Pre-divorce problems contribute to later difficulties

Research supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that pre-separation factors made a substantial contribution to the increased risk that children from divorced backgrounds would lack qualifications, live in social housing and experience unemployment by the time they were in their early 30s.

Compared with children whose parents separated, those who grew up with both parents were on average better qualified and found better jobs. But this difference was largely due to their families being socially advantaged to begin with - and not necessarily because their parents stayed together.

However, the study found that family circumstances before separation played a less significant role in accounting for later differences in personal relationships and parenthood behaviour. Women and men whose parents had divorced when they were children were more likely to have become parents outside marriage than those where parents had remained together. They were also more likely to have experienced the break-up of their own marriages or cohabitations by the age of 33.

The study by Kathleen Kiernan is the first to be published by the new Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics. Dr Kiernan said: "There are no simple conclusions to be drawn about effects that parental divorce during childhood has over adult lives. Although children from divorced families tend to have more negative experiences than those reared by both parents, their qualifications and economic circumstances appear to be heavily influenced by factors at work before the break-up."

She added: "Undoubtedly, children benefit from being raised in an emotionally and economically secure two-parent family. But if that is not possible, then the evidence from this study suggests that those concerned with children's long-term welfare should attend to financial hardship and other conditions that precede family breakdown as well as to its legacy."

Using data from the National Child Development Study, which has followed the lives of more than 11,400 children born in 1958, the study found that children's experience of divorce was not the main contributor to some differences in adult outcomes:

• Financial hardship and behavioural problems that pre-dated the divorce were important contributors to the greater odds that children whose parents separated would lack qualifications as 33-year-old adults, compared with those whose parents stayed together.
• Men who experienced parental divorce during childhood were at greater risk of unemployment. However, statistical analysis taking account of financial hardship before the break-up found the additional level of risk was not significant.
• Adults who experienced parental divorce were more likely than others to be living in homes rented from a local authority or housing association, and less likely to be home-owners. Taking into account factors that pre-dated divorce substantially reduced the odds.

However, children's experience of divorce did appear to be a major contributor to other differences in adult outcomes:

• Men and women from divorced backgrounds were more likely to have cohabited or married before they were 20. As many as 48 per cent of women and 19 per cent of men had begun a live-in relationship during their teens, compared with 29 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men brought up with both parents. Statistical controls for pre-divorce circumstances led to some reduction in the odds for women, but left the odds for men almost unchanged.
• Women whose parents had separated were almost twice as likely to become teenage mothers (25 per cent) as those whose parents stayed together (14 per cent). Men from divorce backgrounds were more likely to have fathered a child by age 22 (23 per cent) than their contemporaries (13 per cent). Controlling for other factors in early childhood and adolescence reduced the odds - but they remained significant.
• Women from divorced backgrounds were more likely than others to give birth outside marriage - especially among those who began child-bearing at an early age. Although controls for age at first birth and for pre-divorce factors substantially reduced the odds, they were still greater than those for women whose parents remained together.
• By age 33, four out of ten men and women who had lived though their parents' separation during childhood had experienced the break-up of their own first cohabitation or marriage. The same was true of three out of ten whose parents had stayed together. Controls for childhood and adolescent background factors made only a modest difference to the odds.

The study also included research into the life experiences of adults who were over 20 when their parents separated. It found that the qualifications and economic circumstances of women from these families were similar to those of contemporaries whose parents remained together. By contrast, men with late-divorcing parents tended to be socially and economically disadvantaged compared with peers with parents who stayed together.

Men and women who were over 20 when their parents separated were as likely to have cohabited or to have started a family at an early age as those whose parents remained together. They were, however, more likely to have experienced the break-up of their own first partnership or marriage by age 33.