Behau. Res. Ther. Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 319-327, Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved
1992 Copyright
0
WOS-7967/92 $5.00 + 0.00 1992 PergamonPressLtd
INVITED ESSAY PARENTAL DIVORCE AND ADOLESCENT MALADJUSTMENT: SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY VS PUBLIC INFORMATION REX FOREHAND University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, U.S.A. (Received 24 October
1991)
Envision the following scenario. John is a 13 yr old adolescent whose parents divorced last year. Since that time he has become increasingly sullen, withdrawn, and hostile toward his mother. When he is asked to take out the garbage, he responds by stating “Why do I have to do everything” and stomping out of the room. When his mother tries to initiate a conversation with him regarding his day at school, he simply says “It’s none of your business”. Discussions between John and his mother almost invariably end in an argument and John stating “I’m going to live with my father as soon as I can because I hate you”. Consider a second scenario. Margaret is a 16 yr old adolescent whose parents divorced when she was twelve. When her parents told her they were divorcing, she showed little emotion. Anytime her parents attempted to talk to her about the divorce and explain it to her, she simply said “It is all right. I understand”. Following the divorce, Margaret continued to do well in school, kept her old friends and had good relationships with them, and gave her mother few problems at home. However, with the passage of 4yr, negative consequences began emerging from the divorce. Margaret is hanging out with a ‘wilder crowd’, she does not abide by the curfew established by her mother, she has had three very intense but brief sexual relationships within the last 6 months, and her grades are beginning to fall. The two examples described in the preceding paragraphs present views which are often portrayed to the public regarding adolescents’ reactions to parental divorce. On the one hand, adolescents are presented as becoming immediately rebellious and difficult. On the other hand, when this does not occur, the possibility of a ‘sleeper effect’ is often presented. That is, while appearing to adjust well to the divorce and its immediate aftermath, adolescents at some point later will suddenly display adjustment problems which are attributed to the divorce. The issue to be addressed in this essay concerns the discrepancy between such images which are portrayed to the public and the empirical data that are evident in the scientific literature. Is the information being presented to the public congruent with, or based upon, that which is in the psychological literature? If it is, then both we as professionals and the news media are doing our jobs adequately. However, if it is not, there is a concern that must be addressed. The position taken in this essay is that parental divorce is a stressor for many adolescents. However, I maintain that the extent of the disruption in their functioning is substantially less than is typically portrayed in the media. This position is presented graphically in Fig. 1. As is evident from this figure, the working assumption is that the scientific literature does support that there are some difficulties in functioning for adolescents from divorced families relative to those from intact families. However, the second working assumption is that the information presented to the public is substantially exaggerated in terms of adolescent maladjustment effects. Thus, the point of concern is represented by the difference between scientific inquiry and public information. In addition to the hypothesis that there is an overstatement to the public concerning the effects of divorce on adolescents, I also intend to present evidence that considering divorce ‘effects’ in isolation is an oversimplification of the issue, as there are many mediating variables that need to 319
320
REX FOREHAND
Scientific Data
Scientific Data
Media Presentation
Fig. 1. Proposed relation between the scientific data and the media presentation. Note that intact divorced refer to adolescents from married and divorced families, respectively.
be considered, Thus, to broadly generalize concerning portrayed to the public, is unwarranted.
