Divorce On Children By Karl Zinsmeister: Article Analysis

Divorce in today’s society is one that has affected many families and children and affects them in more ways than we think.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the article Divorces toll on children by Karl Zinsmeister and give one strength and three weaknesses and to provide my opinion to see how divorce effects children in our society today.

Summary

In this article Zinsmeister discusses how he believes divorce affects children and their development. He starts by discussing how most children now come from divorced families and single parent households. Because of this the children usually only see the parent who has custody over them and does not form a strong parent-child relationship with the other parent. When one of the parents gets

They are substantially likelier to have extensive premarital sexual experience and twice as likely to cohabit before marriage” (Zinsmeister, 1996 pg.43). Through this statement he makes a claim that only females from divorced families cannot find adequate spouses, but males can. Zinsmeister makes no claim towards males choosing inadequate wives which makes this a sexist claim stating that only females from divorced families are not able to choose good enough or “adequate” spouses to marry. The way in which he says this, makes it seem that males coming from a separated family have no problem finding a spouse “adequate” enough for them. If Zinsmeister were to have included statistics of how many men and women found “adequate” or “inadequate” spouses, his statement would have been much more convincing to the reader and to those women who come from a split family and if they will actually have a harder time finding an “adequate” spouse. The statement he makes about females being more likely to have extensive premarital sexual experiences is not a strong point because he does not back it up with statistics proving that it is only females who have more

43). I agree with this statement that this is how children feel after having their parents split up. My roommate comes from a recently divorced family and we have had many discussions on how that has affected her life and her siblings. Her parents were divorced almost two years ago. At that time, her parents seemed to have a happy family life with no issues or fighting on the outside. She thought her parent were happy together raising 7 children. Then the shocking news came to her. Her parents were splitting up. This caused a lot of doubt within herself and her parents. She questioned everything about their marriage and just had no reason or idea to why it happened. Since this happened, she has struggle forming relationships with fear that they will just crumble like her parents. She now fears getting married and finding someone who will not give up on her. For me personally coming from a family with my parent still together is a huge blessing, but I still have fears about my own marriage. Though my parents have been happily married for almost thirty years, I still fear I will not be able to find “the one”. I fear that we will be happily married as a young couple, but that as we get older and things get harder, that my marriage will fall apart and end in