Divorce: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Ashley Williams
Family Social Work
20 September 2013
Shelia Gordon
Research Paper
Divorce: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly As a child my parent divorced. It left me feeling very depressed and confused. My mother did not discuss why or how a mom and dad became divorced. She merely said “me and your dad got a divorce when you were just 1 year old.” I was devastated. I didn’t understand what divorce was, but I definitely did not understand why they weren’t together anymore. Had I done something when I was born to cause them to separate? I mean they were together when my brother was born and he was 3 years old when they divorced. I received this life lesson at 6. At first I would see my father maybe once a year and things seemed o.k. Then as time went on my mother grew very angry with him and being her very vocal self she always let me and my brother know what he had done wrong in her eyes. The angrier she became with my father the less we got to see him until finally by the start of my freshmen year of high school I had not seen or heard from him in 6 years. As a kid I was wonder why he stopped loving us, how it was so easy to just forget about us, and if he ever thought about us. I always wonder if all kids from divorced families felt sad and unsure like I always felt.
Then as a young adult I learned through reading and watching many documentaries on the subject of divorce, those children of divorce are predestined to basically fail in life. I asked myself why? Why do children of divorce have low self-esteem? Why do children of divorce have a greater risk for drug use? Why do children of divorce have a greater risk to go through a divorce as adults? Why do children of divorce do poorly in school and why do they not go to college? All this failure because your mom and dad decided not to live together anymore! Then I started my research for this paper. In my reading I run across a journal article “The Long-Term Correlates of Childhood Exposure to
Family Social Work
20 September 2013
Shelia Gordon
Research Paper
Divorce: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly As a child my parent divorced. It left me feeling very depressed and confused. My mother did not discuss why or how a mom and dad became divorced. She merely said “me and your dad got a divorce when you were just 1 year old.” I was devastated. I didn’t understand what divorce was, but I definitely did not understand why they weren’t together anymore. Had I done something when I was born to cause them to separate? I mean they were together when my brother was born and he was 3 years old when they divorced. I received this life lesson at 6. At first I would see my father maybe once a year and things seemed o.k. Then as time went on my mother grew very angry with him and being her very vocal self she always let me and my brother know what he had done wrong in her eyes. The angrier she became with my father the less we got to see him until finally by the start of my freshmen year of high school I had not seen or heard from him in 6 years. As a kid I was wonder why he stopped loving us, how it was so easy to just forget about us, and if he ever thought about us. I always wonder if all kids from divorced families felt sad and unsure like I always felt.
Then as a young adult I learned through reading and watching many documentaries on the subject of divorce, those children of divorce are predestined to basically fail in life. I asked myself why? Why do children of divorce have low self-esteem? Why do children of divorce have a greater risk for drug use? Why do children of divorce have a greater risk to go through a divorce as adults? Why do children of divorce do poorly in school and why do they not go to college? All this failure because your mom and dad decided not to live together anymore! Then I started my research for this paper. In my reading I run across a journal article “The Long-Term Correlates of Childhood Exposure to
Cited: Ben-A, Noami Ben-Ami and Amy J.L. Baker. "The Long-Term Correlates of Childhood Exposure to Parental Alienationon Adult Self-Sufficiency and Well-Being." The American Journal of Family Therapy (2012): 169-180. Long, Nicholas. Ph.D and Rex. Ph.D Forehand. Making Divorce Easier on Your Children. New Yorkl: Contemporary Books, 2002.