"Divorce, Separation and Changing Family Practices"
21-23 September 2001

"What helps what hurts? Children coping with parental divorce"
Kari Moxnes
(NTNU, University of Trondheim)

1. Introduction

The study of how children cope with the divorce of their parent's and their well being after the divorce is a very complicated and many faceted tasks. How they cope is dependent on a large number of factors, factors of a legal, economic and social nature, factors such as the climate in the family, the relations between family members before, during and after the divorce, and characteristics of the child; age, sex and personality. The purpose of this article is to study the consequences of divorce for children, what the children themselves said was and is painful, but also what they consider helpful.

When the children talked about their divorce experiences and about what had been difficult or painful they talked about change of residence, low household economy, loss of contact with a parent, problems with stepparents and stepsiblings. In other words changes that often are consequence of divorce. But they also talked of high levels of conflict between the parents, incompetent and/or insufficient parenting, of having to parent their own parents, and/or a conflicting or distant relationship to one or both parents. In other words, one or more relations in the family were weak or bad. That is relations that in some cases had become weak or bad years before the divorce, while in other cases first became bad at the time of separation and continued to be bad for years after the divorce. When they talked about what had been good or helpful, they told about parental co-operation, parents that were friends, a closer more democratic relation to parents, family and friends that had been supportive during the divorce process, and of new family members that had become important in their lives.

Analysing the children's divorce stories I will concentrate on the change and continuities that the children had to endure during the divorce process. As a starting point for analysing the children's stories I use the results from a study of parental reports on the consequences of divorce for their children.

2. Theories

Four theories dominate the field of divorce research as to why divorce is a risk for the well being of the child. These are:

The theory of loss of social and economic capital. According to the theory of loss of social capital, the reason why divorce represents a risk for the child's development is that changes such as loss of household income, residential mobility, loss of contact with the non-residential parent led to loss of social and economic capital (McLanahan and Sandefur 1994).

The theory of social stress According to the theory of social stress, every change the child has to adjust to causes social stress and a risk of negative development for the child after divorce. It is the number of changes and the severity of those changes that determine how positive or negative the effect of divorce will be (Moxnes 1990, Wu and Martinson 1993, Sandefur and Wells 1997, Thompson and Amato 1999).

The theory of family structure This theory states that one important reason why children with divorced parents on average do less well than children from nuclear families is that they no longer live in a household with both their biological parents. According to this theory, the nuclear family is best, i.e. superior to all kinds of post-divorce families. "Even in cases where the parents share physical as well as legal custody, the child is not living with both parents at the same time. In our opinion, this is the critical point" (McLanahan and Sandefur 1994, p. 6). I disregard this theory because it is not scientific. The theoretical statement that "the nuclear family is best" is not testable. This is only one more version of the dogma of the nuclear family being the optimal family form.

The theory of parental co-operation The theory of parental co-operation states that what really matters for the child's well being is the degree of parental co-operation under and after the divorce process. Parents who continue to have a shared parenthood reduce the risk of a negative development for the children after divorce (Ahrons and Rodgers 1987, Moxnes 1990).

The first three theories are based on the assumption that the divorce leads to change, discontinuity, and that this change produces social stress and/or loss of capital and/or results in another kind and inferior family type; the fourth theory emphasises that divorce leads to both change and continuity, and that the most important continuity is that of the family and shared parenting. The first three theories have been developed from large scale studies comparing the two groups; children and youth that have grown up in nuclear families and children and youth that spent part or all of their childhood and youth in a single parent family. The forth theory is based on more qualitative studies, interviews with parents and children that have experienced divorce. Furthermore studies of children's own experiences have revealed that other factors such as of high levels of conflict between the parents, incompetent and/or insufficient parenting, of having to be their parents caregiver, and/or a conflicting or distant relationship to one or both parents often is what the children considered most important or most difficult to cope with. Therefore the following hypotheses; 1) of parental conflict, 2) of incompetent or insufficient parenting and 3) of lack of parental involvement must be considered when trying to explain children's positive and negative divorce experiences.

3. The study

The study "Families after divorce" is one of a dozen projects within the larger project "Family change and the consequences for children and youth", also called the Trondheim Umbrella. This project consists of a quantitative study of questionnaire answers given by divorced parents. The population was defined as follows: parents who divorced in Trondheim and Orkdal counties in 1992 and 1995, and who had one or more minor children at the time of divorce. The response rate was 58 percent, and 268 mothers and 205 fathers completed the questionnaire. A serious mistake was made when the questionnaire was sent out; the envelope also contained an invitation to an in-depth interview. A large number of parents, 286, volunteered to be interviewed. Some of those interviewed told us that they had not filled out the questionnaire because they preferred to be interviewed. The parents who completed the questioner gave us information about how their 910 children had coped during and after divorce. In addition, the study includes a sample of 114 parents and 96 children who have been interviewed in depth

The parents were asked if they had observed any change in their child's behaviour that they considered an effect of the divorce process. The parents were presented with 16 statements of change (8 positive and 8 negative) that they could agree or disagree to. Their answers are given in Table 1 in the appendix. Two indexes of effects of divorce, one positive and one negative, were constructed and used to measure the differences in effects for groups of children.

