The University of Utah has released results of a study on divorce trends, and the marriages of children from divorced homes.  The reseacher has concluded that these children are likely doomed to repeat history because they tend to marry younger and they have learned different lessons about marital commitment than their peers from non-divorced families.  This sounds pretty plausible until I ask a few questions like....HUH?  We have experts telling us that our kids’ friends at school have as much or more impact on them than their parents.  Which is it?  How do we know if the subjects of this study had good parenting in a divorced household and just got mixed up with the wrong crowd?  Also, this Utah report claims that divorce is more traumatic on a child THAN A PARENT DYING?!?  Don’t even get me started on that one.  I don’t know how you measure trauma in a research setting, but I would think a child would rather have both parents alive in separate households than lose one completely.  This article also mentions that lots of transitions are hard on kids, so then we should be factoring in other factors such as how much the family relocated in these statistics I would think.

Just a few questions that came to mind.  Not to say there is isn’t any measure of validity to the findings, but I think before we pin all future divorces on currently divorced parents we need to dig a little deeper.

Check out the text of this study and see what your own reactions are.  It may well be true that divorce breeds divorce when all other factors are equal, but there are so many other factors, that I don’t know how you would ever effectively measure the influences.  Also, we are humans with free will and choice, and the way these findings are presented is comparable to a medical problem that runs in families.  Children of divorced parents have choices just like everyone else, and to take this away from them is not the right approach in my opinion.