آیا اثرات طلاق بر پریشانی روانی با سابقه خانوادگی تغییر می یابد؟

This paper investigates whether an adverse family background amplifies the distressing effects of divorce. We use several waves (at age 0, 7, 11, 16, 33, and 42) of the British National Child Development Study to study the effect of divorce on psychological distress in middle adulthood (between ages 33 and 42). We measure family background with indicators such as father's social class, poverty and parental divorce. We find a pattern of significant interactions between divorce and indicators of disadvantage consistent with the idea that an adverse family background amplifies the distressing effects of divorce. The family background influence remains even if we take current socio-economic resources into account. Especially women with fewer socio-economic resources (own and parental) appear to be vulnerable to divorce.

In the research tradition examining the effects of life course transitions, the consequences of divorce for psychological distress take a prominent position (Amato and Cheadle, 2005, Wade and Pevalin, 2004, Willitts et al., 2004 and Wu and Hart, 2002). Studies generally find that divorce leads to psychological distress. Recent research recognizes a number of sources of heterogeneity in the consequences of divorce: transitions might be modified by the quality of the relationship that one leaves (Hawkins and Booth, 2005, Kalmijn and Monden, 2006, Liu and Chen, 2006, Waite et al., 2009 and Wheaton, 1990), by the level of socio-economic resources that one has (Liu and Chen, 2006, McLeod and Kessler, 1990 and Wang and Amato, 2000), by the presence and age of children in the household (Williams & Dunne-Bryant, 2006), and by norms and values regarding marriage (Simon & Marcussen, 1999). The effects of marital transitions over the life course may also differ between men and women (e.g., Simon, 2002 and Williams and Dunne-Bryant, 2006). A second strand of research in the life course literature, namely that into the “long arm” of childhood adversity, shows that people from an adverse family background suffer more psychological distress later in life (Gotlib & Wheaton, 1997). Evidence suggests that children whose parents are in lower social classes (Cheung, 2002, Gilman et al., 2002 and Harper et al., 2002), whose parents are lower educated (Harper et al., 2002), who are from poor families (Sadowski, Ugarte, Kolvin, Kaplan, & Barnes, 1999), or whose parents divorced (McLeod, 1991, Rodgers, 1994, Ross and Mirowsky, 1999, Sigle-Rushton et al., 2005 and Storksen et al., 2007), suffer more psychological distress later in life than individuals with a more advantageous family background. The study of effects of life course transitions and of disparities in psychological distress may be integrated if an adverse family background makes people more vulnerable to the effects of transitions later in the life course, such as divorce. Family background may affect vulnerability because it influences the level of available adulthood resources that may help in buffering the disruptive influences of a divorce. First, people's adult social position is to a considerable extent determined by their family background. As a consequence, people with an adverse family background tend to have fewer resources to buffer the effects of a set-back. Studies showing a link between people's own socio-economic resources and vulnerability to negative life events (Liu and Chen, 2006, McLeod and Kessler, 1990 and Wang and Amato, 2000) are in line with this argument, as they indirectly point to the importance of the family background. Second, people with an adverse background are less likely to benefit from social capital embodied in their parents in adulthood. Parents remain an important source of support to their adult children (McIlvane et al., 2007, Rossi and Rossi, 1990 and Spitze et al., 1994), especially when their children are in need. People with an adverse family background (in terms of economic and social resources) benefit less from their parents, even in adulthood. Studies show, in particular, that people whose parents divorced, or who grew up with a single parent have less contact with both parents and can count less on their (step)parent(s) later in life (Amato, 2000 and Amato and Cheadle, 2005). Parental support, in part determined by the family background, may thus lessen the negative impact of a divorce. Few studies have investigated whether family background conditions the effect of disruptive life events, such as divorce. Moreover, these studies yielded mixed findings. Landerman, George, and Blazer (1991) find for a representative community sample in the USA that people whose parents divorced or separated during childhood suffered more from the effects of negative life events in the past year (more alcohol problems and psychiatric disorders) than people whose parents stayed together. Rodgers (1994) investigated whether an interaction effect existed between parental divorce and the experience of a number of life events on mental health in a UK birth cohort followed since 1946. He found that women whose parents divorced suffered more from their own divorce than women whose parents did not divorce. He did not find such an interaction effect for men. Storksen et al. (2007), however, presented opposite results using Norwegian data. They found no interaction effect for women but find that for men parental divorce worsens the effects of own divorce. McLeod (1991) using a sample of married people in the US did not find significant interactions between parental divorce and parental death in childhood with the effects of own divorce on mental health. Comijs et al. (2007) investigated whether childhood adversity modifies the effect of negative life events on depression in a panel study of Dutch older adults and do not find interaction effects. These studies mainly focused on parental divorce or growing up in a single parent family. No study we are aware of links childhood socio-economic conditions to psychological vulnerability to divorce later in the life course. Furthermore, a potential interaction effect of parental divorce would be better investigated if childhood socio-economic conditions were simultaneously interacted, as there is a strong association between parental divorce and childhood economic conditions. Both in turn, may influence socio-economic attainment and the parent–child relationship in adulthood. We investigate the modifying effect of family background for life course transitions in more detail. The research question we pose is: To what extent does an adverse family background make people more vulnerable to the effects of a divorce? We expect that an adverse family background increases the effects of divorce on psychological distress. We put this hypothesis to the test using the National Child Development Study (NCDS), one of the large UK birth cohort studies. In addition, we test whether current socio-economic resources (educational level) can explain heterogeneity in the effect of divorce by family background. We investigate the effects of divorce on psychological distress in middle adulthood (between ages 33 and 42). The NCDS has extensive prospective information on the childhood circumstances of respondents. Our study covers measures of socio-economic circumstances and whether the family remained intact and examines their potential interplay with divorce. Family background measures are described in more detail in Section 3.