According to the parents, the large majority of children had experienced the divorce process in a healthy way and was doing fine. A large group of children showed neither positive nor negative effects, but when effects were noted they tended to be described as positive. However, approximately one in every three children did show one or more negative effects of divorce (see table 2 and 3 in appendix). In the following I concentrate on studying possible relations between the four changes: decline in the economy, residential mobility, loss of contact with the non-residential parent and stepparents, and the effect of divorce on the children. Thereafter the effect of continuity of parental co-operation, of parental conflicts and/or of a distant relationship between the child and a parent is studied.

For the purpose of this article I use only the interviews with 52 children who belong to three strategically drawn samples. I use only interviews with children belonging in families that theoretically should be expected to be most troubled by divorce. These children were interviewed because they 1) had little or no contact with their father, 2) came from families that had been approached by, or had themselves contacted public agencies offering help to families and children in distress, 3) or lived with a single mother who post-divorce had received economic support from the government. Most of these children lived with their mother, only a few lived with their father. None of them had shared physical custody and in average they had less contact with their non-custodial parent than the larger sample of children.

4. Results

The study of the parent's reports of the consequences of divorcee for their children showed significant differences in children's well-being between children who had experienced changes like decline in the household economy and change of residence and those who had not. But no such differences between those children who had little or no contact with their non-residential parent and those who had frequent contact. Furthermore we found no significant differences between children with stepparents and those who had no stepparent, however there was a significant difference in children's well-being as reported by the parents between children who lived in households with stepparent and those who lived with stepparents only when visiting the parent they did not live permanently with. Those who lived permanently with a stepparent did in average better on both the positive and negative scale.

Economic change in the child's household.

The parents were asked if they considered their household economy to be better, unchanged or worse after the divorce. It is no surprise that most newly divorced parents answered worse to such a question. According to parents, 67 percent of the children lived in households that had experienced a decline in income, while 15 percent lived in households with an unchanged, and 17 percent in households with a better income. We found a significant difference between the two groups of children on both the positive and the negative scale. On average, the children who experienced economic decline reflected more signs of negative effects and fewer of positive effects than those who had not experienced that change did. Economic decline in the child's household is a loss of economic capital and a major risk factor for the child's well being.

The majority of the children we interviewed lived in households with low income. Most of the parents told of a decline in household income. But most mothers, and a few fathers also stated that their pre-divorce income had been low. Therefore the economic situation for most of these children had been one of relative poverty both before and after divorce.

The children were asked about their family's economy, how they understood it to be, and if they ever had felt that the family's low income had been a problem for themselves. They were also asked about their workload at home, whether they received pocket money, and took part in after school activities that cost money.

A few of the children said that they had more money of their own after the divorce; either they got some of the child support money as their own, or they received a state scholarship for high school children because of their parents' low income. A few other children said that the household economy was better or good because the mother had control of the economy and no longer had to pay for the father's expensive habits. However, most of the children acknowledged that they lived in a household with a low income, and that the income had become worse after their parents separated. Some of these children said quite openly "we are poor", and expressed worries about the household's economic future.

The older children also told us why they had such a low income. In most cases it was because their mother did not earn much. She often had little or no work experience and therefore had an unskilled job, worked part time, had gone back to school, or lived on "pension for single parents" or a disability pension. In many other cases it was because the father did not pay, paid too late, or paid less than he was suppose to pay in child support.

At the same time most of the children also said that their family's low income had never been a problem for them personally. Not one of the 52 children told us that they could not take part in some activities because of lack of money, but many said that they did not get pocket money, and many told of a heavy workload at home. The way I understand these children's stories some of the children's answers are best understood as expressions of solidarity with their mother. Instead of saying that they could not take part in snowboard skiing or continue playing in the school band because it was to expensive, they said that they did not want to, that they had lost interest. Instead of saying that they themselves had had to take responsibility of much of the work in the home, because their mother had to work long hours to earn more money, and therefore could not cope with the household work the way she used to do before the divorce, they said that it was only fair that all family members shared the housework. And finally instead of complaining about no longer getting their weekly allowance, they said that they did not need an allowance, they got the money they needed when asking.

According to most of these children a low household income was a problem and hard to live with, but it was not a serious personal problem. It was a problem they shared with the other household members. Furthermore it was a problem that they felt that they could do something to reduce, by sacrificing some of their own activities or desires that cost money, or by earning their own money. Some of these children told proudly of the money they had been earning. However the children acknowledged that little and/or reduced income was a serious problem that caused stress. Poverty and a reduction in the households income is a risk factor for the children's well being.

