Article Two

DIVORCE HAS A LASTING NEGATIVE IMPACT
THE FAMILY, 2008
Summary:
     In this article, Judith Wallerstein, a family researcher and author of a landmark study that presented the long-term negative impacts of divorce on children, is back to inform us of more information as to how divorce leaves children damaged for life.  Wallerstein takes us through different stages, how the children react as a child, up to how they act and what kind of effects were left with them as adults.  As a research experiment, Judith and her colleagues took children ages three to sixteen and studied them.  A year later, they re-interviewed the same children to check on their progress.  The discoveries they made were impressive. Where they had thought that the youngest would cope very easy, they were wrong.  Parents of the young children would receive phone calls from school informing them that their children were acting out, getting in fights, and being disruptive in class.  The older children act similar.  Some of them stopped interacting with others, keeping to themselves and not socializing.  Because of all the bottled up anger, the teens began to take out their anger on people who usually didn't deserve it.  This caused a stream of un-healthy relationships to be formed, causing an even larger amount of anger, stress, and sadness to come down on the child.  Judith goes on to tell us how, in her studies, she discovered that some of the children who grew up into young adults, wanted to change.  Around their early twenties, they had to start disassociating themselves from the failed man-woman relationship that was their parents.  This is the time when they decide to give themselves another shot; realize they are not their parents, that they can have a functional relationship, both with friends and romantic relationships.  However, not every young adult felt that way. Some of the people who were observed had been so negatively impacted by the toil of their parents messed up relationships that they had already decided that they could never have a good relationship with anyone, because they were going to be just like their parents. 
     Not all, but many of the adults who had been left by their parents, or had to endure the fighting and arguing of their disastrous relationship, ended up being frightened by happiness.  What Ms. Wallerstein meant by this was that the better their lives were, the better the job was, the better their love life, the more afraid they would be that disaster would strike suddenly.  These young men and women who suffered with a residue of symptoms were so used to turmoil and tragedy, that they are not used to the joy and happiness that comes with life.  These people believe that nothing lasts forever-after all, their parents did not last forever.  Judith Wallerstein believes that this is caused by the fact that the children did not expect the divorce or separation of their parents.  It came unexpectedly, one minute, they had two loving parents, the next, their world was turned completely upside down.
     Wallerstein goes on to conclude that while divorce or separation may take a turn for the better in the lives of the adults, it is a whole different story in the lives of the children.  For the adult, it is a new start, a fresh canvas.  For the child, it is a crash and burn, a black, shredded canvas.  It is the loss of a family, and there is no remedy for a family that has been lost.