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Effects of Divorce on Child Development


Attitudinal dimension is the last dimension of conflict referring to the degree of negative emotional feeling or hostility directed by divorcing parties toward each other. This may be openly expressed or hidden. These dimensions need to be taken into account when assessing incidence of conflict because they each affect how each party, including the child, assesses the conflict. (Matthews).
             There are three major patterns of parenting three to five years after separation: cooperative, disengaged and conflicted. The first two years after divorce parents are most likely to participate in parallel parenting. This type of parenting is strained because the parents only attempt to communicate or align their parenting practices around their visitation arrangements. (Johnston, 1994) Maccoby and Mnookin recently performed a study in California involving 1,124 families and 1,875 children that were interviewed one year and two and a half years after divorce. They were then able to distinguish three major co-parenting styles by examining the presence or absence of discord and the frequency of attempts to communicate regarding the children. Parents that displayed cooperative coparenting had high communication and low discord. This group made up 29% of the sample. Similarly, parents that had low communication and low discord practiced disengaged coparenting and comprised a surprising 41% of the sample. Lastly, 24% of the sample displayed conflicted co-parenting which displayed low communication and high discord. This type of parenting was seen as the most detrimental to child development because of how unlikely it was for conflicted parents to become cooperative parents over time. Furthermore, the ones that displayed conflicted co-parenting were more likely to be the divorcing parents with more intense legal conflict and hostility between parties. Maccoby and Mnookin's data was able to indicate that one quarter of divorces were highly conflicted when it came to child rearing behaviors around three and a half years after separation.


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