THE
MEDIA
and
the effects of divorce, especially as is
STORY
The influence of divorce on children and adolescents has received substantial attention in the media, particularly in recent years. For example, I conducted a computer search of the general periodicals under the heading of Children of Divorced Parents in a university library. From 1989 through March of 1991 (27 months), 29 articles were listed as appearing in popular magazines and newspapers. Included were articles in the New York Times (5), Parents’ ~uguzine (4), P~yc~u~5gy Today (41, Christianity Today (2), Newsweek (2), Time (l), and U.S.A. Today (1). Many of the titles of the various articles clearly portray divorce as a traumatic event with lasting effects. Titles included “Children after Divorce: Wounds that Don’t Heal”, “Children of the After Shock”, “Children’s Divorce Trauma”, and “The Lasting Wounds of Divorce”. Obviously, such titles are intended to attract attention and draw readers. The work of Wallerstein (e.g. Wallerstein & Blakeslee, 1989; Wallerstein & Corbin, 1989) has been in the forefront of much of the public media attention to divorce. Wallerstein’s work focuses on following children from divorced families for l&15 yr following parental break-up. Her study has been appropriately criticized on a number of scientific grounds. As Kelly and Emery (1989) pointed out in a review of Wallerstein and Blakeslee’s book Second Chances, “there is no comparison group, the sample is limited and self-selected, and the vast majority of the data are case studies. One hardly needs to be a methodologist to note the study’s flaws” (p. 82). These reviewers further note that “the book is full of conclusions that are scientifically invalid, ignore contradictory research, and unrelentingly emphasize the negative” (p. 82). However, the conclusions reached in Second Chances are anything but tentative. “There is no hedging and only rare disclaimer” (Kelly & Emery, 1989, p. 85). Kelly and Emery emphasize that a focus on the negative is particularly alarming in a book written for public consumption.
While this portrayal is undoubtedly accurate for some members of some families, the conclusions about pervasive generational scarring surely are inaccurate and damaging for many others. Those who have done well by their children and themselves will fear their achievements are illusory, This is especially true because of the dreaded ‘sleeper effect’ that Wallerstein discusses at length. She suggests that girls--even those who show few apparent ill-effects of divorce-are likely to see serious and unexpected damage arise in their young adult life (p. 82).
Parental divorce and adolescent maladjustment
321
Has Wallerstein’s work attracted public attention? The conclusions of Second Chances have been repeated in the popular press numerous times, including Time (6 February 1989), Newsweek (6 February 1989), Parents’ Magazine (6 August 1990), Society (March/April, 1989), New York (8 October 1990), Christianity Toduy (12 May 1989), and The New York Times Magazine (22 January 1989). Each of the ‘attention grabber’ titles noted previously was attached to an article reporting on the book. Much of the media attention to divorce does not focus on adolescents. Rather, the attention is on pre-adolescent children or children in general without differentiation across age groups (it should be noted that this pattern is not unlike that within the scientific literature). However, it is important to note that adolescents do not escape unnoticed in Second Chances and its attention in the media. One Wallerstein and Blakeslee conclusion, noted by Elkind (1990) in Parents’ Magazine (p. 160), is that “those who enter adolescence, in the immediate wake of their parents’ divorce, had a particularly hard time. . . . An alarming number of teenagers felt abandoned physically and emotionally”. More recently, in an article in Newsweek (22 July 1991) entitled “Girls Who Go Too Far”, teenage girls are depicted as affection-starved individuals who will do anything to have a boyfriend. One ‘cause’ of this boy crazy problem is presented as parental divorce. Wallerstein is quoted in the article as stating that following divorce “many girls are terrified of being abandoned or betrayed. One response we’re seeing in a number of young women is to throw themselves into a lot of relationships” (p. 59). In Second Chances, Wallerstein and Blakeslee expand on the ‘going too far’ theme. They note that divorce in adolescence is particularly difficult for girls and can lead to promiscuity, which is ‘characteristically combined with drug and alcohol use’ (p. 168). At a different point, they emotionally describe adolescents of divorce who engage in delinquent acts: Made wretched by the experience of divorce, most feel rejected and abandoned by both parents. After the family structure collapses in adolescence, they do not recover. These young people are not generally engaged in crimes of violence. They steal cash to buy drugs or alcohol but do not use knives, guns, or other weapons (p. 153). In summary, the image presented in the public media about adolescent functioning following parental divorce is one of severe disruption. Is this warranted?
