Parental Divorce and Children's Interpersonal Relationships

Summary

This meta-analysis involved 53 studies that compared the interpersonal relationships (parents, siblings, and peers) of children from divorced homes with those from continuously intact homes. Children from divorced homes had more positive sibling relationships than children from intact homes. Mixed-race samples of children had more negative interpersonal relationships than white samples of children. Younger children from divorced homes experienced a lower quality of mother-child relationship than older children. The quality of relationships are lower for studies conducted more recently when compared with those conducted in earlier decades. Larger samples and studies utilizing attitude measures yielded stronger evidence for a lower quality of interpersonal relationship. Effect sizes were stronger for clinical samples than in studies based on convenience or random samples.

Key Words:

• Divorce
• interpersonal relationships
• children
• peers
• parents