The impact of divorce on children: Tamara D. Afifi at TEDxUCSB

a few days ago I told my students I was going to be giving a TED talk and they had two responses the first was that is super cool right so would you agree super cool right oh yeah and so I went from being kind of the geeky professor to still being a geeky professor but being able to do something really cool the second reaction was we want our voices to be heard and so what I did was I just asked them for a minute and a half just to take out a sheet of paper and I said I want you to write down something you know if there is anything that you would change about the way your parents communicated when you were growing up and the second question I said was I want you to also thinking think about something that you appreciate about the way they communicated with you or with each other growing up and this was one of the responses I mean keep in mind this was written in a minute and a half my parents never got a divorce but I always wish they had even when they were both cheating on one another to get back at each other when Child Services got involved when all the friends and family encouraged them to end it they still held on now I'm 19 and scared to believe that anything lasts forever every relationship I go into I constantly remind myself that in a month or a year or whatever I lose them I wish my parents had just ended it back when me and my brothers were little that they hadn't made me feel like their love/hate relationship with each other was more important than us however they always reminded us that we were loved and that we mattered forever and always and we still stayed strong when it really mattered I love them both now imagine you know and this was anonymous so collecting these and then kind of sifting through them after class and seeing that you know and then I you know I kept sifting through thinking you know and there were a bunch of them there were really really sad cases when the majority were super positive keep that in mind you know but really made me think as a professor you know looking across and my students I was kind of dumbfounded because I you know talked about divorce for in conflict for like a class period and a half not once that ever her to me the student was feeling that inside and I think a lot of parents faced a similar situation where they look at their child they think their child is okay and most children are but inside they might be feeling something very different and they don't talk about it so parents just don't know so today I want to give children of divorce a voice so like I said I don't have any fancy PowerPoint slides I just have their voices and some research thrown in in particular I want you to see divorce through the eyes of the adolescents and young adults who've experienced it and Alphen get asked the question so what impact does divorce have on children and my answer is always it depends it depends upon a host of complex circumstances and situations and children really vary in terms of how they respond to divorce some children actually fare a lot better if they're removed from a really conflicted turbulent environment and other children fare really poorly and then other children aren't affected aren't affected at all divorce does have for most children a short term impact most children of divorce suffer from lower self-esteem anxiety depression less quality contact with their parents their standard of living decreases and a lot of times you know these short-term effects actually linger into adulthood and have long term effects you know some children continue to have psychological difficulties children of divorce on average tend to have less satisfied relationships with their parents later in life they have more difficulty in their romantic relationships and they're much more likes to get to get divorced themselves and at this point in the lecture this the children who are from divorced families the students want to get out and walk out because it's like great I'm screwed is there hope and yes there is because research actually shows that the differences there were the effect sizes between children of divorce and children of parents who stay married are very small primarily because there's a lot of variance and how people without children respond to divorce well it's really interesting Otto who's a sociologist and one of my mentors actually showed that these effect sizes actually these differences might be getting bigger not smaller he did a meta-analysis where he looked at hundreds of studies and children whose parents were divorced in the 70s and 80s and 90s and it was really high the effect of divorce on children in the 70s decreased in the 80s and increased in the 90s again so it's kind of perplexing divorce is common it's less stigmatized so why would the differences between dildo divorce and non divorced families be increasing you know in Apollo mato one of his height you know one of his suggestions was well maybe is because the reasons for divorce are different than they used to be when people got divorced in the 1970s because there's a really bad marriage right you know adultery all these other things and they really needed to get out of it today people are getting divorced for personal happiness and that could really bother children right that's not enough people are getting divorced too easily when I ask my students what do you think they actually argue it's because children are closer to their parents now than they ever have been when I think about my generation and I just turned 40 I'm going to admit it on the web who just turned 40 right but I think my generation and older you know we talk to our parents like on a Sunday night once a week and that's good you know good kids and we say hi and you don't have good relationships but those of you who are college students how many of you talk to your parents once a day or once every other day yeah the vast majority whenever my I asked my students you know classes of 100 90 percent of them talk to their parents at least once a day text messaging the phone how whatever they use they talk to the parents a lot and they feel extremely close to them times are changing partially due to technology and other things but it might mean that when divorce happens because they're so close to their parents it hurts them more so setting that aside though those