DIVORCE IS A PART OF MY LIFE…RESILIENCE, SURVIVAL, AND VULNERABILITY: YOUNG ADULTS PERCEPTION OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF PARENTAL DIVORCE
Dorit Elder-Avidan, Muhammad M. Haj-Yahia, and Charles W. Greenbaum
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Reviewed by Christopher Khoo Chong Han & Tan Zhi Peng
Introduction/Objective
The rising rate, and the growing number of children whose parents divorced since the 1970s reflected wider society changes and created a shift in the perception and social acceptance of divorce. The role of marriage in coordinating social life has deteriorated and many children are being brought up in alternative settings. Divorce is a complex event with personal, social, legal, and financial short-term and long –term effects for adults and children. Yet, the conceptualization of divorce in negative terms alone, implying harm and damage, can skew the ways we view adjustment and my block recognition of coping with the unconscious mental and emotional patterns that shapes behaviour in a given situation or environment.
The main objective of this research is to deepen the understanding of the way young adults whose parents are divorced during their childhood and who also experienced parental divorce as well. In divorce, the breakup of the parents affects all individuals and subsystems in the family and its relationship to all other subsystems.
Most research on the effects of divorce on young children investigated their life in new post-divorce families; functioning in school, social circles, and in the family; emotional reactions relationship with parents; and adjustment. Children do not favour their parents’ decision to divorce because their children need to go through specific psychosocial tasks in order to adjust, and are at a higher risk for emotional difficulties when the pre-divorce parental relationship was extremely impaired. They even will have a higher risk when caught up in high-level parental conflict...