During the 1970s, a gaggle of supposed experts argued that divorce had few, if any, negative effects on children. One scholar wrote that divorced mothers could enjoy the “development of better relationships with [their] children” while two others said absent fathers were easily replaced.1 But today, social scientists are revising their opinions. They realize that children of divorce are more likely than their counterparts in intact families to drop out of high school, become pregnant as teenagers, and spend time in prison.2 University of Virginia marriage authority W. Bradford Wilcox noted that “[s]ocial-science data about the consequences of divorce have moved many scholars across the political spectrum to warn against continuing the divorce revolution, and to argue that intact families are essential, especially to the well-being of children.”3

Of course, the discovery of divorce’s negative effects was precipitated by the spread of no-fault divorce laws in America beginning 40 years ago. Such laws, which passed in virtually every state, allowed one spouse to dissolve a marriage without demonstrating any wrongdoing by the other. When such laws became widespread, Americans also began to view marriage merely as a vehicle for romance, self-fulfillment, and happiness, while discarding the traditional notion that duty, obligation, and sacrifice undergirded matrimony. Consequently, the divorce rate more than doubled in the U.S. between 1960 and 1980. While less than 20% of the couples who married in 1950 eventually divorced, approximately half of those married in 1970 did. Adding to the tragedy, half of the children born to married parents in the 1970s saw their parents divorce, compared with only about one in ten of those born in the 1950s.4

The consequences of divorce for those children were staggering. Taking into account both divorce and non-marital childbearing, one sociologist estimated that if America maintained the same level of family stability today as it did in 1960, there would be annually 750,000 fewer children repeating grades in school, 1.2 million fewer school suspensions, 500,000 fewer acts of teenage delinquency, 600,000 fewer young people receiving therapy, and 70,000 fewer suicide attempts.5 And those who think remarriage fixes the problem are wrong, for the establishment of step-families often requires more adjustment and creates greater instability. This led sociologist Andrew Cherlin to conclude that “children whose parents have remarried do not have higher levels of well-being than children in lone-parent families.”6

Children of lower-income families feel the sting of divorce with particular acuteness. That is because the poor and uneducated divorce at a higher rate than their upper-income peers and thus pass along divorce’s ill effects to their children with alarming frequency.7 As Professor Wilcox put it, “[T]he fallout of America’s retreat from marriage has hit poor and working-class communities especially hard, with children on the lower end of the economic spectrum doubly disadvantaged by the material and marital circumstances of their parents.”8 In this vein, a researcher at the Brookings Institution concluded that nearly all increase in child poverty in the U.S. since the 1970s is linked to family breakdown.9

With such a massive collection of evidence, right-thinking persons cannot claim that divorce leaves children unharmed.10 Of course, there are exceptions, but in the vast majority of cases, it is a lie to claim that divorce is in the children’s best interest. Indeed, parents who truly care about their kids must sacrificially and selflessly commit to fidelity until they are parted by death, just as they vowed.
 
Footnotes:
 
1  W. Bradford Wilcox, “The Evolution of Divorce,” National Affairs Website, Fall 2009, http://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-evolution-of-divorce (accessed January 6, 2010).
 
2  Ibid. See also Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
 
3  Wilcox.
 
4  Ibid.
 
5  Ibid.
 
6  Cited in ibid. See Andrew J. Cherlin, The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today (New York: Knopf, 2009).
 
7  Wilcox.
 
8  Ibid.
 
9  Ibid.
 
10  See also Kairos Journal article, “Between Two Worlds—The Effects of Divorce on Children”.
 
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