THE
SCIENTIFIC
DATA
Relative to younger children, adolescents’ responses to parent divorce have been ignored in the scientific literature. For example, in a recent meta-analysis of parental divorce and child well-being, Amato and Keith (1991) reported on 22 studies examining academic achievement of pre-adolescents (pre-school and primary grades) but only 11 studies on the same topic with adolescents (secondary grades). Similarly, for social adjustment there were 22 and 5 studies reviewed for pre-adolescents and adolescents, respectively. Thus, conclusions that can be reached even in the scientific literature, much less in the public media, about parental divorce and adolescents have to be viewed quite tentatively. The current review will take two approaches and will serve more as a condensed summary than a comprehensive review. First, two studies, one employing a methodology common to sociology and one employing a methodology common to psychology, will be reviewed as examples of the work in this area. Second, conclusions from Amato and Keith’s meta-analysis will be summarized. Utilizing a nationally representative sample of 1197 children and adolescents, Allison and Furstenberg (1989) compared those from intact families (869 youth) to those from divorced families (328 youth). Data were collected from parents, teachers, and children at two points in time, separated by 5 yr. The results for the sample as a whole indicated that marital dissolution was associated with poorer academic performance, more problem behavior, and more distress.
REX FOREHAND
322
However, for adolescents, the difficulties were limited to one area of functioning: a measure of delinquency. Of 10 regression analyses performed, only two (a child report of delinquency and a parent report of delinquency) were significant. Considering the number of analyses performed, the two significant findings may have emerged, at least partially, by chance. A further analysis of a particular subset of adolescents-those whose parents divorced between the two assessmentsfailed to find any differences in functioning when compared to those whose parents had not divorced. Perhaps what is of even more importance is the magnitude of the effects. While significant differences did emerge in several areas for the sample as a whole, the proportion of variance accounted for was never more than 3%. As Allison and Furstenberg note, gender differences accounted for more variance than did divorce! A study by Forehand, Thomas, Wierson, Brody and Fauber (1990) was conducted exclusively with an adolescent sample. Youth (mean age = 13 yr) from 121 intact and 93 recently divorced (< 12 months) families, respectively, were included in the sample. The results indicated that adolescents from divorced homes were functioning significantly poorer than those from intact homes in all four areas assessed: externalizing problems, internalizing problems, social competence, and cognitive competence. However, the magnitude of the effect was relatively small and is displayed for two measures in Fig. 2. These measures, completed by teachers, are from Quay and Peterson’s (1987) Revised Behavior Problem Checklist. What is obvious from the figure is that the mean difference between the two groups for each measure is
1992 Copyright
0
WOS-7967/92 $5.00 + 0.00 1992 PergamonPressLtd
INVITED ESSAY PARENTAL DIVORCE AND ADOLESCENT MALADJUSTMENT: SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY VS PUBLIC INFORMATION REX FOREHAND University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, U.S.A. (Received 24 October
1991)
Envision the following scenario. John is a 13 yr old adolescent whose parents divorced last year. Since that time he has become increasingly sullen, withdrawn, and hostile toward his mother. When he is asked to take out the garbage, he responds by stating “Why do I have to do everything” and stomping out of the room. When his mother tries to initiate a conversation with him regarding his day at school, he simply says “It’s none of your business”. Discussions between John and his mother almost invariably end in an argument and John stating “I’m going to live with my father as soon as I can because I hate you”. Consider a second scenario. Margaret is a 16 yr old adolescent whose parents divorced when she was twelve. When her parents told her they were divorcing, she showed little emotion. Anytime her parents attempted to talk to her about the divorce and explain it to her, she simply said “It is all right. I understand”. Following the divorce, Margaret continued to do well in school, kept her old friends and had good relationships with them, and gave her mother few problems at home. However, with the passage of 4yr, negative consequences began emerging from the divorce. Margaret is hanging out with a ‘wilder crowd’, she does not abide by the curfew established by her mother, she has had three very intense but brief sexual relationships within the last 6 months, and her grades are beginning to fall. The two examples described in the preceding paragraphs present views which are often portrayed to the public regarding adolescents’ reactions to parental divorce. On the one hand, adolescents are presented as becoming immediately rebellious and difficult. On the other hand, when this does not occur, the possibility of a ‘sleeper effect’ is often presented. That is, while appearing to adjust well to the divorce and its immediate aftermath, adolescents at some point later will suddenly display adjustment problems which are attributed to the divorce. The issue to be addressed in this essay concerns the discrepancy between such images which are portrayed to the public and the empirical data that are evident in the scientific literature. Is the information being presented to the public congruent with, or based upon, that which is in the psychological literature? If it is, then both we as professionals and the news media are doing our jobs adequately. However, if it is not, there is a concern that must be addressed. The position taken in this essay is that parental divorce is a stressor for many adolescents. However, I maintain that the extent of the disruption in their functioning is substantially less than is typically portrayed in the media. This position is presented graphically in Fig. 1. As is evident from this figure, the working assumption is that the scientific literature does support that there are some difficulties in functioning for adolescents from divorced families relative to those from intact families. However, the second working assumption is that the information presented to the public is substantially exaggerated in terms of adolescent maladjustment effects. Thus, the point of concern is represented by the difference between scientific inquiry and public information. In addition to the hypothesis that there is an overstatement to the public concerning the effects of divorce on adolescents, I also intend to present evidence that considering divorce ‘effects’ in isolation is an oversimplification of the issue, as there are many mediating variables that need to 319
320
REX FOREHAND
Scientific Data
Scientific Data
Media Presentation
Fig. 1. Proposed relation between the scientific data and the media presentation. Note that intact divorced refer to adolescents from married and divorced families, respectively.
