Youth face many challenges these days, with one very prominent problem being divorce. Personally, my parents are divorced, so this is a challenge that has greatly affected me. Divorce isn’t all that new of a challenge among youth. It has been going on for many, many years. However divorce rates have skyrocketed in the last 60 years, but why exactly is this happening? First of all, raise your hand if your parents are divorced. You see, if this was 1960, only about half of those who raised their hands would have divorced parents.
Divorce rates went wayyyy up from 1960 to 1980. In fact, they more than doubled. There are multiple reasons for this. First, there was the introduction of the no-fault divorce bill, introduced by Ronald Reagan, which was accepted eventually by every state. Prior to this, couples needed a reason to get divorced. Second, many more people were cheating on their spouses in the 70s, and well, that usually means divorce. Finally, feminism helped fuel the divorce fire. Women were standing up to their abusive husbands.
Women were able to get better jobs and support themselves without a husband. These three reasons helped to spike up the divorce rate. And although divorce rates did go way up, they are slowly receding, which is pretty good Now what does divorce do to a child? Drug use and criminal activities are all higher among children with divorced parents.
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Children with divorced parents also have a higher chance of divorcing themselves later in life. Divorce can make school and other activities difficult, as transportation can be difficult for one parent. Parents may try to lie to and manipulate their kids so they get to see them more than the other parent, which can lead to the child having trust issues.
The other parent may let their child do things the other parent doesn’t let them do, or buy their kid stuff, either to be the favorite parent, or just to spite the other parent. Kids can be left without a parental figure present in most of their lives if they don’t get to see their mother or father very often if at all Divorce overall puts a lot of emotional strain on a child. Divorced people also tend to remarry. 70% of all people who divorce will remarry at some point in the future.
What does this mean? Stepparents and stepsiblings. Kids have a difficulty dealing with change, as do nearly all people. A stepparent may do things very differently from the other parent, or kids may not like them simply because they feel like a replacement to their other parent. The child may also feel distant from their stepsiblings, as there may be an age gap, or maybe they just aren’t alike. I’m lucky to have a good relationship with my stepfamilies, but some kids just aren’t as lucky as I am.
Another problem is parents can’t just not get divorced. If the mother and the father fight all the time, that can lead to anxiety and depression. Sometimes, one of the parents is just a bad person, and that’s not a good thing to have around children. The best possible thing that can happen is that both parents can agree on an equal custody agreement, as mine did. A counselor or therapist may be able to help a child cope with the changes of divorce, and it also helps if the parents allow their child to communicate with the other parent whenever they like.
These solutions, however, can only help so much. There will likely always by some negative consequences from a divorce upon a child In conclusion, divorce is a big challenge for many kids in today’s society. Kids have to deal with many things if they’re parents are divorced, such as stepfamilies, manipulative parents, and the overall emotional strain. This is a hard issue to resolve and the negative consequences likely will never fully go away, but we must try our best.
