This review addresses major questions about divorce, around which much contemporary research is oriented. These involve questions of the consequences of divorce for the adjustment of children and the vulnerability and resiliency of children in coping with divorce, whether children are better off in a conflictual intact family situation or a divorced family, and how mothers, fathers, and clinical or educational interventions can moderate the effects of divorce. Although research in the past decade has yielded considerable information about these questions, issues that need further investigation are also presented.
Despite a recent leveling off of the divorce rate, almost half of the children born in the last decade will experience the divorce of their parents, and most of these children will also experience the remarriage of their parents. Most children initially experience their parents' marital rearrangements as stressful; however, children's responses to their parents marital transitions are diverse. Whereas some exhibit remarkable resiliency and in the long term may actually be enhanced by coping with these transitions, others suffer sustained developmental delays or disruptions. Others appear to adapt well in the early stages of family reorganizations but show delayed effects that emerge at a later time, especially in adolescence. The long-term effects are related more to the child's developmental status, sex, and temperament; the qualities of the home and parenting environments; and to the resources and support systems available to the parents and child than they are to divorce or remarriage per se. In recent years, researchers have begun to move away from the view that single-parent and remarried families are atypical or pathogenic families and are focusing on the diversity of children's responses and to the factors that facilitate or disrupt the development and adjustment of children experiencing their parents' marital transitions.
This review addresses major questions about divorce, around which much contemporary research is oriented. These involve questions of the consequences of divorce for the adjustment of children and the vulnerability and resiliency of children in coping with divorce, whether children are better off in a conflictual intact family situation or a divorced family, and how mothers, fathers, and clinical or educational interventions can moderate the effects of divorce. Although research in the past decade has yielded considerable information about these questions, issues that need further investigation are also presented.
processes such as attachment mechanisms is not known at this time.An important neurological question is the relationship between dissociative processes and other neurological disorders. especially temporal lobe epilepsy (see Zahn. Moraga. & Ray, 1997 for a review). While the appearance of dissociative phenomena among individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy has been well documented, the data do not support a seizure disorder model as a primary mechanism for dissociation. Thus, although it is clear that individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy can show dissociative symptoms, it does not appear that the presence of dissociative symptoms suggests temporal lobe epi epsy.Divorce rates are higher in couples who marry young, are poor, uneducated, urban, and African American.
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