Children of Divorce

CBMW has published commentary on an article that they do not link to. Sigh. This is their general pattern. Here is the study and on page 37 it states,

Amato and Keith (1991) summarised the results of over 90 studies and showed that children with divorced parents “on average” are worse off than those with continuously married parents. These children tend to have less academic success, they exhibit more conduct problems, are more likely to suffer depression and distress, have lower self esteem, tend to have fewer friends and less social support from their peers and also have weaker emotional bonds with their mothers and fathers

And here is a review of the Amato and Keith study,

Amato, P. R., & Keith, B. (1991). Parental divorce and the well-being of children: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 26-46.Meta-analysis involved 92 studies that compared children living in divorced single-parent families with children living in continuously intact families on measures of well-being. Children of divorce scored lower than children in intact families across a variety of outcomes, with the median effect size being 14 of a standard deviation. For some outcomes, methodologically sophisticated studies yielded weaker effect sizes than did other studies. In addition, for some outcomes, more recent studies yielded weaker effect sizes than did studies carried out during earlier decades. Some support was found for theoretical perspectives emphasizing parental absence and economic disadvantage, but the most consistent support was found for a family conflict perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record. Copyright © 2005 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.)