Children with parents that were fighting over money, and especially children with fathers that did not pay child support the way he was suppose to, expressed more anger and/or sadness and little if any of the solidarity mentioned above.

According to the children, having parents that continuously were fighting about money was difficult and painful. Likewise having a father that was unwilling to pay, or paid insufficient child support hurt them very much. It was those children that had experienced mother and fathers fights about money, who knew that their father did not pay child support the way he should, and that also knew that the economy in their fathers household was much better than in their mothers, that was most hurt by the economic situation and the decline in the household economy. For these children this was a personal problem that was threatening to their identity, and a problem they could do nothing to change. It was the fights between their parents, the fathers rejections or lack of responsibility toward themselves, together with the unfairness they observed in the differences in standard of living in mother and fathers household, that pained them the most. In other words their main problems were parental conflict, incompetent or insufficient parenting. and/or lack of parental involvement.

Residential mobility.

In Norway, divorced parents do not move far. Most parents in our sample continued to live in the county they lived in pre-divorce. Furthermore, it seems that most parents make an effort to find a new home close to each other. A large minority of the children could walk between their parental homes. The majority of parents in our study moved to another home at the time of separation and divorce. Fathers moved more often than mothers, but when the father had physical custody for one or more of his children it was more common for him to keep the family home than it was when the mother had physical custody. Since most of the parents moved, one would expect that most of the children also had to move, but this was not the case, 54 percent of the children continued to live in the family's pre-divorce home. Another 9 percent of the children continued to live in the family pre-divorce home half time and moved to a new home were they also lived half time. Only 37 percent of the children had to move to a new home. The study of parental reports showed significant difference between the two groups of children on both the positive and the negative scale. According to the parents, the children who changed residence showed signs of negative development more often and signs of positive development less often than those who continued to live in their pre-divorce home. Residential mobility causes social stress might lead to loss of social capital and is therefore a major risk factor for children's well being.

With few exceptions the children in our in-depth interview sample had changed residence when their parents separated or divorced. A large number of these children had moved more than once. They had moved two or three times either because their mother was dependent on the county for housing, she had to take the apartment she was offered, or because their mother had met a new man, and together they had found a new home that better suited the needs of the extended household. Many of these families lived in apartments that they rented. However, the majority of the children did not move far from their pre-divorce home, and could therefore keep most of their friends and significant relations. But a large minority had moved so far from their pre-divorce home that they had to leave the known community and their social network.

According to most of the children changing residence had been a problem that caused considerable stress. Moving so far that they had to change communities had been a serious problem that produced not only social stress but also considerable loss of social capital. But even if most children told of worries and loss when changing residence, the majority of children did not present this as a serious personal problem. Again it was a family matter, and a problem many of them could reduce by keeping contact with friends in the old neighbourhood.

Even if leaving the pre-divorce home and neighbourhood had been hard for many children, finding new friends and getting included in the new community had been much worse for some of them. It was worst for those children who knew no one in the new neighbourhood. It seems that it was easier to become integrated into the new neighbourhood for those who had relatives, friends of their mothers, or own friends in the place they moved to. To have someone who could facilitate community integration is important. Few of the children mentioned their parents as facilitators. In most of these cases the mothers (in a few cases the father) were also new to the neighbourhood and had no relationships there. Since the parent worked most of the day, and usually had friends in another part of the town, they had little time and no great need to acquire friends in their new neighbourhood. Getting integrated was often something the children had to cope with themselves.

Many of these children's stories was about months, even years of being excluded from the other children's activities, and of being treated either as invisible, with contempt, or being pestered by the other children. Difficulties finding new friends had been the main problem, and for the children, this was a personal problem that was threatening to their identity, and a problem that they themselves could do nothing to reduce. A few of these children were angry with their parent or felt that she or he had failed them. They presented their problem as one of incompetent or insufficient parenting and/or lack of parental involvement.

Loss of contact with the non-residential parent.

According to Norwegian law, every child and parent has the right to contact the other regardless of what kind of relationship the parents have or have had. This means that even in cases where the parent has had only a short affair the mother cannot prevent the father or the child from seeing each other. However, the parent can decide how much contact there shall be. Increasing the contact between children and non-residential parents has been an important political goal in Norwegian family policy in the past decade. It seems to be working. It is no longer considered socially acceptable for parents to have irregular and or little contact with their children.

What has been called "common visitation" has until lately been what most parents have chosen. "Common visitation" is defined as one afternoon each week, every second weekend, Christmas or Easter holidays and two weeks in the summer. "Common visitation" is approximately 18 percent of the child's time, "extended visitation" is more, and "reduced visitation" is less than common visitation. We found that 63 percent of the children had common visitation or a more extensive visitation arrangement, among these 11 percent had two homes and spent an equal amount of time with both parents. Only 6 percent of the children had no visitation and no contact with their father. It is important to know that none of the mothers or fathers that answered the questionnaire indicated that the other parent tried to prevent the child from having contact with the non-residential parent. As in a number of other studies (ref) we found no significant relation between the frequency of visits and the effect of divorce.

