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

who else searched this up cuz their parents are divorced and it's really messed you up and you've never gotten the support and help you've needed?? and that mostly everyone overlooks it and says "it's just a divorce, get over it"

IT HURTS MY HEART TO SEE KIDS COMMENTING ON THIS..... I AM SO SORRY MY LOVES :( <3 <3

Basically were all here because we can relate

Low self esteem, anxiety, depression—> story of my life.

SHE IS RIGHT DIVORCE HAS A SHORT TERM EFFECT ON CHILDREN - FROM 2-90 YEARS

Something that I internalized at 17 when my parents divorced was that I was unlovable. If half of me is mom and half me is dad, and they both hate each other, they each must hate half of me. They would deny this of course, but this is the logic we struggle with, and is very difficult to overcome no matter what they said. My peace came through becoming Christian and knowing I am loved deeply by the one who truly created me. That has been the only salve for me, and I am now in my late 50's

My parents are divorced and all my friends think I'm funny, crazy and happy all the time but when I get home and go to be I just lay there and cry for a long periods of time but no one knows. i live with my dad and my 3 sisters and my mum lives in a totally different country. I love my mum and dad equally. It takes 4 on a boat to get to my mum and cost a lot of money which we struggle with. I only get to see my mum on holidays and I'm only 13 and my mum and dad split up when I was 4 but I still cry and cry how much I miss them :(

Going in between houses is hard

They should study the effect of parents who stay together in misery and fight everyday but, "stay for the children".

I was 16 when my folks divorced, and remember it being such a relief. I flourished as a young man after being removed from the chaos. Best of luck everyone!

There is a book called “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Case Study.” The researchers followed the lives of over 300 children of divorce, checking in on them every 5 years for 25 years. The results are fascinating. When I got divorced I was surprised to find that family courts use this book to formulate and determine terms in custody issues. The speaker mentioned how children did badly in the 1970’s, better in the 1980’s and worse again in the 1990’s. She didn’t mention how divorce and custody laws changed in these decades. In the 70’s, the children almost always went to the mother. In the 80’s courts decided fathers should be in their kids lives more so they made the kids stay in one home while the parents alternated being in the one home with the kids. In the 90’s, parents stated it was too hard for them to move every other week, so the courts made the children go back and forth. The book theorizes, if parents couldn’t live in this back and forth way, how is it assumed children can? This is just one of the many things discussed in this book by author Judith Wallerstein.

I was raised in a divorced family. I remember that one thing I've done in that time was to focus on my life. Whatever happened to my parents, that was their life and I didn't want this to drag my life behind. Now I've been working to help families who are in tough time like my family back then. Each one of us is given a life for us to shap. Hope you all win in this battle and make the shape you like to be.

I had to go to court for 3 years getting asked who I want to live with and love the most I couldn't chose I would just cry myself to sleep every night *Thank you for all the support it’s crazy and I hope anyone going through this is ok and it gets better I promise, I’m here for anyone if you need it or if you want to speak to someone who understands ♥️

My parents just told me today that they are getting a divorce. I always thought they had the best marriage and so did my friends. I’m 14 years old and can’t stop crying. I don’t know what’s going to happen

I know some people say Divorces arent a life changing milestone, but for me, it broke me. I cried for weeks when they divorced. I lost interest in things I used to like, got bad grades and lost some friends due to a change in my personality. Overtime, I coped with the fact that this is my life now, things wont be as they used to be. To any of you going through this, I wish you luck and just know that youll get over it and continue on with your life.

I am 45 years old today and my parents divorced over 30 years ago and I’m still devastated and it has changed my life forever because of it sadly. We no longer have a homebase for holidays I have not seen my brother and sister in a very long time and I feel like we don’t have a real family anymore. Divorce is one of the worst things that could happen to anyone. Once you get divorce notice how siblings move all over the country and it breaks apart the family forever. The best years of my life were prior to my parents divorce by far.

My mom and dad need to see this. Im going through so much. Drama, friend problems, my own problems, i dont need a divorce problem!!!! Im only 11!!!

I get migraines a lot, but I get more migraines when my dad and his girlfriend fight. Edit: parents always think that their child doesn’t know what’s going on, but they do. They know everything.

