favour of that conclusion (at that time, 1991) can be challenged.305 Abelson and Saayman note that many families may be able to cope with divorce to the extent that it is not disastrous for them.306 These authors represent cautions and suggestions that the effects of divorce may not be as bad as some say, but they do not challenge the basic thesis that divorce has significant bad effects for children in a number of areas. Proof that divorce of parents correlates with problems for their children does not by itself resolve the question of cause. There are three possibilities. The harm may be caused by the fact of the divorce and the process involved; it may be caused by the conditions in the home prior to the divorce; or it could arise from conditions subsequent to the divorce, notably single parenting and a greater likelihood of economic deprivation. Some light is thrown on the question by studies that compare the plight of children in single parent families resulting from divorce with the plight of children in single parent families resulting from some other cause. As noted earlier, Juby and Farrington state that of boys in single parent families because of the death of the father, 17% had criminal convictions as adults, whereas of boys who were in that situation because of desertion by the father 32% had criminal convictions as adults. Wadsworth307 found that divorce correlated with both frequency and seriousness of delinquent behaviour of children, but found no strong correlation between death of a parent and children’s delinquency. The study by Diekmann and Engelhardt of post war Germany cited earlier shows a high correlation between parental divorce and the likelihood of children divorcing, but if the family is disrupted for reasons other than divorce the divorce rate for children rises only slightly. Acock and Kiecolt find that children in later life report more problems and less happiness if they grew up in single parent families, whether the disruption was because of death or because of divorce.308 However, they believe that in the case of the death of a parent the ill effects are almost completely due to the change of socioeconomic status, whereas the bad effects for children 305
Wells, L. Edward, & Joseph Rankin, “Families and delinquency: a meta-analysis of the impact of broken homes” Social Problems 38(1991) 71-93. 306 Abelson, David, & Graham Saayman, “Adolescent adjustment to parental divorce: an investigation from the perspective of basic dimensions of structural theory” Family Process 30(1991) 177-91. 307 Op. cit., p. 54. 308 See Acock, Alan, & K. Jill Kiecolt, “Is it family structure or socioeconomic status? family structure during adolescence and adult adjustment” Social Forces 68(1989) 553-71.
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