Buy essay on The Effects of Divorce on Children

During my internship I experienced very deep and complex situation of one of the children. That 9 year old boy seemed cheerful and quite ordinary at first sight although he frequently became an initiator of quarrels and fights between children. Moreover the boy started doing not well at school. Parents tended to explain his negative behavior and educational results with his age group crisis, but one situation, which I chanced witness cleared the situation up.
Once I saw how aggressive and rude the way the boy spoke to his mother was. First I wanted to talk to parents, but then remembering their attitude to psychological problems of their son(they pretended there were no problems at all), I decided to speak to the boy himself. At first he argued with me telling that he actually was good to his mother, but then suddenly told that he behaved just not better than she did. That is how I learned about problems in his family. The parents were divorcing; their relations were tensed and sometimes even hostile. On the one hand the boy thought he hadn’t got any family any more, while on the other hand he tried to play the leading role in the family instead of his father and care about his mother, so when he heard how he argued with him he felt underestimated and not loved any more. “I tell her(his mother) what she must do but she doesn’t listen to me as if I am stupid…”, “I know what to do…”, “I don’t need them any more…” – all these phrases indicate the unhealthy psychological condition of the boy.
It is a topical question what is better for children: to live within the family (no matter healthy or not it is) or live with a single parent. Many researches suppose that hostility in the family has a larger impact on the child development than living with both parents does. Constant fights between the parents influence directly on children’s self esteem, their further marriage relationships and even their academic results at schools.
There are many aspects which cause stress for children whose parents divorce. First of all it is changes which children (especially those under age of 10) fear the most. Secondly it is fear of abandonment. The family is not a stable structure for children any more< so they fear once they will be abandoned by both parents. Moreover children feel alone, angry and even guilty because of hostility between parents. Also there is a thought that divorce should be considered not just a stress in the life of a child but an event which may have long-term consequences on his or her future life. One of the most common fears of the adults whose parents divorced when they were children was that they will probably repeat the model of the unhappy marriage of their parents.
The information collected from the literary sources I found reliable enough to refer to I learnt how pitiful the consequences of divorce may be for children. From my personal experience I got to know that problems may not simply be on the surface, but may be hidden deep inside. I am convinced that most of the negative aspects of divorce influencing well-being of a child may be eliminated, but only in case if both parents, teachers and caregivers work together to rehabilitate the child’s healthy vision of the family and relationships within it.
References
Wallerstein, JS. “Children after Divorce: Wounds That Don’t Heal.” “The Psychiatric Times: Medicine and Behavior.” 8: 8-11, 1989
Weiss, R.S. “Going It Alone”. New York: Basic Books, 1979