effect sizes those differences are still very small so divorce matters but what I want you to remember today is this point there's one variable that determines more than any other how well children function after divorce and that's parents conflict I would say them that the most profound finding on divorce in the past four decades is that parents conflict is more important than divorce per se in predicting how well children function in fact children whose parents have a lot of conflict and who stay married those are the children that actually have the most difficulty psychologically and out of the most difficulty establishing satisfying relationships later in life not the children necessarily whose parents divorce it's not so much about the divorce as it is how parents relate to each other you know most most people who've been married for 50 years are happily married thank goodness where there's a subgroup of those people who've been married forever who really just don't like each other it's sarcastic I know it's dark I kind of wish there was a special section of the Hallmark store for them you know what I mean because of the home workers always like so flowery and beautiful but there should be like a card that says you've been married for 50 years but have you been happy again dark I know um but there are those sub but people who simply don't believe in divorce and I'm not saying that you should go out and get a divorce I'm not an advocate of divorce it's really painful and people I do think people get divorced way too easily but parents also need to know that the way that they fight affects their children's bodies I remember a long time ago is doing field research and went into family's homes and I was spending anywhere from four to seven hours in their home and I was interviewing and surveying you know all the kids and the parents everybody in the home and I remember sitting on the couch with a child Nate is 12 years old sitting on the couch with him and ask him asking him about his parents divorce and I remember him saying you know his stomach hurt a lot at night his stomach would hurt and then he would go to school and his stomach would still hurt he had a hard time concentrating and he was talking about how his parents fought a lot and then I asked him all you talk to your parents about their fighting it's like he said no I don't ever talk to them about it because if I bring it up it makes the conflict worse that defining moment that had a big impact on my research I walked away from that interaction with that child thinking I got to do something different and different other than self reports in our surveys to try and show parents look the way that you're fighting is affecting your children's bodies and from that point forward I began to look at physiology and children's physical physiological reactions to their parents conflict and other types of communication patterns through things like their heart rates their galvanic skin response to their sweat or arousal in looking at stress hormones and so you know when your body is stressed your brain tells the rest of your body to emit hormones like cortisol so we take people spit you can throw a lot of things through a person's spit although sometimes people don't want to give us their spread they're a little bit hesitant because they're like are you cloning me what are you going to do with this DNA you can actually tell a person's DNA but we look at stress hormones because you can tell from just from someone's spit how stressed their body is and so for example we bring parents and adolescents into the lab with system set them on a couch and then we have them talk about something stressful about the parents relationship and these are parents and kids from divorced and non divorced families and then we take their spit before the interaction and at three or four times after the interaction to look at how their body is responding when they're talking about something stressful related to the parents relationship and what we found for example is that parents that have really good communication skills they don't have very much conflict they're supportive they're competent in the way that they communicate either affectionate it doesn't really stress out kids very much that type of interaction you know they stress out a little bit get a little bit anxious and in there their bodies are able to calm down really quickly doesn't matter whether their parents are divorced or not the kids that have the most difficulty are the ones whose parents have a lot of conflict we're still married those kids after that type of an interaction or anxiety levels are likely bouncing a superball in this room their bodies are less able to calm down after an interaction like that now that's just one interaction now imagine if your parents are chronically fighting you know what that can do inside to a child's body now children of divorce whose parents had a lot of conflict also reacted they had a delayed reaction but then they were able to come down again the other group of children that tend to have a really hard time with their parents divorce are the ones who never see it coming so let me give you kind of an extreme example mmm a young woman came up to me after a class one day and she was really bothered by that it was actually after the lecture on divorce I tend to bother people so you know she had her hands all sweaty I get that comment a lot to make people sweaty so she come up to me after class and she's like you know I thought my parents had the perfect marriage and my friends always told me your parents have the perfect marriage so she went off to college and her parents sprung a divorce on her and that's actually not all that uncommon and then she said you know when my mom is my best friend and so my mom confided in me that she was cheating on my dad but that my dad didn't know and she said should I continue to see this other person who should I break up with your father now you can imagine what that would do to a person's body so she said professor Afifi what should I do you know oh oh you know you think I'm nervous now like then I was I you know and actually said two things I said well I'm really sorry theory in that situation number two I said why do you know this information so that's a lot of weight for a college student to have that type of information and I said you know why