Children's Postdivorce Adjustment Research Articles

A Path Analysis of Factors Predicting Children's Divorce Adjustment

Eighty-two mother-child pairs from divorced homes completed measures assessing life change events, marital hostility, parenting skills, parent adjustment, child behavior adjustment, and children's self-concept. A model was constructed to describe direct and indirect effects of causally ordered prior variables on positive and negative child outcomes. Path coefficients suggested the operation of both direct and mediated effects of background factors, postdivorce adjustment of the custodial parent, and current child-rearing environments on adaptive and maladaptive child outcome variables. The impact of age on children's postdivorce adjustment was found to be mediated by the number of major life events they reported. One causal path was found to be significant for several child outcomes: Mothers with more children reported better postdivorce adjustment in themselves, which in turn predicted better self-reported parental functioning. More effective parenting was positively associated with better social ...

Child Custody Evaluations: Criteria and Clinical Implications

The present study examined mental health practitioners' views of the relative importance of various criteria in determining child custody in a divorce. A second focus was the possibility of differences between professionals regularly conducting custody evaluations and their inexperienced colleagues. A broad survey of both psychologists and social workers showed considerable agreement between the two professions in emphasizing relationships among the members of the family and the richness of the social environment in the prospective custodial home. Experienced and inexperienced professionals agreed on this basic approach to custody decisions. The clinicians' opinions are discussed in the context of results from the empirical literature that have demonstrated a relationship between specific variables and children's postdivorce adjustment.

Locus of control in children of divorce.

Scores on the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale for Children (N-SLOCSC) were compared for third and fifth grade boys and girls from intact versus maritally disrupted family backgrounds. Significant main effects for each independent variable revealed that fifth graders more than third, boys more than girls, and the marital disruption more than the intact group, exhibited higher internality in their locus of control scores. These findings strongly suggest that experiencing a parental divorce in childhood has a significant influence on generalized perceptions of personal control and effectance, perceptions which may ultimately mediate both short- and long-term outcomes in children's post-divorce adjustment.