Children of Divorce

Since "no-fault" divorce laws were introduced in Australia in 1975, 1,250,000 divorces have occurred and an estimated 850,000 children have gone through the experience within their family unit. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on 9-10 March, Adele Horin has provided a comprehensive review of studies of the impact of divorce on offspring.

The more detailed research has been done by US psychologists E. Mavis Hetherington and Judith S. Wallerstein that draw on longitudinal studies of people before and after divorce covering up to 25 years in some cases. A list of the references in Horin's article are provided in the Resources section of this site.

The general thrust of conclusions from these studies are that whilst there is a traumatic experience at the point of beak-up, there is not strong evidence that divorce alone is a primary explainer of different abilities to cope with life in later years. Interestingly the studies show that late in life break-up of parents can be more traumatic for children than where this occurs in childhood or adolescent years.

You can assess how the Australian rate of divorce is mapped over the childraising years of different generations by using the Good Times/Bad Times analyser on the Research Center of this site.

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