Teens Not as Close to Fathers After Divorce
Teenagers often try to distance themselves from parents; however, after a divorce, the split between a father and his children can be much wider.
Researchers at Penn State University recently conducted a study in which they looked at interviews of high school students before and after a period of five years. The responses of teenagers whose parents were married were compared to the responses of teenagers whose parents had separated during the five-year period.
In the initial interview, 71 percent said that they were close to their mothers and 57 percent said they were close to their fathers. After five years, 38 percent of the teenagers with parents that were still married reported being close to their fathers. However, among the teenagers with parents who split up, only 25 percent said they were close with their fathers.
The study, which was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, said that the closeness of teenagers to their mothers had no difference between ones whose parents were together and ones whose parents had divorced.
It was suggested by the authors that the difference was fathers being more likely to be separated physically from their children after a divorce, and they were often already not as close to the children while still married.
Here is the link to the story about the study. It is hard to tell how valid the results were. But, I can say from personal observations that I have frequently seen fathers and their children drift apart after divorce. This happens for a variety of reasons.
When you couple that with all of the sociological evidence that we have which recognize the importance of fathers in the lives of their children, the inevitable conclusion is that we must be doing all we can to make sure that fathers stay involved with their children post-divorce. The responsibility for that falls not only on the dads themselves, but also on the mothers, the Judges, and the lawyers involved in these custody cases. The stakes are simply too high not to do so.