappy in your marriage, it will probably end in divorce eventually.
All marriages have their ups and downs, and many married people find that they are unhappy at some point. Being unhappy at certain points of your marriage does not necessarily mean that things can’t get better or that you will inevitably end up divorced.
It’s easy to make a mistake with your first marriage, but people mature and learn, so second marriages tend to be more successful.
While many people who divorce have successful subsequent marriages, the divorce rate of remarriages is actually higher than that of first marriages. Remarriages can be complicated if they involve blended families. Stepfamily relationships can put stress on a marriage.
Children who grew up in a home broken by divorce are less likely to divorce themselves because they’ve learned from their parents’ mistakes.
Children whose parents divorced actually have a higher rate of divorce than children from intact families. Even so, the majority of children from divorced backgrounds do not experience divorce themselves.
It is hard for a divorced woman to remarry.
According to a study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than half of divorced women went on to marry within five years; three-quarters within 10 years.
Locate mental health and well-being support organizations in your area.
