divorce essays

divorce essays When a boat is sinking, all the passengers are given life preservers. When a marriage comes to an end, a similar state of emergency exists, but no one hands you a life preserver. You and your children are on your own, thrashing about, trying hard to survive. Many parents in this situation feel like helpless, frightened children themselves, wishing someone or something would save them. Imagine, then, how devastated and powerless children feel. A separation and divorce is a shocking experience for them, for their very existence depends on their parents. They sustain tremendous losses and experience great pain, during, and after divorce. This crisis and tragedy of divorce is that this time, when parents are usually least able to help or even think about helping, is when children need their help most of all (Bienfeld,1). The effects of divorce on children can be devastating. To children, divorce does not mean the second chance that it so often means to one or both parents. To children it is the loss of their family - the entity that provides them with support, stability, security, and continuity in an often unpredictable world (Bienenfeld, 92). Children assume that their family is a given and that their parents are permanent. Studies uniformly find that divorce is a jolt to most children. Even youngsters that have lived in tense, conflict-ridden home for many years seldom think of divorce as a remedy for unhappiness; the remedy would be for parents to stop fighting (92). When suddenly divorce becomes reality, the assumptions children have accepted as givens and the structure they have relied on crumble, they feel not only vulnerable but powerless to have any influence on a situation the profoundly impacts their lives. During a divorce children's feelings become extremely confused. Many children feel intensely rejected, perceiving that the parent is leaving them as well as the spouse. Int...