Divorce has been such a large part of our nation’s social identity since the rise of the sexual revolution and the introduction of “no fault” divorce laws.
In 1900, the rate of ever-married women experiencing a divorce was 4.1 per 1,000 married women. By 2022, that rate had nearly quadrupled to 14.6 per 1,000 married women, according to Bowling Green State University. So what is happening to the children in families plagued by divorce?
The National Bureau of Economic Research sheds important light on the topic, affecting about a third of all American children.
How parental divorce shapes children’s resources and futures, from @acjohnston0, Maggie R. Jones, and Nolan G. Pope https://t.co/nq26oAJLiN pic.twitter.com/aOcO5Wu7Ee
— NBER (@nberpubs) May 15, 2025
According to their study, which tracked over 5 million children affected by divorce across 50 years, the consequences of divorce are damning.
“Following divorce, parents move apart, household income falls, parents work longer hours, families move more frequently, and households relocate to poorer neighborhoods with less economic opportunity. This bundle of changes in family circumstances suggests multiple channels through which divorce may affect children’s development and outcomes,” the study stated. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
“In the years following divorce, we observe sharp increases in teen births and child mortality. To examine long-run effects on children, we compare siblings with different lengths of exposure to the same divorce. We find that parental divorce reduces children’s adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births. Changes in household income, neighborhood quality, and parent proximity account for 25 to 60 percent of these divorce effects,” the study found.
The Effects of Early Childhood Divorce:
- Teen births increase by 73%
- The chance the child will die by age 25 increased by 35%
- Incarceration rates increase by 43%
- Future adult earnings decrease between 9% and 13%
But if you have ever experienced divorce, it didn’t take a study to see that the children are negatively affected by the trauma. Still, it’s become extremely popular for our society to claim that “children are resilient” and can handle the massive disruptions to their lives that come with divorce. When in reality, this mindset is a massive cop-out for adults trying to excuse their selfish behavior.
Being Catholic and also a child of divorced parents, I have pretty strong views on the issue. Excluding instances of severe abuse and neglect, there is really no excuse for divorce, especially after you’ve had children.
Abuse is a tragedy and in those cases, protecting the spouse and child is paramount.
But most divorces don’t involve violence. They’re low-conflict. And in those cases, divorce doesn’t rescue kids it robs them.
Marriage remains the most reliable way we’ve found to provide… pic.twitter.com/NnwBcBQNUs
— Josh Wood (@J_K_Wood) May 14, 2025
Our society gives a voice to adults who claim to be unhappy with their lives and, therefore, look to divorce as the solution to their problems. Meanwhile, the children are ignored and told that they’ll be happier being shuttled between two different houses and forced to cope with the trauma of losing access to a living parent. (American Businesses Are About To Get A Great Deal)
When you are a child being forced to sit in a courthouse while your parents fight for custody and a division of the assets that were once the foundation of your world, it feels like you are running a race that will never end.
But the pain of the actual divorce doesn’t end once the decision is finalized. Every school event, holiday, and family get-together becomes a struggle session where the child is forced to balance their love for each parent so neither feels slighted. Instead of the parent raising the child, making them feel loved and protected, it becomes the child’s responsibility to care for the adults.
Divorce is one of the biggest human problems, but it rarely gets talked about https://t.co/vn4HJxpqRY
— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) May 12, 2025
And this is in the best-case scenarios where both parents remain actively involved in their child’s life, because divorce creates physical distance between parents, which obviously results in children not having direct access to both of their parents.
The study found that “a significant fraction of divorces involve long-distance relocations.”
“At divorce, the median distance between parents rises to 4 miles in the year of divorce and grows to over 10 miles over the following decade. The mean distance between parents starts at just over 100 miles at divorce, growing to over 200 miles after ten years,” the study stated.
The study found that the loss of income, worse neighborhoods, and time away from each parent explained up to 60% of the harm.
But unseen factors like emotional stress and family breakdown carry deep consequences. pic.twitter.com/J2nC77mKEC
— Josh Wood (@J_K_Wood) May 14, 2025
The Catholic Church requires engaged couples to take marriage preparation classes before allowing them to get married. Wouldn’t it be a great lesson for those couples if we taught them the dangers of divorce to their future children? Adults should be aware of how their actions affect more than just themselves. (ROOKE: Trump Got Democrats To Do Exactly What He Wants)
The parent-child relationship is extremely important. The study didn’t look at rates of sexual abuse or gender dysphoria, but I would guess that the rates are higher among divorced children than among those who have married parents.
Parents were divinely called to protect and teach their children. Mothers are the emotional protectors, while fathers are the physical protectors. Each plays an equal but different role in the formation of their child. Removing one from the equation will create gaps in their protection, allowing the perfect opportunity for predatory adults to harm their child.
Should Children Be Allowed to Make Harmful Decisions for Themselves? Leftists Seem to Think So.
Watch episode 1 of SEPARATED today: https://t.co/CDNLWBTqC2 pic.twitter.com/kLgy3qlZql
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 14, 2025
This study shows that divorce significantly harms children. Again, I think that mode of thinking is just adults trying to pack away the shame and guilt for the heavy burdens they’ve asked their child to bear.
Divorce is horrible. It introduces real, tangible harm to children that we can quantify. We didn’t need a study to tell us this fact, but now that we have one, it’s time we stop coddling selfish adults who break up their families.
Follow Mary Rooke on X: @MaryRooke_
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
