Statistically, we know that children of divorce are more likely to experience a number of adverse outcomes (mood/anxiety struggles, lower graduation rates, more problems in their own future marriages, and more.) The fact that kids of divorce can suffer is not disputed.
However, people do question: a) if there are situations where children benefit from divorce and b) whether it is the divorce itself, or the parental conflict surrounding divorcing couples, that is to blame for the children’s struggles.
I often see parents contemplating divorce appropriately seek information (usually on the internet) to better understand possible outcomes. Here’s the problem:
It is human nature to bring our own "agendas" to our search for information.
In other words, a leaning in spouse who wants to save the marriage will tune into all the research that shows the damaging impact of divorce on children and will arm themselves with information about why the marriage must be saved. On the other hand, the leaning out spouse is more likely to zoom in on all the articles suggesting that children are resilient and sometimes even benefit from parental divorce.
We do know that the impact of divorce (or keeping the marriage together) depends a lot on the level of conflict between the parents both before and after divorce.
Below, you’ll see several possible scenarios based on couples’ level of connection/loving and their level of conflict. Use drag and drop to try to order the scenarios from BEST to WORST for children’s outcome. There is no proven/correct answer to this exercise, but it can be really useful if you take the time to sincerely consider the pros and cons of each situation. Once you’ve spent some time with this, go here to learn more about the two most common of these scenarios and what we know about child outcomes for each.