Divorce in the family consequences for the social and emotional functioning of adult children

Abstract

The article relates to the issue of parents' divorce and its negative implications for the functioning of adult children of divorced people. The aim of the research, the results of which are described in the article, was to know and characterize the parent's behaviour during the conflict over a child/children, to verify whether parentification and parental alienation syndrome appear during the parents' conflict and to know the negative effects of parents' divorce on the social and emotional functioning of their children, both in childhood and in adulthood.The need for an individual approach and recognition of the emotional and social situation of adult children of divorced people resulted in the inclusion of a qualitative research orientation in the conducted research. The information acquired over the course of the research confirmed the negative effect of the parents' divorce in terms of social and emotional functioning. The analysis of the biographies of the respondents allowed to characterize the most common negative consequences of parents' divorce in the emotional and social sphere, present both in childhood and in their adulthood.