Parental and Environmental Determinants of Children's Behavioral, Affective and Cognitive Adjustment to Divorce

Abstract

Children's adjustment to their parents' divorce was studied in relationship to interspousal hostility, single parenting skills, child-reported good and bad environmental events and time since separation using a sample of 23 boys and 16 girls between 6 and 11 years of age. Families were recruited through newspaper ads, schools and other community organizations. Their middle income parents were separated for between 5 and 60 months, were divorced and were not remarried. Adjustment was broadly defined to include the child's beliefs about divorce, parent-reported behavioral adjustment and child-reported emotional labeling/reactivity. All four independent variables were found to be significantly correlated with adjustment. The potency of hostility and bad events changed over time since separation. Single parenting skills remained associated with child outcome for families across the time period tapped. Some sex differences in the effects of good events emerged.

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