My parents have been divorced since I was two years old. They don’t like each other, never have and never will. It is a constant family battle between me. Kids in today’s society say that children who do not have married parents are statistically have more trouble in school, more behavioral problems, and have a lot of trouble getting along with the divorced parents. Not that all children with divorced parents are like this, but a pretty large number of children suffer from one or more things, being worse off than parents who stay married. I think that part of the reason of it being this way is because the judicial system sets up things in order to help find stability in the family, but does it really help stability, or with some families does it break them down?

Having divorced parents can go two ways. You can have the parents that are ok with each other, but didn’t think it would work out, but can still remain civil and stay calm. Then, you have the parents that hate each others guts and wish only for the other parent to get run over by a dump truck. I was in the middle of those two scenarios; my parents do not hate each other completely, but they can’t act civil with each other. I remember going through middle school, I had a lot more stress than most people, which caused me to not get the grades that I could have gotten. Statistics say that children with divorced parents suffer from multiple things.

The biggest thing that a lot of kids suffer from is parental loss. When the divorce goes through the family court system and is getting closed, the judge will grant custody to one of the parents. Usually the other parent does not get nearly as much time as the custodial parent. In my case, it was my mom that got most of the custody, leaving my dad with visitation on Wednesdays, and every other weekend, which is only eight to ten days out of the month. My mom would get the other twenty to twenty two days. It is a little off balance, and it affected me, now I respond and understand the women in my life more than I do the men. I don’t like discipline from men and I usually go to women to talk more. It happened naturally, and I didn’t try. Not having a man to man relationship for the most part of my life has affected me without even knowing it. “When fathers helped with homework, set appropriate limits and expectations and demonstrated warmth, children fared better.” ( Hughes 1). I don’t think I got all the things I needed in life from my father’s side. I was very concentrated on my mother’s side of the family.

The second biggest thing that kids are affected by is exposure to parental conflict. Conflict is already common in families, but especially with divorced parents. The amount of conflict the child is involved with is a big part in determining the child’s well being. If a family has a lot of conflict, the child may be more susceptible to overwhelming stress, depression, and a lot of angst with the parents. So why does the kid have to go through all this? Why does the kid have to be the back fall for the parent’s lack of civility? Is it the family, or the way the family court is set up?

The court system has set up custody of kids very well; however, does it work as well as they think it does? They set the “guidelines” up for stability, but I think that the guidelines really can help some families and can also not be good for the families. In my case, the guidelines did not help us at all, because on a night I was supposed to be a my moms, I would ask to stay at my dads, and she wouldn’t let me because I was supposed to be home. That really made me mad, and my dad was mad at her, I was mad at her, and she was mad at me for asking for the 14,000th time. So it made our family more dysfunctional than it already was. The holidays were a nightmare too. I did not enjoy this madness until I was sixteen years old. I got fed up with that, and I started voicing out what I wanted. It really helped, but the first part of my life was a lot of stress and bull.

In conclusion, I really don’t think that the way things work for divorced parents. Even though kids get through their parents being divorced, they still are more distressed in life than if they were to have intact families. “There is also some evidence that young adults whose parents divorce feel as if they had little control over their lives following divorce including the transitions between households.” (Hughes 1) I think that a better solution could be created, however, I don’t know how to make the kid stop suffering completely, but I think as of now the kid suffers way too much in a divorced parent household.