A deep and lasting wound

A long-established finding in leading international academic investigations is that the death of marriage has profound negative consequences for nearly all measures of child well-being. And those consequences are deep and long lasting. Some new sophisticated data from a leading economics research organization—the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)—further documents and builds on what earlier research has found.

Let us first quickly examine what earlier academic investigations into divorce’s impact on child well-being has unearthed.

While not the only one, Judith Wallerstein is the earliest scholar to examine carefully divorce’s impact on a large population of children, and she did so over nearly three decades. She poignantly explains in the culminating journal article of her life’s work, “Hardly any of our subjects described a happy childhood; in fact, a number of children told us that ‘the day they divorced was the day my childhood ended.’”

Her research showed the negative impact on children was what she called “cumulative.” Problems compounded as these children entered their adult years. They certainly did not “adjust” to the end of their parents’ marriage and the resulting death of the family they knew and depended on.

She observed in 2004,

The central finding of this study is that parental divorce impacts detrimentally the capacity to love and be loved within a lasting, committed relationship. At young adulthood, when love, sexual intimacy, commitment, and marriage take center stage, children of divorce are haunted by the ghosts of their parents’ divorce and are frightened that the same fate awaits them. These fears, which reach a crescendo at young adulthood, impede their developmental progress into full adulthood.

Wallerstein found that a third of her 131 study subjects “were openly pessimistic about marriage and divorce and sought to avoid both.” She adds, “Divorce begets fewer marriages, poorer marriages, and more divorces.”

We should all agree this is a horrible curse for one generation to cast upon another. She concluded that her 25-year study “points to divorce not as an acute stress from which the child recovers but as a life-transforming experience for the child” (emphasis in original).

The new research just published by NBER charts new findings into how divorce is far more damaging to children than anyone ever imagined. It also quantifies deleterious effects far into adulthood and documents the causal effect by examining a million sibling groups to measure differing before/after affects within a family. Younger siblings experienced greater damage. So, the problem is not just that these kids came from turbulent families to begin with, as some skeptics of divorce research have claimed.

Conducted by scholars at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Maryland, and the U.S. Census Bureau, these authors examined data on “over 5 million children to examine how divorce affects family arrangements and children’s long-term outcomes.” These children were born between 1988 and 1993. While Wallerstein, a psychologist, looked at relational issues, these economists examined more objective measures.

[W]e estimate the effect of divorce on child outcomes including adult earnings, teen birth, mortality, college residency, and incarceration. Our event studies show that divorce represents a significant turning point in children’s outcomes, and our sibling comparisons show that longer exposure to divorce has a lasting impact into adulthood.

The first objective measure that declines after divorce is income. “This decline moves the average divorced household from the 57th percentile of the income distribution to the 36th.” They explain the poverty persistence, “Households recover about half of their initial income loss over the next decade.” This also means children of divorce typically make multiple moves into less safe neighborhoods and schools and are moved further from their father, as 95 percent of divorced kids typically reside with their mothers.

These changes come at a great cost.

These economists state, “We find that teen births and child mortality increase following divorce and remain elevated throughout the observation window, suggesting that divorce represents a turning point in the trajectory of children’s outcomes.”

Specifically, for children of divorce,

• Teen births increase by 60%. (Of course, rates of teen pregnancy are higher still.)

• Early death increased by 35% to 55%.

• Jail time increased 40% to 45%.

• Earnings are substantially less (9% to 13%) in adulthood, equal to obtaining one less year of education.

• Likelihood of attending college decreases.

When parents make choices to improve their lives by leaving unhappy marriages, there are clear victims: their own children. All parents should appreciate these facts before they decide to throw in the towel on a marriage that seems hopeless. For most of these marriages, there is help and hope. But the difficulties divorce creates are poisonous gifts that keep on giving.