We investigated whether family background moderates the effect of divorce on psychological distress. The analysis brought together the study of life course transitions and social stratification. We used a large prospective cohort of individuals in the UK followed from birth to their early forties to study the effect of divorce in middle adulthood (33–42). The large number of respondents ensured that enough divorces were observed to estimate reliable interaction effects. Additionally, the NCDS data contained prospective information on a broad range of family background indicators. We differentiated between recent divorces (occurring in the past 5 years) and more distant divorces. We found that the experience of divorce is associated with an increase in psychological distress for women, but not for men. Furthermore, the distressing effect of divorce was limited to recent divorces. These are average effects, however, which may hide considerable heterogeneity and we tested whether family background moderates the effect of recent and distant divorces on psychological distress. In our examination of possible interactions of divorce with family background a clear pattern emerges. In line with our main hypothesis, people from an adverse family background suffered more psychological distress from divorce than people from a more favorable family background. These effects, however, were restricted to recent divorces (those occurring in the past 5 years), as the moderating impact of an adverse family background was not found for divorces more distant in time. For recent divorce, we found an effect for all indicators of a more adverse family background: those who grew up in a non-intact family (parental divorce and for other reasons), whose mothers did not continue school after the minimum school-leaving age, whose fathers were manual workers, and those from an economically deprived background. While we failed to find support for our hypothesis for divorces more distant in time, we find strong evidence regarding recent divorces in support of our hypothesis. Furthermore, we explored whether moderating effects differed by sex. For women, the average effects of a divorce are stronger than for men. There appear to be some differences between men and women in the extent to which family background moderates the impact of recent divorces. An adverse family background moderates the impact of divorce for both sexes, but the moderating effects seem to be stronger for women than for men. Both women and men suffer more from divorce if they come from a non-intact family. A family background of lower socio-economic resources (lower educated mother, father manual worker, poverty) appears to be especially negative for women if they divorce but not so much for men. Women are more geared towards family and suffer larger socio-economic set-back after divorce, which may explain the greater importance of family background for them. In addition, we tested whether current socio-economic resources were the driving force behind the moderating influence of family background. The inclusion of educational level did not really change the influence of family background. Interestingly, higher educated women suffered less from divorce, whereas higher educated men suffered more. Taken together with the finding that family background mattered more for women than for men, this lends more support to the idea that women with fewer socio-economic resources (own and parental) are more vulnerable after divorce. The opposing findings of women and men regarding educational level are not so easily explained and are an interesting opportunity for further research. Our analysis has important strengths, such as the prospective design and the large number of divorces, but it also has a few drawbacks that leave open a number of possible improvements. The long time interval between the ages 33 and 42 waves of the NCDS (9 years) complicates the analyses. We differentiated between recent and distant divorces to take the long time interval into account, but this cannot fully solve the problems introduced by the wide spacing of measurements in time. Perhaps parental resources are mainly helpful to soften the direct short-term effects of divorce. In addition, the NCDS lacks detailed information on the current situation of the parents and on the current relationship of the respondent with his/her parents. Such information would have allowed us to test the potential buffering effects of family background through parental support and resources more directly. We leave it to future research to address these questions. This study has tried to shed more light on heterogeneity in the effect of divorce on psychological distress by exploring whether a more adverse family background makes people more vulnerable to the effects of divorce. The findings help to widen our understanding of why divorce has a greater impact for some than for others. In addition, the evidence presented in this paper suggests that differential vulnerability related to family background to the effects of negative events, such as divorce, may be a pathway through which disparities in mental health come about. The study offers some evidence for differential vulnerability, but more research is needed. For example: using data with a shorter time interval between waves and more direct measurements of current contact with parents. It is also important to look for other possible factors, which may moderate the effects of negative life events, for instance the respondents’ own expectations. We started out with a simple and, in our view, compelling hypothesis: people from an adverse family background suffer more from a divorce than people from a more favorable family background. We find that the experience of divorce is a traumatic experience, especially for men and women with an adverse family background. It is up to future research to find out why and how family background shapes the impact of divorce.