Excerpt: Divorce and Remarriage

Arendell, Terry. [1997] 2005. "Divorce and Remarriage". Pp. 253-262 in Understanding Society, 2nd ed., edited by Margaret L. Andersen, Kim Logio, and Howard Taylor. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.

The divorce rate in the United States is on the rise, and at current rates will reach 60% for first marriages and even higher for second marriages. Demographically, blacks and whites are the most likely to divorce, although rates are rising for other races/ethnicities. Considering such changes to the American family, Terry Arendell reports on the effects of divorce and remarriage on children who are caught in the middle.

Following divorce, children tend to become "bored, moody, and restless, and to feel misunderstood". Newly single parents lose some degree of control over their children:

A related phenomena [to children's change in mood] is single parents' lesser ability to make control demands on their children. Examining data from the National Survey of Families and Households, Thomson, McLanahan, and Curtin (1992) found that single parents of both sexes seem to be "structurally limited" in their ability to control and make demands on a child without the presence of another adult.

As of 1995, "more than 85% of children whose parents are divorced are in the custody of their mothers". This is significant, because "as a group, women's incomes drop more than 30% following divorce... [and] about 40% of divorcing women lose more than half of their family's incomes". When we consider the loss of a father's assets to his family and the failures of welfare reform for single mothers, it becomes apparent that most divorces result in downward social mobility for both mother and children when the families follow traditional family roles.

Children's outcomes following divorce are due to a number of variables: duration of exposure to "parental strife and conflict", family events prior to divorce, father abandonment, failure of one parent to pay child support, parental neglect, the "intersection of class, race, and gender with poverty", the children's sex and age, etc.

When a parent remarries, children often find their lives and family relations disrupted before adjusting; "restabilization often follows the initial disequilibrium experiences by the newly formed stepfamily". Still, positive effects are seen when the primary parent continues to provide quality, constant parenting.

Arendell's report provides a nice summary of recent studies on family life following divorce, emphasizing descriptive statistics and documented effects. Where she falls short is her analysis of the facts, which in this excerpt is practically nonexistent. It would be nice to understand why divorce rates are on the rise (which I'm sure I'll read about eventually), the mechanisms by which children cope and how they reconstruct their social reality, and how parental divorce affect the children's outcomes in later life.

Relevance: 3/5 (neutral)
Salience: 3/5 (neutral)

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