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by Rebecca K.

Created on: February 01, 2011   Last Updated: February 02, 2011

Divorce can have a strong impact on children, there's no debate about that. Both sons and daughters alike feel the strain when mommy and daddy call it quits. The general idea is, it's easier on them at a younger age than as the child grows. It can also be hard on teens and even adults when their parents marriage suddenly ends.

So what are parents to do? Stay in an unhappy or perhaps abusive marriage for fear of the effect on the children. No. If divorce is absolutely necessary, then it must be done. Long-term effects of living in a dysfunctional marriage can also set a harmful example for children perhaps more so then getting a respectful divorce.

Does divorce cause a more harmful effect on daughters than sons? Some claim that the girls will grow up to "go wild" and will have "daddy issues". This must be based entirely on opinion. While some girls may be resentful towards their mothers for taking away their father, other girls may look up to them for standing up for themselves, becoming independent and perhaps escaping a harmful situation. Certainly it is not accurate to stereotype all daughters of divorced couples as "having daddy issues." Many girls and women who have had fathers in their lives grow to have just as many daddy issues from the role their father played/did not play in their growing up.

Conversely, studies show that divorce can actually be harder on boys than girls:

"...Children who were preschoolers (ages two and a half to almost six) at the time of parental separation initially seemed the most disturbed of any age groups under study (Wallerstein, 1984). At the 18-month follow-up, nearly half of the preschoolers were more disturbed than they had been initially, with boys significantly more disturbed than girls.

"...Hetherington's (1989) cluster analysis of her results yielded three times as many boys as girls in the maladaptive, aggressive-insecure cluster described above (see Effects of Divorce) ... It was hypothesized that the children's increasing responsibilities following divorce had a positive effect on girls that was cancelled out for boys by the maternal custody factor (i.e., problematic mother-son relationship and father absence)."

This study would also make common sense. Perhaps boys feel more pressure to perhaps fulfill the "man of the house role". He may have to be the sole protector of a younger sibling, get a job a a younger age to help with household expenses and may feel the intense absence of his role model, his father.

Sons may also loose the chance to learn valuable skills from their fathers such as: car maintenance, carpentry and hunting skills. That is not to say that a woman cannot teach her son, but these are father bonding moments that the son would likely miss out on.

Do all girls with divorced parents grow to have daddy issues? Unlikely.

http://www.deltabrav o.net/custody/affect ed.php

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