Saturday, 18 July 2015

CHILDREN AS TRUE VICTIMS OF DIVORCE



CHILDREN AS TRUE VICTIMS OF DIVORCE
BY
ELAIKPI A. ABADA
KUW/U14/MCM/2015
Divorce is the termination of a marital union, the dissolution of marriage or in some instances the reorganization of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage between a married couple under a particular culture, religion or laws of a particular country.
Divorce law varies considerably around the world, but in most countries it requires the sanction of a court or other authority in a legal process. The legal process of divorce involve issues from spousal support, child custody, child visitation/ access parenting time, child support, distribution of property, and division of debt.
Divorce can be a stressful experience affecting finances, living arrangement, household jobs, schedules, parenting and the outcomes of children of the marriage as they face each stage of development from childhood to adulthood. Where children are involved they naturally become the victims.
The true victims of divorce are indeed the children who suffer extremely in so many ways and forms. Psychologically, children and adult offspring of divorced parents, display greater unhappiness, less satisfaction with life, weaker sense of personal control, anxiety depression and greater use of mental health services. There are suggestions of evidences in researches around the world that shows that divorce has a causal effect that breeds these outcomes.
Children of divorced parents are also more likely to experience conflict in their own marriage and are more likely to experience divorce themselves. They are also more likely to be involved in short term cohabiting relationships, which often dissolve before marriage.
According to Nicholas wall, former president of the Family Division of the English High Court, “people think that post-separation parenting is easy in fact, it is exceedingly difficult and as a rule of thumb my experience is that the more intelligent the parent, the more intractable the dispute. There is nothing worse, for most children, than for their parent to denigrate each other. Parents simply do not realize the damage they do to their children by the battles they wage over them. Separating parent rarely behave reasonably, although they always believe that they are doing so and other party is behaving unreasonably.
Poorly managed conflict between parent increases children risk of behavior problems, depression, drugs abuse, poor social skills, and poor academic performance leading low self-esteem. Fortunately, there are approaches by which divorce professional can help parent reduce conflict. Option includes mediation, collaborative divorce, and parenting management.
Children who have experienced a divorce are more likely to have lower academic achievement than children from non-divorced families. In a review of family and school factors related to adolescents’ academic performance, it noted that a child from a divorced family is two times more to drop out of school than a child from a non-divorced family. These children from divorced families may also be less likely to attend college, resulting in the discontinuation of their academic career.
In view of this issues and many more that are not mentioned here, there is need to put the victims first, we need to understand more about victims of divorce, and the impact it has on their lives. Some of this is obvious but there are other perhaps more surprising results. We know that there are some people that are more likely to be victims: people living in villages, less affluent urban areas particularly.
The child is the future of tomorrow and we all are responsible directly and indirectly in shaping the views, hope and aspirations of our children. Marriage has to do with more than love for the couples but love for the children and humanity as a whole. Couples should know and always remember that; divorce is indeed an option but with grave consequences that should be handle with utmost caution especially when children are involved.

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