Today, first time marriages have a 45 percent chance of breaking up and ending in divorce (Wallerstein 67). Twenty five percent of people today between the ages of 18 and 44 have parents who are divorced (68). What many people don"t think of when they think of divorce is the many negative effects it has on children. If 15 percent of people have parents who are divorced, what impact has that had on their relationships today?.
The effects on children in a divorce come in many different stages. It starts at the breakup, and then it affects them through their childhood and eventually during adulthood. It affects people different ways as they grow up and start their own lives. Children who go through divorce can be very devistated. Children feel as though the divorce is because of them, and that they are not loved anymore. The home becomes very lonely through their eyes (71). When divorce happens in families when children are young it definitely shapes them into the person they become. During adulthood people who come from divorced families have a hard time with relationships. They don"t know what to look for or what is so called "normal" because they never had that in their own home. People in divorced families worry about following in their parents footsteps and failing at marriage (70). Divorce affects them for the rest of their lives.
Wallersteins essay is directed towards a number of audiences. The first is divorced families. He shows in his essay that many children go through divorce and divorced children are not alone, many other children feel the same effects as they do. The next audience is intact families. Wallerstein shows points about how intact families have children who know what they want in a relationship and how a family works. These intact families don"t know something divorced children do. Divorced children know what they don"t want out of a relationship, they have seen the bad effects.