Divorce can be liberating, empowering, and so much more. Yet it can also be a real challenge for you and your kids. One long-held belief is that it will be damaging to your child’s education. A team of researchers decided to look closer at this.
They found that three main factors explain why divorce can affect a child’s educational attainment:
#1. Decreased financial resources
Money can be in short supply when parents end their marriage. However hard they work, meeting the needs for food and shelter can leave little over for extra-curricular activities or extra educational materials for their children.
#2. Disruption to routine
Children are highly adaptable, but a stable routine makes life simpler. It allows them to focus on their studies. Moving between parents’ houses takes time. It also increases the chance that homework or textbooks are inaccessible due to being left in the wrong house.
#. Decline in psychosocial skills
Divorce can affect children’s emotional well-being. Some may act up, getting into fights or trouble with the law as they struggle to deal with their new reality. Others may just turn inward, struggling to trust in relationships after seeing the one they thought was unbreakable end.
The study suggests that kids who grew up in a more difficult environment may have already developed the skills to cope with disruption and reduced financial resources. Or their education had already suffered due to those things, so divorce caused a drop from a lesser height. Hence divorce may affect their education less than that of kids from more privileged backgrounds.
Despite this, it’s clear that many children go on to do exceedingly well after their parents’ divorce. Seeking legal help to create appropriate custody arrangements will increase the chances that your kids do.