Most of the parents of the children we interviewed were either satisfied with the children's contact with the other parent or wished that there were more contact. Some very few of the mothers expressed worries about the child's relation to the father and wondered if it would have been better for the child if s/he did not have to see the father. According to these mothers the fathers had alcohol or drug problems, had a criminal record, or could not be trusted because they had frequently broken dates with the children.

Among the children who had frequent contact with their father, most were satisfied. In the few cases they complained it was because of lack of flexibility in the visitation arrangement. They wanted to feel free to go to a football match or birthday party even if they were supposed to spend time with their fathers on that particular day.

Among the children who had little or no contact with their father most were not satisfied, but their way of coping and their emotions in regard to their father's absence differed considerably. A few of those children who had infrequent contact were satisfied, either because they were used to not seeing their father much, he had worked far away, or he had never taken much part in their life.

Others were relieved when they seldom or never saw him because his behaviour had too often made them feel ashamed or frightened.

Not living in the same household as their father (in a few cases the mother) had been a difficult change for most of the children. Years after divorce not seeing the non-residential parent for days and weeks was still a problem for some children at times. But they did not present the lack of frequent contact with the non-residential parent as a personal problem. The way most children presented this problem was as a necessary result of the parents being divorced and of the of their own and their parents' work situation, their economy, and the distance between the parental homes. Their visitation arrangement had to be understood in the contact of the binuclear-family's situation, that was something most children had accepted, they could do nothing more than try do make the best out of that situation. Without doubt, loosing daily contact with one of the parents had caused serious social stress for the children at time of separation; furthermore many children saw this as a loss of social capital.

It was those children who seldom had contact with their father that seemed mort hurt and disturbed when they talked about the relationship with him. Regardless of whether the children wanted more or less contact with their father it was those who could not understand or make a personal and/or social acceptable explanation as to why they seldom had contact, that were most troubled. These children considered their father to be weak. Weak because he was dependent on drugs, had an antisocial lifestyle or was unable to stand up to his new wife or cohabitant. For these children the relationship with the father was a personal problem, one that was threatening to their self-esteem. As we understand it they talked of incompetent or insufficient parenting and/or lack of parental involvement.

Extension of the Family with Stepparents.

The majority of divorced parents find a new partner soon after divorce (Jensen and Moen 1991, Jensen and Clausen 1997, Moxnes and Haugen 1998). The large majority of children 72 percent have had their binuclear family extended with the addition of one (54 percent) or two stepparents (18 percent). Among these children 35 percent live in a household along with stepparents, and 56 live with stepparents in their non-residential parent's household

The parental reports showed no significant differences between children with and without stepparents. However, I do not believe that this is because stepparents have no effect on the child's well being. Sometimes a new stepparent has a negative effect, while in other cases a stepparent is a relief or gain. The finding that there are significant differences in the effect of divorce between children with a residential stepparent and those with a non-residential stepparent strengthens our understanding of the effect of stepparents. Children who lived with a stepparent in their home were reported to have shown signs of a more positive and less negative development than children who had stepparents in their non-residential parent's home.

Among the children we interviewed who lived permanently with a stepparent, all but two lived in their mothers household. Most of these children told of a good relationship. They talked about their stepfather as someone who belonged in their household, a friend who often was of help, and many stressed the economic importance of his presence in the household. Only some very few called him father or dad, or talked about him in family or kinship terms. On the contrary, a number of children stressed that even though they like their stepparent, he was not a father. They would not accept that he behaved as a father or made decisions on their behalf. His status in the family was dependent on his relationship with the mother. As long as the children could see that their mother was happy, that the stepfather contributed to the household tasks and did not interfere too much in the children's own lives, they accepted him or were happy that he lived with them. Otherwise they openly expressed their dissatisfaction with him or distanced themselves from him. It is significant that none of the children who had had a stepparent that had left the household kept in contact. Lisa told us that her mother had lived with four different men during the five years that had passed since the separation from her father.

The stories about the stepparents in the non-residential parent's home were more differentiated. Some children expressed happiness that their father had a new cohabitant or wife. They related how their father had become happier and fun to be with, or that it had become more fun to visit the father after she came into his life. Others disliked their father's new partner, usually because they never got to spend time alone with their father, or because she made them feel like an outsider or unwelcome in their father's home. They had become accustomed to having all his attention and felt that the stepmother and/or her children stole his time and attention. A few children disliked the stepmother so much that they refused to visit their father.

