Divorce: Who is really affected?

Tatenda Makombe
Ever wondered why the divorce rate is high? Many marriages are failing nowadays because people are getting married for the wrong reasons.
Some people are getting married for money while others don’t take their time to know their partners. Instead of getting to know each other, couples spend most of their quality time engaging in premarital sex, and in this case one ends up in a marriage because they are pregnant.

Others think they are too old to be single and end up getting married for the sake of getting married. Marriages fuelled by these factors normally don’t work out and end up in divorce.

While it is not worth it to stay in a marriage which is not working, the results of divorce are not pleasing. Divorce mainly affects the fruits of these failed marriages. For some children the parents’ divorce can affect the children when they are young even when they are older.

Divorce introduces a massive change into the life of a boy or girl no matter what the age. Witnessing loss of love between parents, having parents break their marriage commitment, adjusting to going back and forth between two different households, and daily absence of one parent while living with the other, all create a challenging new circumstance in which to live.

So much will be different, new, unpredictable, and unknown that life becomes filled with scary questions such as ‘‘who will take care of me?’’ If my parents can lose their love for each other, they can lose their love for me. The child is exposed to stress, which can change a child’s physiology.

It is sad to note that most children whose parents are divorced have an increased likelihood of dropping out of school. At a certain school a research was carried out and it was discovered that most of the children who dropped out of school were from broken homes.

However, if these children stay in school they are most likely to have poor Math skills. Children of divorced parents are also more likely to suffer anxiety, stress and low self-esteem. It is unlikely that children of divorce catch up with their peers who live in stable homes.

In some cases the parents will remarry, and the children from the failed marriage will suffer from neglect. These children will get less attention from their parents. In most cases they become mischievous as they will be seeking attention from teachers, neighbours and other people that might be close to them.

When their parents remarry these children are at a great risk of suffering from physical and verbal abuse from their step parents. These children might end up living with relatives who might not care for the well-being of these children. These relatives might end up abusing the children depriving them of their basic rights.

Divorce makes the life of the adolescent world more distant from parents.Children which experience the divorce of their parents may end up getting less parental supervision.

As a result, some scholars believe that these children may be more susceptible to the influence of their peers and this increases the chances of them getting involved in deviant behaviour, including drug and alcohol use and smoking.

Children may lose the active presence of a father (or mother). They are likely to see their parents dating again and even share a home with a parent’s unmarried romantic partner. Unfortunately, research confirms that children of divorce are more likely to engage in sexual behaviour at earlier ages and to become pregnant (or cause a pregnancy).

One important reason for this finding is that divorced parents are often less effective at monitoring their teenage children; poorer monitoring of teens is associated with earlier sexual activity and pregnancy.

Let’s engage in relationship with people whose weaknesses we accept and can tolerate so as to try and reduce the divorce rate and raise children in happy homes.

Even an unhappy marriage can be repaired overtime.