How Divorce Really Hurts Children

As a product of divorced parents and coming from a broken home, I can understand what children of broken homes go through and it certainly isn’t the child’s fault. I, myself, blame the parents. Allow me to elaborate. 

Coming from the average broken home, I assume that most children get nervous or anxious when a fight between the parents breaks out. Mom is yelling at dad for some petty reason or dad is yelling at mom for a ridiculous reason, but all of this began when they both decided to have a baby or worse yet children….and yes I said worse. I promise I’ll get back to that later. 

What I have learned from a broken home is that everyone suffers but mostly the child, especially when you have irresponsible parents whose only goal in life is to have a baby

and reproduce and not think in the long-term of what that child needs, which is a stable family. 

What most men and women don’t understand is that if both parties are not spiritually, mental/emotionally, or financially ready to support a child, the fact that they had a baby and the house is missing one or more of the aforementioned necessities for a child to grow in a healthy environment, is selfish to the child and makes for terrible parenting. 

If you have a baby and mom and dad aren’t financially available, they have put that child at risk for foster care or will have to give that child up because the parents can’t financially support that child. 

If you’re like me in a situation where your parents didn’t support you spiritually and mentally/emotionally then you grew up with a lot of verbal confrontations going on in the household. This may not seem like anything new but, according to BBC News, when parents engage in conflicts with each other that are frequent, intense, and not resolved, children do less well. 

These negative effects can include sleep disturbance and disrupted early brain development for infants, anxiety and conduct problems for primary school children, and depression and academic problems, and other serious issues, such as self-harm, for older children and adolescents. 

The problem in this is that growing up in an angry household, children become anxiety-ridden, do more poorly in school, and can even act out. So when parents punish their children for not getting a bad grade, getting into a fight, getting detention, or not behaving the way that they want their child to behave and the parents the first reaction is anger and verbal violence, it continues the cycle and that child acts out more because, subconsciously, that is all the child knows of inside their home and when they grow up, the scars carry on to the next family and the next and the next. 

The sad part is people stay married for the children. On the surface, that seems like a noble truth, but the fact in the matter is–the underlying truth to all of this–the parents no longer love each other and that is a terrible foundation to have your parenthood based on, which is why it kills me when one parent takes the kid away from the other thinking that the child will be fine without the other parent. The only way to raise a successful and healthy child is to have both parents working 50/50 on raising the child, but most parents don’t want to hear that, which is why they think in short terms of having a baby and living in a fantasy world of what they want their child to be and not realizing

that their fantasies are just hurting that child as they pressure them to be something that that kid doesn’t want to be, causing more anxiety. 

Before we part, I want you to think long and hard about an argument that your parents had and think to yourself: Were they thinking about me and the psychological ramifications of myself, their child? They probably weren’t thinking about you. I bet that the only thing they were concerned about was winning the argument. 

In short, think long and hard before you bring children into the world if you are not financially, spiritually, or emotionally straight.