All of the children told of a stressful period when they got a new stepparent, they were worried about what she/he would be like how they would behave towards themselves and if this new person would make significant change in their family life. Per (15 years) expressed what I think most of the children thought at that time: "you know what is said about stepparents, they are not nice towards stepchildren". However, after a while most children recognised the importance of stepparents, and the economic and social capital he (in a few cases she) had brought to the household. In other words getting a stepparent had been a stressful event for most of the children, but the stepparent had also been a gain of economic and social capital for many of those who lived permanetly with her or him.

"If he had not earned much money we could not have kept the house" (Per 15 years)

Most of the children who had a stepparent in the non-residential parents home, had a stepmother. A number of studies have shown that it is more difficult to be a stepmother than a stepfather and that the children often are more satisfied with their stepfathers than with their stepmothers (ref). This difference is usually explained by higher expectations towards stepmothers than stepfathers. That might be true, but according to the children it is also a question of gains and losses. Children with a stepparent in the non-residential parents household spend a limited number of hours with that person, and therefore it takes a very long time before they get to know each other. They do not, or cannot see that they benefits from their stepparent's economic and social capital. However, what they often see or feel is that stepparent and stepsiblings take the time, the attention and the money that the father used to give to them. These children often presented the stepmother as someone that had stolen their fathers and ruined the good relationship they once had. In other words for these children the stepparent represent no gains only losses. Again, that was a personal problem that was threatening to their identity, and a problem that they had tried without success to reduce. Even if most of these children excuse their fathers, their stories are about incompetent or insufficient parenting and/or lack of parental involvement.

5. Explaining divorce as a risk factor for children's well being.

According to the theory of loss of social and economic capital, the consequence of separation and divorce is a number of necessary and unnecessary changes that causes the children to loose capital. The most common such changes are economic decline in the child's household, change of residence, loss of contact with one or both parents and extending the family with stepparents and stepsiblings. McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) state that approximately half of the differences between children from nuclear families and children from single-parent families are caused by a declining economy in the child's household, and should be explained as loss of economic capital. As we have seen, the parental reports showed

significant differences between the two groups of children on both the positive and the negative scale. On average, the children who experienced economic decline reflected more signs of negative effects and fewer of positive effects than those who had not experienced that change did. Economic decline in the child's household is a loss of economic capital and a major risk factor for the child's well being. For most of the children a low household income was a problem and hard to live with, but it was not what they presented as the most serious personal problem. This was a problem they shared with the other household members. Furthermore it was a problem that they felt that they could do something to reduce, by sacrificing some of their own activities or desires that cost money, or by earning their own money.

Likewise residential mobility seems to be a major risk factor for the children's well being. The study of parental reports showed significant difference between children who had and had not changed residence on both the positive and the negative scale. According to most of the children changing residence had been a problem. Moving so far that they had to change communities had been a major problem that produced not only social stress but also considerable loss of social capital. But even if most children told of worries and loss when changing residence, the majority of children did not present this as a serious personal problem. Again it was presented as a family matter, and a problem many of them could reduce by keeping contact with friends in the old neighbourhood.

The results from the parental reports showed no significant differences between those children who had frequent contact with their non-residential parent and those who had little or no contact. We do not believe that this means that the amount of contact with the non-residential parent is without importance for the child's well being. The children's stories support such an understanding. Not living in the same household as their father (in a few cases the mother) had been a difficult change for the majority of the children. But they did present neither the quantity nor quality of their visitation arrangement as a personal problem. The visitation arrangement was a necessary result of the parents being divorced and of the of their own and their parents' work situation, their economy, and the distance between the parental homes. Their visitation arrangement had to be understood in the contact of the binuclear-family's situation, that was something most children had accepted, they could do nothing more than try do make the best out of that situation. Without doubt, loosing daily contact with one of the parents had caused serious social stress for the children at time of separation; furthermore many children saw this as a loss of social capital.

The parental reports showed no significant differences between children with and without stepparents. However, I do not believe that this is because stepparents have no effect on the child's well being. Sometimes a new stepparent has a negative effect, while in other cases a stepparent is a relief or gain. The finding that there are significant differences in the effect of divorce between children with a residential stepparent and those with a non-residential stepparent strengthens our understanding of the effect of stepparents. Children who lived with a stepparent in their home were reported to have shown signs of a more positive and less negative development than children who had stepparents in their non-residential parent's home. All of the children told of a stressful period when they got a new stepparent, they were worried about what she/he would be like how they would behave towards themselves and if this new person would make significant change in their family life. Per (15 years) expressed what I think most of the children thought at that time: "you know what is said about stepparents, they are not nice towards stepchildren". However, after a while most children recognised the importance of stepparents, and the economic and social capital he (in a few cases she) had brought to the household. In other words getting a stepparent had been a stressful event for most of the children, but the stepparent had also been a gain of economic and social capital for many of those who lived permanently with her or him.

