Effects of Parental Divorce Among College Undergraduates

The discernible effects of parental divorce on young adults were investigated by contrasting two large samples of university undergraduates, children of parents who were either in intact marriages or divorced after the student was five years old. Men and women reacted to parental divorce quite differently, but overall, relatively few significant differences were found between the children of divorced and intact parents. Those differences that were found suggest that women may be more adversely affected by their parents' divorces than men. In addition to examining traditionally assessed variables in divorce research, a number of variables were examined that had rarely been previously assessed, including risktaking behavior, social support, attachment style, locus of control, and ego-identity status. Among these measures, attachment style and ego-identity status seem unusually promising and deserving of further study.