Explaining the higher incidence of adjustment problems among children of divorce compared with those in two-parent families

We examined the extent to which differences in adolescent adjustment problems between divorced and intact families can be explained by loss of family income, parental conflict, the psychological adjustment and parenting practices of the custodial parent, and level of involvement of the noncustodial parent. The importance of these factors was assessed by hierarchial regression with a sample of 328 intact and 206 divorced families. The results indicated that quality of mother's parenting and of father's involvement in parenting explains the association between divorce and boys' externalizing problems, whereas quality of mother's parenting and postdivorce conflict explain the relationship between divorce and girls' externalizing problems. Divorce elevates a girl's risk for depression because it increases the chances that her mother will become depressed, which in turn reduces the quality of her parenting. Including the various explanatory variables did not reduce the association between divorce and boys' internalizing problems. Boys with divorced parents tended to be more depressed than those from two-parent families regardless of the psychological adjustment, level of conflict, or quality of parenting manifested by their parents.