Divorce often gets blamed for a host of troubles faced by children whose parents split, and much past research has focused on the damage to children’s well-being. New research suggests at least in one segment of overall well-being — bad behavior — divorce doesn’t appear to be the reason for some behavior problems.
“It really depends on the individual marriages and the family,” says Allen Li, associate director of the Population Research Center at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif. “My conclusion is that divorce is neither bad nor good.”
His findings, to be presented Saturday in Chicago at a meeting of the non-profit Council on Contemporary Families, contrast with a body of research about divorce’s effect on children that some researchers say has overestimated the difficulty that parents’ divorce causes for children.
