This comprehensive review of over 200 current research reports highlights areas where links between parental separation and outcomes for children have been well-established and pinpoints remaining areas of contention and ignorance. It goes on to discuss the possible policy implications and highlights specific areas where further research is needed.
The broad-ranging comparative nature of the review allows for a rapid and increased understanding of what aspects of family life influence children's development and how they may be affected if their parents separate.
Research over many decades about the impact of divorce and separation on children has generated useful knowledge, but also led to confusion and misunderstanding. A comprehensive review of over 200 research reports, summarised here, finds:
- Parental separation is most usefully viewed as part of a process beginning before divorce itself and continuing long after. Support may be needed and intervention required at any stage to reduce possible detrimental effects on children.
- Although short-term distress at the time of separation is common, this usually fades with time and long-term adverse outcomes typically apply only to a minority of children experiencing the separation of their parents.
- However, these children have roughly twice the probability of experiencing specific poor outcomes in the long term compared with those in intact families.
Children of separated families have a higher probability of:
Factors affecting outcomes:
- Some widely held views about separation are not supported by the evidence:
- - the absence of a parent-figure is not the most influential feature of separation for children's development;
- the age at which children experience separation is not in itself important;
- boys are not more adversely affected than girls.
If recent trends continue, more than a third of new marriages will end within 20 years and four out of ten will ultimately end in divorce. More than one in four children will experience parental divorce by age 16. Divorce rates in England and Wales (but not Scotland or Northern Ireland) are among the highest in Europe, though considerably less than in the United States (where most research has been carried out).
This Foundations reviews the existing research into the nature of, and possible underlying causes of, particular outcomes for those experiencing parental separation. The factors responsible for poorer outcomes are not well understood. The review presented here identifies the main areas in which children from separated families are likely to be disadvantaged, both in the short and long term, and evaluates possible explanations.
Children's experience of parental separation
Interviews with children around the time of separation show that most wish their parents had stayed together and hope they will get back together. They are likely, in the short term, to experience unhappiness, low self-esteem, problems with behaviour and friendships, and loss of contact with a significant part of their extended family.
Good, continuing communication and contact between children and both parents appear especially important in assisting children to adapt. Clear explanations about 'what' is happening and 'why' can help, as can reassurance for younger children that they are not being abandoned and that a parent can still be a parent even if he/she leaves the home to live elsewhere.
The immediate distress surrounding parental separation usually fades with time and most children settle into a pattern of normal development. Nevertheless, studies have found that there is a greater probability of poor outcomes for children from separated families than others - and that these can be observed many years after separation, even in adulthood.
Disadvantages among children of separated families
Typically, the areas of disadvantage identified by research only apply to a minority of those whose parents have separated during childhood. There is no simple or direct relationship between parental separation and children's adjustment, and poor outcomes ar