Thebabbler +1.
I’ve been trying to understand these posts people have written about the effect of divorce on kids. I thought about it a lot, and looking at myself and my siblings, I really have no idea what they are talking about. I really thought about it, but I really can’t figure out what anyone is talking about. Certainly in terms of the girls.
I did hear part of a recording once by Dr. Pelkowitz talking about the effect of divorce on kids. He said that it very much depends on the age and gender of the kids. I don’t remember which ages were the most/least problematic. What I do remember is that there it is much more difficult for boys, in particular only or oldest boys.
L’maaseh, it is not clear-cut if kids are better off if their parents get divorced or stay together. For starters, there are different shitas on it and you can find research in both directions and they both make sense. At the end of the day, it really depends on many, many factors including the ages and genders of the kids, the kids’ personalities, what the parents are like, what the marriage was like, how complicated the divorce is, the custody arrangements, and most importantly how well the parents are able to manage the divorce in a way that is the least complicated for the kids (not bad-mouthing the other parent to or in front of the kids, not using the kids as pawns, keeping the kids out of the arguments, neither discouraging the kids from going to their father’s for Shabbos nor forcing them to do so, making sure their needs are fulfilled, etc.)
Aside from the fact that every case is different, it is almost impossible to ever know conclusively, if the kids were better or worse off. The only way to do so would be to know how things would have worked out the other way and obviously, you can never know that. You can try to compare families in which the parents chose to get divorced and those in which they didn’t, but it’s really an extremely inaccurate comparison. First of all, every situation is completely different. Second of all, by definition, there are going to be differences to start with between those families that chose divorce and those that didn’t. For one thing, on average, the couples that chose divorce probably had worse marriages to begin with.
I will just say that personally, in my experience, most of my peers who have the biggest problems come from homes with shalom bayis problems in which the parents did not get divorced, and most of my peers who have divorced parents turned out very well.