Impact of Divorce on Children

Abstract

In this review I will be looking at the impact of divorce on children. The problem is that divorce has been shown to be an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE). The purpose of this project is to explore the impact of divorce on school-age children's academic achievement. The articles I found were chosen based on if they were a good fit for the topic of exploration. I excluded articles that did not correlate to the topic. The key words I used to search for articles include divorce, academic achievement, socioeconomic status, and school-age. The databases in which I found the studies were Google Scholar and Tennessee Technological University Library. The participants in the reviewed studies included school-aged children, divorced parents, lower economic status parents, higher economic status parents, and parents' education level. In the studies found participants were randomly selected based on age and marital status. Children from single parent homes, especially ones with mothers, have lower academic achievement because of being raised in a stressful environment. Parental support also plays a role because lower parental support was shown to lead to decrease in children's motivation. These results connect to the purpose of this research because it narrowed down different factors contributing to academic achievement with children who have divorced parents. In the future researchers could investigate changes in children's developmental progress right after divorce occurs.