Cognitive and Behavioral Changes in Children Resulting from Parental Divorce and Consequent Environmental Changes

Abstract

Operationalizing divorce as environmental change helps to understand the processes leading to the development of psychopathology in some children of divorce. Children living with their divorced mothers and children living with their married, natural parents completed change measures (Recent Life Changes Questionnaire, Environmental Change Questionnaire), a behavior checklist (Child Behavior Checklist) and a cognitive/perceptual characteristics measure (Semantic Differential). Significant F-ratios were obtained for the main effects of parent marital status and extent of environmental change and for the interactions of marital status with environmental change and marital status with age at divorce. Processes leading to child psychopathology were identified as types of changes, changes in parent-child relations and increased demands on the custodial parent. Conceptualizing divorce as environmental change has significant implications for the development of primary prevention programs for this population of children.