Marital transitions: A child's perspective.

Abstract

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.

Ajustamento da criança à separação ou divórcio dos pais

“…Temperamento e nível de desenvolvimento são dimensões intrínse-cas à criança, essenciais na compreensão do processo de adaptação à separação ou divórcio parental [21][22][23][24][25] . Crianças com temperamento fácil, inteligentes, responsáveis e socialmente sensíveis evidenciam mais competência de adaptação positiva a essa transição familiar 24 .…”

Marital conflict and children's adjustment: A cognitive-contextual framework.

“…Hetherington (1979Hetherington ( , 1984 suggested that children of different ages differ in their awareness of and ability to cope with interparental conflict, but that no one particular age group is likely to be more affected than another. Although young children may be less able to cope with conflict, they are less likely to be aware of conflict and its implications, whereas older children have a larger repertoire of coping responses but are likely to be more aware of the causes and consequences of conflict (Hethering-ton, 1984;Hetherington, Stanley-Hagen, & Anderson, 1989). This idea has been supported by work on children's response to anger between adults, which shows that 4-to 5-year-old children evidence more distress, but also more adaptive coping responses, than 2-to 3-year-olds (E. M. Cummings, 1987).…”

Psychosocial adjustment and physical health in children of divorce

“…Hetherington et al 5,[10][11][12] enfatizaram consistentemente duas dimensões intrínsecas às crianças, essenciais no processo de adaptação à separação: o temperamento e o nível de desenvolvimento. As crianças com temperamento fácil, inteligentes, responsáveis e socialmente sensíveis são as que evidenciam melhor capacidade de adaptação positiva a esta transição familiar 5 .…”