We consider loss of social and economic capital to be important when explaining why divorce puts children at risk of negative development post-divorce. The changes that followed separation and divorce were hard to cope with for those children who had to move far from their pre-divorce home. Even if they never used words like "loss of social and economic capital", that is how we understands their stories of the pain they felt when loosing contact with friends and parents, and of how hard it was to live in a household with a very low income. As seen, changes such as economic decline in the child's household, residential mobility, loss of contact with the non-residential parent and extending the family with a stepparent, are all changes that can cause children to lose social and economic capital. However, we consider loss of capital to be only part of the explanation as to why divorce is a risk to the development of children. Most of the changes that we have analysed so far could also be explained as resulting from social stress.

According to the theory of social stress, all changes that the child experiences during the divorce process cause social stress. As can be seen from the presentation above, most of the children talked about worries, fear, angst, sadness and/or depression when describing the changes they had experience when their parents separated. We believe that if the theory of social stress is fruitful we will find that the consequences of divorce for the child are dependent on the number of changes and on the severity of those changes. Therefore, if the theory of social stress is fruitful in explaining the effect of divorce on children, we believe this effect to be on average more negative for those children who experience all or only some of the changes we have studied than for the children who experience none or only one of them.

In order to control the fruitfulness of the theory of social stress we used the parental reports and constructed an index of change. Each of the four changes we studied was given the value of one, and the number of changes the child had experienced was added. We found significant differences between the children who had had to adjust to two or more changes and those who had experienced none or only one. The children who experienced many changes showed more negative changes than those who had experienced only a few did do. Only 12 percent of the children who experienced one of these changes showed signs of two or more negative effects of divorce, while 39 percent of those who experienced four changes showed similar effects. No such differences were found on the positive scale.

We believe it is safe to assume that the changes we have studied will always bring social stress. Economic change in the child's household brings social stress, even if the decline in economy does not affect the child directly. The parents' uncertainties and worries about the household economy will often affect the children in that they will worry and become stressed. Likewise, change of residence produces stress even if the child moves only a block or two. They have to get used to a new house, new neighbours and a new route to school. This indicates that social stress caused by change during the divorce process increases the risk for a negative development in the children post-divorce. However, we consider social stress to be only part of the explanation as to why divorce is a risk factor for children.

According to the theory of parental co-operation it is the extent and the quality of the parental co-operation that determine how the children will be affected by divorce. This theory states that the children with parents who share the parental duties and responsibilities and let the children continue to have one family, a binuclear family, will be less negatively affected by divorce than those children who have parents that do not co-operate. We asked the parents a number of detailed questions as to how they co-operated, and how satisfied they were with that co-operation, and found that the question that differentiated the best was: Are you satisfied with the parental co-operation your former spouse and you have regarding the children? Most of the children (58 percent) had parents who were satisfied.

There may be two different reasons behind parental co-operation being important in the effects of divorce on the children. First, it can be because children with co-operating parents on average are exposed to fewer changes than those who have parents that did not co-operate. Second, satisfactory parental co-operation might lessen or protect the children against the possible social stress or the loss of capital that the children otherwise would have been exposed to. The study of parental reports showed that children with parents who were satisfied with the parental co-operation on average had had to adjust to less change than those who had parents not satisfied with the parental co-operation. Furthermore we found significant differences in the effects of divorce between the children with parents who co-operated and the children with parents who did not. The children with parents who co-operated had on average shown fewer negative and more positive signs of development post-divorce.

The children's stories also supported our understanding. Children with parents who co-operated told of less change and fewer difficulties during and after the divorce process than children who had parents who did not co-operate. They seldom told of economic stress, of problems when changing residence, of conflicts in relation to the visitation arrangement. The children of parents who did not co-operate told of many examples of quarrelling and fighting between the parents, about fathers who were unwilling to pay child support, of residential change that made the distance between their own and the non-custodial parent's home considerable, and of fathers they seldom or never had contact with. According to the children divorce was "not so bad", when the parents continued to be friends, but divorce was "very bad" when the parents continued to argue and fight, parents that were enemies was the worst that could happen.

High level of conflict between the parents

A large minority of the children did not mention any conflict between their parents, they could not remember ever witnessing their parents fighting neither before nor after divorce. But many of them concluded that the parents must have had fights if not they could not understand why they had divorced. Most of the children said that they had heard or witnessed fights or arguments between the parent often in the years or months before their separation, and for some also in the following years. About one in every three children said that the parents had had frequent arguments/fights before, during and after divorce.

Most of the children said that their parents had become friends after the divorce, or that they were no longer unfriendly to each other, and that the whole family could spend time and do things together. Many of the children underlined that divorce was not so bad when the parents behaved themselves and treated each other nicely. On the other hand, many children said that nothing is worse than having parents who are in conflict. Every child, who told us that their parents had conflicts, were arguing or fighting, also told that the parental conflict was a problem that hurts, made them sad or angry.