be considered, Thus, to broadly generalize concerning portrayed to the public, is unwarranted.
THE
MEDIA
and
the effects of divorce, especially as is
STORY
The influence of divorce on children and adolescents has received substantial attention in the media, particularly in recent years. For example, I conducted a computer search of the general periodicals under the heading of Children of Divorced Parents in a university library. From 1989 through March of 1991 (27 months), 29 articles were listed as appearing in popular magazines and newspapers. Included were articles in the New York Times (5), Parents’ ~uguzine (4), P~yc~u~5gy Today (41, Christianity Today (2), Newsweek (2), Time (l), and U.S.A. Today (1). Many of the titles of the various articles clearly portray divorce as a traumatic event with lasting effects. Titles included “Children after Divorce: Wounds that Don’t Heal”, “Children of the After Shock”, “Children’s Divorce Trauma”, and “The Lasting Wounds of Divorce”. Obviously, such titles are intended to attract attention and draw readers. The work of Wallerstein (e.g. Wallerstein & Blakeslee, 1989; Wallerstein & Corbin, 1989) has been in the forefront of much of the public media attention to divorce. Wallerstein’s work focuses on following children from divorced families for l&15 yr following parental break-up. Her study has been appropriately criticized on a number of scientific grounds. As Kelly and Emery (1989) pointed out in a review of Wallerstein and Blakeslee’s book Second Chances, “there is no comparison group, the sample is limited and self-selected, and the vast majority of the data are case studies. One hardly needs to be a methodologist to note the study’s flaws” (p. 82). These reviewers further note that “the book is full of conclusions that are scientifically invalid, ignore contradictory research, and unrelentingly emphasize the negative” (p. 82). However, the conclusions reached in Second Chances are anything but tentative. “There is no hedging and only rare disclaimer” (Kelly & Emery, 1989, p. 85). Kelly and Emery emphasize that a focus on the negative is particularly alarming in a book written for public consumption.
While this portrayal is undoubtedly accurate for some members of some families, the conclusions about pervasive generational scarring surely are inaccurate and damaging for many others. Those who have done well by their children and themselves will fear their achievements are illusory, This is especially true because of the dreaded ‘sleeper effect’ that Wallerstein discusses at length. She suggests that girls--even those who show few apparent ill-effects of divorce-are likely to see serious and unexpected damage arise in their young adult life (p. 82).