My parents aren't divorced but they often argue with each other. I thought I was the only one and I've never met a person who is going through the same problem as me. My mom stayed because she didn't want her kids to feel 'different'. I actually hope that they would get a divorce, after seeing everything that my dad did to her and the nonstop argument I have to listen to. Honestly this just traumatized me since I was a kid up till now. I'm 20 and I've never been in a relationship because of this. I never told this to anyone, even to my best friend because I thought that nobody would understand. They would joke about me having very high standards of guys and I would just laugh it off. I just think that it would be better if nobody knew about it. I think kids with these kind of parents would suffer more as we would listen to them arguing and watching bad things happen almost everyday. Neverending. It makes us have a very deep scar as we don't know who to tell this to because it's a rare family situation. After years, it feels good to just let it out even though idk who would read this. Thank you for reading.

I'm an only child with separated parents. I wasn't supposed to be born, I was conceived on a drunken New Year's night and my dad wanted my mom to get an abortion. Obviously, that didn't happen. My parents never actually got a divorce, but they've been separated since I was 7 years old. I remember living in a two-story house with both of them up until that time, things seemed so carefree, my cousins and aunts actually used to come around and visit for the holidays. My father works as a department worker at Wal-Mart and my mother used to work as an office attendant at an elementary school. They seemed to have a pretty decent romantic life and wanted me to have a good childhood. Things seemed alright at the time. Then when I was about 6 years old, they started fighting. Verbally and physically. My father had anger issues and my mother was getting into alcohol from stress. I remember one time my father was pinning my mother by the wrists to the wall of the walk-in closet, there was blood on the walls. I got involved by trying to get my dad to let my crying mother go, and he had slapped me on contact. I ran back to my room crying and they had stopped fighting once they realized what had happened. I've never forgotten that. My parents sold the house and moved into separate apartments. I had the typical life of a child living with separated parents, switching between houses every other week. I had naturally grown more attached to my father as my mother would drink and have boyfriends around whenever I went over. I still remember the times we went into her room just to find her barely conscious on the bed with an empty pill bottle in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other and had to take her to the ER to get her detoxed. I didn't have friends growing up and was often bullied for being that one 'weird girl' with the baggy clothes that always sat alone and didn't really talk to anyone. No one knew about my situation, not even the teachers, for even THEY disliked me. I didn't talk to anyone and became apathetic throughout the years. I had to change schools every two years as my parents were constantly moving. Things didn't really change with each school I went to. My mother is an alcoholic and has checked into rehab and stayed in halfway homes multiple times throughout the years. I slowly started staying with my dad more often as time passed, and eventually just stayed with him full-time once we actually settled in a new home when I reached the 6th grade. Sometimes when my mother was sober, she would stay with us. She suffers from bipolar disorder and would eventually turn back to drinking and repeated the process time and time again, sometimes ending in fights and broken glass before being sent back to rehab. She even went out driving on the highway late in night when she was drunk, with my father and I getting a phone call from a far away hospital saying she was in a severe accident and that her car was totalled. She got extremely lucky with only minor scars and got her license revoked. My dad got tired of these situations around my 8th grade year and made her find her own place. My mother is on disability and has been able to find her own apartment and make a decent living through a housing association. She still relapses every now and then, but she's doing better. My father seems to be doing alright, but seems rather lonely and depressed, talking to his sisters often. My only family I really talk to is my father, with the occasional monthly visit with my mother. I'm a 16 year-old junior in high school now. I have one friend, the other friends I've ever had have all abandoned me in favor of other people. I'm a little lonely and I hardly ever talk about my feelings and my past as no one cares to listen. I feel misunderstood. I've grown to accept a nihilistic outlook on life. I don't see the point in living. But I need to be successful and make my dad proud and go to college and make a living out of myself. I don't want to see my dad stuck working a dead-end job for the rest of his life. I've grown weary and I'm only 16, almost 17. I know I shouldn't be upset over my past as others experience a whole lot worse, but it still hurts. I didn't have anyone my own age to talk to growing up like most children growing up in a broken family do, I didn't get to have a sibling or a close friend to confide in. It's hard and I feel like no one else is going through the same exact situation I have, as they all have a sibling or someone they leaned on for comfort. Life is unfair. But it is what it is.