It was those children who told of a continuing high level and/or increasing high level of conflict that was most unhappy with their situation post-divorce. It was the pain having parents with a high level of conflict that came across as the most difficult in the children's stories about the divorce. Having parents that continuously were fighting and hurting each other was presented as a personal problem and threatening to their identity by the children. These children felt caught in the middle of the parental conflict. Some felt that they were not allowed to love the "guilty" parent, while others felt guilty when they "hated" that parent. Those children who had parents that they believed were friends felt free to continue and strengthen their relationship to both parents.

However a high level of conflict between the parents were not the only relational problem the children stressed, incompetent or insufficient parenting and/or lack of parental involvement had been and still was a painful experience that many children had to cope with.

Incompetent or insufficient parenting.

Most children told of a close and good relationship with both their parents before and after divorce. The majority of the children also told of an improved relationship with the residential parent (in most cases the mother) post-divorce. They said that after the separation between their parents they had got to know their mother better, that their respect for her had increased and that they themselves felt that she was treating them with more respect than before. They had become closer, more like friends the last years. As we understand it a democratisation process had taken place. Only a few children told a different story about the residential parent. These children had a mother who had not coped well with the divorce. She had never been able to reorganise hers and the children's life. Some of these children felt they were abandon by the mother because they knew that they would not get the support they needed from her. Often they felt sorry for or were ashamed of the mother; they pictured her as a weak person, and had often lost their patience with or respect for her.

Most children also told of a good relationship with their none residential parent. Some children that told of a distant relationship with their father said that their relationship had always been like that. Their father lived and worked far away and he had never played a big part in their life. Some of these children had come to accept/learned to live with, the lack of involvement or interest from their father. These children seemed satisfied with both the quality of the relationship and the amount of time spent with their father. Those children who were unsatisfied or unhappy with the relationship with their father were those who had a close relationship with him pre-divorce, but who had lost both closeness and time with him post-divorce. Most unhappy were those who had little or no contact with their father post-divorce, and who could not understand why the father that once loved them dearly, seemed to have lost all interests in them. Being the child of a parent that is incompetent, that is unable or not willing to behave as a good parent is suppose to, make life difficult on a daily bases, but more important, it can be devastating for the child's self-identity.

What we learned studying the children's stories is that separation and divorce always is a stressful process for the children. The changes that the children have to adjust to when the parent's move apart often causes loss of social and economic capital. It is had to loss friends and move from a known neighbourhood. It is hard to learn to live in a household with less money, and to have to give up activities that you liked to take part in. Likewise it is hard to adjust to not seeing one or both parents daily, and not having daily access to what we call the parents social resources. However, this is changes, stress and loss of resources the children learn to cope with if they get sufficient support from their parents and kins. In other word such problems are easier to cope with if they are shared and defined as a family problem and an unfortunate, but necessary result of divorce. It is much harder to cope with if the child lacks the support from the parents and is left to cope on it own. Worse and very painful for the children is to have to live with parents that is constantly fighting, often for their own parental rights, and paying little attention to the child's needs and desires. Likewise it is hard to learn to live with one or both parents that are weak or so self-centred that they do not recognise or acknowledge the child's need for love and caring. However, incompetent or insufficient parenting is not always, not even in most of these cases, a result of divorce, often it was a reason for divorce. According to the majority of the children who told of such parenting, incompetent or insufficient parenting had been their problem long before divorce. Regardless whether they told of a high level of conflict between the parents or insufficient or incompetent parenting that had been a continuous characteristic of the parents' relationship or parental style before, during and after divorce. One important aspect of their pain and disappointment was that their parents promise that fighting would stop, and life would become better when the parents divorce, a promise that never come true.

The children's stories support our understanding that parental co-operation is the key to understanding the effects of divorce on children. The study of the parental reports showed that children with parents who are satisfied with the parental co-operation are on average exposed to less change, and show fewer signs of negative and more signs of positive effects of divorce than children of parents that are dissatisfied with the co-operation. Therefore in order to understand why divorce is a serious risk to the well being of children post-divorce, we believe it necessary to see the three theories - those of loss of capital, social stress and parental co-operation - as a whole and as interrelated.

6. Conclusions

All the children in this study experienced their parent's divorce. In addition, they had to adjust to a number of changes in a relatively short space of time. The study of parental reports showed that more than one-third of the children changed residence, two out of every three experienced a decline in their household economy, all had lost daily contact with one or both parents, and three out of four had seen their family extended by the arrival of one or two step-parents. Among the children interviewed the majority had experienced most of these changes. The sample of children used in this article is as stated above selected because we assumed it would include a large number of those children who had been exposed to most difficulties during and after divorce. Many of the children experienced so many changes during the divorce process that some of them showed signs of maladjustment post-divorce. In spite of all that the children had to adjust to, the parents' and the children's own evaluation of the effects of divorce were such that we must conclude that the large majority of children had lived through the divorce process in a healthy way and were doing fine after divorce.