you should be worried about what you're gonna wear in Friday night you should be worried about getting good grades you should be worried about going out with your friends and what type of career you might have instead she was worried day in and day out every minute of the day of the day what am i parents going to do her mom they have a really close relationship but parents have to be very careful so that that doesn't tip over right so their child doesn't become their confidant their best friend another parent and that's a slippery slope and I think that's a generational difference as well that we're facing so that closeness is a good you know is a good thing but she felt caught between her parents that's what really bothers adolescents and young adults is when they feel caught or torn between their parents when children feel caught or torn between their parents they're tugged between different loyalties they love both of their parents right so they're trying to maintain these relationships and defend their parents and the present parent in the presence of the other children feel torn when their parent when their parents make them me Thierry's when they give them their make the messengers of information they ask him them to relay information they use inappropriate disclosures and it could be very very small thing so for example the dad says can you just remind your mom that you have a dentist appointment on Tuesday easy right the child goes to the mom mom dad said I have a dentist appointment on Tuesday and the moms like well why did your dad just tell me that like why doesn't your father ever talk to me you tell your father he needs to talk to me more who's a simple task turns into a child feeling caught unfortunately when children feel caught what they tend to do because it creates dissonance anxiety in their brains right so but unfortunately the way that they settle that dissonance is by forming an alliance with one parent against the other they don't mean to do it it's just easier unfortunately so they might maintain a really close relationship with one parent but they lose the connection with the other I don't know how many quotes I got from students in these classes that said because of that one thing I lost a relationship with my mom or dad for three years and it's never been the same so how else do children respond when they feel caught they avoid they don't want to talk about it right so when they avoid the parents don't realize it exists very much so they keep on talking right and the child keeps on avoiding so it's a vicious cycle sometimes the second reaction that they have is they become aggressive right they mimic their parents conflict in return the third thing they do is they directly confront their parents and say look like you need to keep me out of this and that actually is the most effective for them but they have to say it numerous times but that only comes with age because we tell our children don't talk back to your parents right so they're not going to talk back to their parents usually but as they age they increase in their competence and their ability to or they gain efficacy they think they now have the ability to tell their parents like look don't put me in the middle of it so I wanted to end on a positive note because I said I would what can parents do that's the big question and I felt this talk today it was really important because I want to give parents efficacy what can they do how can I feel like I can do something so that I that my children don't get put in the middle and I think parents feel very frustrated because they feel like they can control their own actions but they can't control the bad behavior of the other parent well the first thing you need to do is if you can cooperate try and create rules between each other for how you're going to communicate to each other and to your children and try to co-parent together that's the best alternative but if you tried and tried and tried and that's not working the parent continues to badmouth you don't engage let go focus on your own behavior because time and time again adolescents and young adults will tell you I respected that I could see what was going on and my mom or my dad didn't go there you know when I said we had two little girls one six and one eight they you know they squabble like sisters do siblings do so like one will come to me and say you know mom my sister keeps picking on me and I say well what would happen if he didn't talk to her back you know really what would happen if he didn't engage just don't fight back she's going to get bored right same thing happens with adults if you don't engage your behavior can actually affect the other behavior because they're not it's not a game anymore this second thing is to figure out where the emotions are coming from Robert Emory who is a clinician and a researcher who studies divorce said you know sometimes parents former spouses are really angry at each other because they hate each other and sometimes they're really angry at each other because they still love each other so you have to figure out why are you so angry and then you have to figure out how to redefine your relationship you no longer married to each other your co-parent so trying to figure out how you can go from spouses to co-parents effectively and the last thing that I would recommend is trying to take away some of the emotion in conflict in general people tend to say the worst things things that they regret when they're highly emotional highly angry highly sad so try and diffuse some of the emotions something very simple for example is to email the parent instead of talking to them face-to-face so much or via the phone email has its own issues but it does tend to diffuse emotion and the last and final point that I wanted to make to parents the most important thing you can do is to listen to your child's voice they may not say anything but try and put yourself in your child's shoes and think of the long-term impact that this would have and listen to their inner voice thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 612,468

Rating: 4.7986722 out of 5

Keywords: Children, ted talks, United States, UCSB, tedx talk, Divorce, ted x, ted, Tamara Afifi, tedx talks, tedx, Communications, TEDxUCSB, ted talk, Family, English

Id: cKcNyfXbQzQ

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Sun May 20 2012