Literature Review

 One of the main concerns facing researchers is examining the effects of divorce on the academic achievements of students. The articles provide cross examinations of the effects of divorce and separation on children’s academic achievement and behavioral problems over time. Over the past several decades, the divorce rates that increased at very high rates in the U.S alone.  Consequences of the changes in family structure have impacted affected children in a variety of ways with the main concern being academic success of the students.

Review literature

According to Christopher (2014), half of all American youth experience parental divorce at some point during their childhood. In the light of the high divorce prevalence and its association with negative outcomes, researchers have studied extensively the effects of divorce on students. The effects of divorce depend on the configuration stressors such as conflicts and separation and resources such as parental support present in a post divorce situation. Among the negative outcomes that persist and change following divorce include parental divorce that that has been associated with lower academic achievement. Academic related attitudes and models (ATL) have been linked with family involvement. The participants were drawn from of a kindergarten class as national representative sample of kindergarten students through their eighth grade year (Christopher, 2014). Reading and mathematics tests were used to measure academic achievement.

According to Jeremy (2015), studies have found that parental divorce and living in a non intact family is associated with several negative outcomes for students including behavioral problems and lowered student success. The vast studies on divorces compared children from families experiencing disruptions from intact families. Jeremy attempts to estimate the temporal effects of the disruption caused by divorce on the children’s outcomes. He categorizes the literature on how the marital disruptions affect the children. He uses a multivariate framework to estimate the cross sectional comparisons of children from families having disruptions and those from intact families. The findings are standard with children from divorced families doing worse on a variety of measures than those from intact families. The main problem   with cross sectional studies is that they neglect unobserved differences between families having or lacking disruptions. Hence they cannot distinguish between the causal effects of the disruptions and selection perspectives. Some of the unobservable or immeasurable factors can turn out to be important predictors of the children’s outcomes and the probability of disruption.  For example, a drug addict parent is likely to contribute to an increased likelihood of a disruption which is most likely to create an atmosphere that is not conducive for children’s studies. Longitudinal studies have an assumption that marital disruptions have a onetime effect that persists as time passes after the disruptions. Though this possible, the effects of disruptions are temporary or the effects can increase over time. The IV model studies   use unilateral divorce state laws to estimate the impacts of parental divorce on the children’s adult outcomes. This class of studies is isolated from the rest in that it isolates the effects of divorce as compared to the divorce process. In addition, the studies fully address the problem of unobserved differences between families that have divorce disruptions and those that do not. According to the IV studies, in some cases the parental divorce lead to worse outcomes as an adult such as lower income, less education and a higher probability of getting divorced themselves (Jeremy, 2014).

According to William (2008), the major concern for researchers has been how to explore the effects of divorce on the academic success of students has been the how to control for socioeconomic status. He samples students who had participated in the NELS for the years 1988, 1990 and 1992 that was sponsored by the US department of education’s national centre for statistics.  Methods such as two stage probability design were used (1998) to select the national representatives’ samples of schools and eighth grade students. Questionnaires concerning a wide range of topics were issued to parents, teachers and students and achievement tests indifferent subjects such as science were also given to the students. Follow up studies were conducted at two year intervals on the student ample with achievement tests and questionnaires being administered again.  Two models were used to analyze the effects of divorce on academic achievement. The study indicates that a different pattern of effects of divorce emerge depending on the whether pre-dissolution or post-dissolution control for SES are used (William, 2008).

Analysis

 Evidence provides that divorce negatively impacts the students’ academic motivation. Females who experienced divorce achieved less academic performance as compared to males who equally experienced divorce. Aughinbaugh et al. (2005) is the only study that has examined the effects of effects of divorce while addressing the problem of unobserved differences. The children who experienced parental divorce achieved less growth in mathematics as compared to children who did not experience divorce, thought the effects were small. The results however support the hypothesis that parental divorce is associated with diminished ATL.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that divorce plays a major role in the academic success of students. Parental conflicts and divorce affects the students negatively are caused them to lag behind in academics.

References

Anthony, C. J., DiPerna, J. C., & Amato, P. R. (2014). Divorce, approaches to learning, and children's academic achievement: A longitudinal analysis of mediated and moderated effects. Journal of school psychology, 52(3), 249-261.

Arkes, J. (2015). The temporal effects of divorces and separations on children’s academic achievement and problem behavior. Journal of divorce & remarriage, 56(1), 25-42. 

Ham, B. D. (2004). The effects of divorce and remarriage on the academic achievement of high school seniors. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 42(1-2), 159-178. 

Jeynes, W. H. (1998). Examining the effects of divorce on the academic achievement of children: How should we control for SES?. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 29(3-4), 1-21. 

Carolyn Morgan is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in nursing research paper writing service California. If you need a similar paper you can place your order from nursing paper writing services Pennsylvania.