There were relations between the changes that the children had experienced and the effects of divorce. First, there was a relation between decline in the economy in the child's household and the effects of divorce. The parental reposts showed that children who experienced a decline in the economy more often showed signs of negative and less often positive effects of divorce than those who lived in a household where the economy was unchanged or better. Furthermore, the children themselves told of worries about economy, of not being able to take part in certain activities because they were too expensive and about hard work to earn money. We concluded that a decline in the economy in the child's household is hard to adjust to and increases the risk of a negative development post-divorce.

There were also relations between residential mobility and the effects of divorce on the children. The parental reports showed that the children who changed residence showed more often signs of negative and less often signs of the positive effects of divorce than the children who continued to live in their pre-divorce home full-time or part-time. Those children who had had to change residence and move to a new neighbourhood told stories of how difficult and hard it was to lose all their friends, but also of how difficult it had been to be new at school and to acquire new friends. We concluded that residential mobility is hard to cope with and increases the risk of a negative development for the child post-divorce.

Our analysis of the questionnaire data showed no relation between the amounts of time spent with the non-residential parent and children's well being post-divorce. These results could be understood as if time spent with the non-residential parent was unimportant with regard to the child's well being. I do not believe this, because the children themselves stated otherwise. The children who had a good relationship with their father usually saw him frequently and regularly, or in the cases where the distance between their homes was considerable, spent most holidays with him. These children seldom expressed any worries or problems concerning their visitation arrangements. The children who had a distant and conflicting relationship with their fathers most often had infrequent contact. A few of these children were glad they saw their fathers seldom or never. The majority, however, was unhappy because they worried about their fathers well being, was sad because their fathers seldom took contact, or was angry because the stepmother or step-sibling was more important then themselves. These children were not satisfied with the visitation arrangements. I therefore believe that a distanced and conflicted relationship with the non-residential parent and infrequent and irregular visits is hard to live with and increases the risk of a negative development for the child post-divorce.

Our analyses of the quantitative data did not show any relation between the family being extended with stepparents and children's well being post-divorce. But there were significant differences between those children who lived permanently with stepparents and those who had stepparents in the non-residential parent's household. Children with stepparents in the non-residential parent's home more often showed signs of negative development and less often a positive development than those who lived permanently with stepparents. The children's own stories also revealed that stepparents were often a risk to their development, at least in the first months or years. I therefore consider the extension of the family with stepparents as difficult to get accustom to and therefore increases the risk of a negative development for the children post-divorce, but more so for those children who have stepparents only when in the non-custodial parent's home.

According to the theory of loss of capital, the reason why divorce is a risk for children's well-being post-divorce is that the changes they have to adjust to during the divorce process cause them to lose social and economic resources. Based on the children's stories we conclude that loss of capital is a major reason why divorce is a risk to children's well-being post-divorce. However, we consider loss of capital to be only part of the explanation. The changes the children had to adjust to cause social stress. What the children's stories emphasised more than anything else was that their parents' divorce was a stressful process. Our analyses of the parental reports also showed that the negative effects of divorce increased by the number of changes the children had to adjust to. We conclude that social stress is a major reason why divorce is a risk to the well being of children post-divorce.

To understand the effects of social stress and loss of capital, these factors have to be considered in the context of parental co-operation. It is the extent and quality of parental co-operation that determines how difficult the parents' divorce will be and the affect it will have on the children. The study of parental reports showed that children who had parents satisfied with the parental co-operation, compared with those who did not, experienced less change and showed fewer negative and more positive effects of divorce. The children agree, having parents that cooperated, and behaved in a friendly manner towards each other was very important. It seems that when parents are friends and/or cooperated the children adjusted to the changes that were forced on them with less trouble and in a more healthy way then they did when parents were angry at each other or did not cooperate. Extensive and good parental co-operation facilitates the divorce process for the children and reduces the risk that divorce will be a risk to the well being of children post-divorce.

The three theories - loss of capital, social stress and parental co-operation - must be seen as a whole and as interrelated. Divorce is a process of change. The changes the children have to adjust to always cause social stress, and often, but not always, carry with them loss of social and economic capital. How much social stress and loss of capital the children have to endure depends on the parents. Parental co-operation is the key to understanding the effect of divorce on the children. Parents who co-operate to the betterment of their children seem to be able to reduce the number of changes their children have to adjust to and also the amount of social stress and loss of capital their children would have to endure when parents do not co-operate. Parental co-operation is therefore the most important means by which to reduce the negative effects of divorce for children.

Appendix

Positive changes:

Negative changes:

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