The perceived impact of childhood parental divorce on young adults

This qualitative study examines perceptions and meanings of childhood parental divorce and its impact through the eyes of adult children of divorce. There were three primary objectives in this study. They include (a) capturing the retrospective childhood meaning of parental divorce through the eyes of the young adult participants, (b) describing how they believe the process of divorce is influencing their views of themselves in terms of the roles of husband or wife, and father or mother, and (c) understanding the meaning of parental divorce as it is perceived currently by young adults.

In-depth interviews were conducted with 21 young adults between the ages of 20 and 30 whose parents divorced when they were 10 years old or younger. From these interviews, seven themes emerged: retrospective perception of parents' relationship with each other, current perception of parents' relationship, perceptions of marriage and parenthood, perceptions of single-parent families; perceptions of remarriage, perceptions of sibling relationships, and perceptions of extended family relationships. Results indicated that three crucial factors seemed to influence the effects of the divorce experience of the participants: first, the quality of life experienced in the single-parent family; second, the quality of the relationship with the non-custodial parent; and third, the way in which parental remarriage is experienced.

In addition, a particularly intriguing finding was that often siblings were separated and reared in separate households. Sometimes this physical separation precipitates an emotional distancing as well. This finding has not been noted in earlier studies. Further, because of the tremendous within group variation of the divorce experience, there is no consistent method of characterizing the child of divorce. Additionally, participants' perceptions of their own marital roles and their roles as parents yielded striking results in that they had the added task of turning away from the marital behavior modeled by their parents and often from the parenting model as well.