Consequences of Parental Divorce and Marital Unhappiness for Adult Well-Being

Abstract

Based on a national sample of adults, individuals who experienced parental divorce as children were compared with those who did not experience marital dissolution. Respondents from disrupted families of origin scored lower than those from happily intact families of origin on measures of psychological, social, and marital well-being but not on measures of socioeconomic adequacy. These differences, however, were generally weak in magnitude. Individualsfrom intactfamily backgrounds who described their parents as unhappily married exhibited lower levels of well-being than did individuals who described their parents as happily married. Divorces that entailed a decline in parent child-relations, and multiple divorces on the part of parents, appeared to be particularly problematic. Individuals experiencing low-stress parental divorces did not differ appreciably from those who grew up in happily intact homes. The topic of children and divorce has generated a substantial body of research. Most of this work is concerned with the short- and medium-term effects of family disruption on young children. In contrast, relatively few studies have searched for long-term consequences of divorce that may persist into adulthood. Of those studies that do, most focus on a few outcomes and do not consider the ways in which post-divorce factors may influence later well-being. The present study extends prior research in three ways. First, we use national survey data to estimate the consequences of parental divorce across a wide range of measures of adult well-being. Second, we take into account the potentially mediating effects of a variety of post-divorce family arrangements, such as parental remarriage and closeness to parents. And third, we include in the analysis adults whose parents were unhappily married but did not divorce.