An Overview of the Psychological Literature on the Effects of
Divorce on Children Despite decades of psychological research,
there is still considerable debate in the field concerning the
effects of divorce on children. While most studies have reported
at least some negative consequences of divorce for children,
few, if any, have examined factors associated with children's
positive adjustment. More recent research underscores our need
to better understand the impact of marital conflict pre-divorce
and family environment on child adjustment. Some children do
well post-divorce and others do not. However, not enough is
known to disentangle the impact of contextual factors that often
accompany divorce (e.g., financial pressures and marital
conflict) from the impact of the divorce itself. The Impact of
Divorce vs. Marital Conflict Divorce: Recent research utilizing
more sophisticated methodology than previous studies shows that
while children of divorced parents overall have more adjustment
problems than children