You Want to Know How It Affected Me?

Abstract

Life-story interviews were conducted with 40 young adults, aged between 19 and 29 years, living in New Zealand. The participants were from a range of cultural background and had experienced parental separation/divorce as children or adolescents. Previous studies have found that the negative effects of divorce can carry through into adulthood with adult offspring experiencing more mental health problems, difficulty in intimate relationships and increased rates of divorce; whilst other studies have found that young adults of divorce function as well as those from non-divorced families. This paper examines the participants' own views of the impact of parental divorce on themselves and their lives. Whilst a minority of them were positive about their parents' decision to separate, the majority of participants considered that they had experienced or were currently experiencing negative effects related to the divorce and associated events. These included problems in their own functioning in every day life, perceived problems in intimate relationships, and problems in relationships with other family members, especially parent/s. It is argued that cognitive-processing models are likely to be useful in understanding the problems that face young adult offspring of divorce. Implications for counseling approaches are briefly discussed.