Children of Divorce

Abstract

A case-control study was done to observe the association between the parents' divorce and their children's results in school. The information was obtained from a questionnaire which was answered by the counselors of 8 public schools in Santiago, Chile. From one class of each school, 52 pupils of divorced marriages were searched. The control group of 52 pupils of non-divorced parents was chosen by selecting the name following the case on the class list. The children of divorced parents were: 37 (71%) girls, 15 (29%) boys, the average age was 11.8 ± 0. 8 years; 12 (29%) had failed the year; the average marks were 5.2 ±0.7 (range 1-7) and the average attendance was 92 ± 8 %. The controls were: 33 (63%) girls, 19 (37%) boys, the average age was 11.4 ± 0.6 years; 3 (5.7%) had failed the year; the average marks were 5.9 ± 0.5 (range 1-7); the average attendance was 94.5 ± 4.5%. The conclusion is that children of divorced marriages have 4.9 more estimated relative risk (RR) of failing year and 7.1 times more estimated relative risk of having an average mark of 5.5 or lower than children of non-divorced parents. These numbers must be observed with caution because of the small size sample and show an association but are not cause-effect.