Perceptions of Quality of Life Following Divorce: A Study of Children’s Prognostic Thinking

Abstract

The general quality of latency-aged children's prognostic thinking and the way in which they view the long-range impact of divorce upon peer adaptation are explored. When interviewed about responses to two fictional peers with marked behavior problems, 80 children in the third and fifth grades displayed an optimism in their prognostic thinking about the future of these peers. In general, peers from divorced homes were perceived as having a more positive future adjustment than peers from intact homes. However, male subjects from disrupted homes revealed a significantly pessimistic orientation regarding the impact of divorce upon the future; females from disrupted homes had a strikingly optimistic view. Implications for school-based interventions are discussed.

The Challenge Model of children's adjustment to parental divorce: Explaining favorable postdivorce outcomes in children.

“…Kalter, Riemer, Brickman, and Chen (1985) and Fulton (1979) demonstrated that gender influences the configuration of symptoms experienced by children following divorce. Preadolescent girls tend to experience less behavioral disruption and fewer problems in cognitive, emotional, and social development than do boys (Hetherington, Cox & Cox, 1979, 1982; Hodges, Buchshaum, & Tierney, 1984; Kelly & Wallerstein, 1976; Kurdek & Berg, 1983; Plunkett, Schaefer, Kalter, Okla, & Schreier, 1986; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1975, 1976), particularly in homes with limited parental control and in those headed by an unremarried mother (Hetherington et al, 1985; Zaslow, 1988, 1989). Although these differences dissipate over time (Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980b) and are absent by adolescence (Zaslow, 1988, 1989), some females from divorced families appear to benefit relative to peers in terms of increased prosocial behavior (Hetherington, 1989), and one long-term study found differences in psychological adjustment favoring adult women from divorced family backgrounds (Kulka & Weingarten, 1979).…”