Parental divorce and adolescent maladjustment
321
Has Wallerstein’s work attracted public attention? The conclusions of Second Chances have been repeated in the popular press numerous times, including Time (6 February 1989), Newsweek (6 February 1989), Parents’ Magazine (6 August 1990), Society (March/April, 1989), New York (8 October 1990), Christianity Toduy (12 May 1989), and The New York Times Magazine (22 January 1989). Each of the ‘attention grabber’ titles noted previously was attached to an article reporting on the book. Much of the media attention to divorce does not focus on adolescents. Rather, the attention is on pre-adolescent children or children in general without differentiation across age groups (it should be noted that this pattern is not unlike that within the scientific literature). However, it is important to note that adolescents do not escape unnoticed in Second Chances and its attention in the media. One Wallerstein and Blakeslee conclusion, noted by Elkind (1990) in Parents’ Magazine (p. 160), is that “those who enter adolescence, in the immediate wake of their parents’ divorce, had a particularly hard time. . . . An alarming number of teenagers felt abandoned physically and emotionally”. More recently, in an article in Newsweek (22 July 1991) entitled “Girls Who Go Too Far”, teenage girls are depicted as affection-starved individuals who will do anything to have a boyfriend. One ‘cause’ of this boy crazy problem is presented as parental divorce. Wallerstein is quoted in the article as stating that following divorce “many girls are terrified of being abandoned or betrayed. One response we’re seeing in a number of young women is to throw themselves into a lot of relationships” (p. 59). In Second Chances, Wallerstein and Blakeslee expand on the ‘going too far’ theme. They note that divorce in adolescence is particularly difficult for girls and can lead to promiscuity, which is ‘characteristically combined with drug and alcohol use’ (p. 168). At a different point, they emotionally describe adolescents of divorce who engage in delinquent acts: Made wretched by the experience of divorce, most feel rejected and abandoned by both parents. After the family structure collapses in adolescence, they do not recover. These young people are not generally engaged in crimes of violence. They steal cash to buy drugs or alcohol but do not use knives, guns, or other weapons (p. 153). In summary, the image presented in the public media about adolescent functioning following parental divorce is one of severe disruption. Is this warranted?
THE
SCIENTIFIC
DATA
Relative to younger children, adolescents’ responses to parent divorce have been ignored in the scientific literature. For example, in a recent meta-analysis of parental divorce and child well-being, Amato and Keith (1991) reported on 22 studies examining academic achievement of pre-adolescents (pre-school and primary grades) but only 11 studies on the same topic with adolescents (secondary grades). Similarly, for social adjustment there were 22 and 5 studies reviewed for pre-adolescents and adolescents, respectively. Thus, conclusions that can be reached even in the scientific literature, much less in the public media, about parental divorce and adolescents have to be viewed quite tentatively. The current review will take two approaches and will serve more as a condensed summary than a comprehensive review. First, two studies, one employing a methodology common to sociology and one employing a methodology common to psychology, will be reviewed as examples of the work in this area. Second, conclusions from Amato and Keith’s meta-analysis will be summarized. Utilizing a nationally representative sample of 1197 children and adolescents, Allison and Furstenberg (1989) compared those from intact families (869 youth) to those from divorced families (328 youth). Data were collected from parents, teachers, and children at two points in time, separated by 5 yr. The results for the sample as a whole indicated that marital dissolution was associated with poorer academic performance, more problem behavior, and more distress.
REX FOREHAND
322
However, for adolescents, the difficulties were limited to one area of functioning: a measure of delinquency. Of 10 regression analyses performed, only two (a child report of delinquency and a parent report of delinquency) were significant. Considering the number of analyses performed, the two significant findings may have emerged, at least partially, by chance. A further analysis of a particular subset of adolescents-those whose parents divorced between the two assessmentsfailed to find any differences in functioning when compared to those whose parents had not divorced. Perhaps what is of even more importance is the magnitude of the effects. While significant differences did emerge in several areas for the sample as a whole, the proportion of variance accounted for was never more than 3%. As Allison and Furstenberg note, gender differences accounted for more variance than did divorce! A study by Forehand, Thomas, Wierson, Brody and Fauber (1990) was conducted exclusively with an adolescent sample. Youth (mean age = 13 yr) from 121 intact and 93 recently divorced (< 12 months) families, respectively, were included in the sample. The results indicated that adolescents from divorced homes were functioning significantly poorer than those from intact homes in all four areas assessed: externalizing problems, internalizing problems, social competence, and cognitive competence. However, the magnitude of the effect was relatively small and is displayed for two measures in Fig. 2. These measures, completed by teachers, are from Quay and Peterson’s (1987) Revised Behavior Problem Checklist. What is obvious from the figure is that the mean difference between the two groups for each measure is
