• The poverty rate for children living in single-parent homes is five times the rate for children living with two parents.
• Divorced men experience an average 42% rise in their standard of living in the first year after divorce, while divorced women (and their children) experience a 73% decline.
• School-age children living with a parent and stepparent, or divorced mother only, are 40% to 75% more likely to repeat a grade and 70% more likely to be expelled from school.
• Children who grow up in fractured families are less likely to graduate from high school than children from intact families.
• A disproportionate number of runaway teens come from step-parent households.
• Young sons often experience nightmares and a “father hunger” soon after the dad leaves home. In their teens, they are more likely to have increased levels of aggression, gang membership and other emotions and behavioral problems.
• Young daughters of divorce often experience anxiety and guilt. In their teens, they are more likely to be sexually involved, marry younger, be pregnant more often before marriage, and become divorced or separated from their eventual husbands.
• Children of divorce typically experience depression, drug and alcohol experimentation and a diminished ability to form lasting relationships.

Source: Free to Be Family, published by the Family Research Council, a division of Focus on the Family.

Tags: children, divorce, family, marriage