Which Parent Do I Choose?-- Teens and Divorce Sally Smith, a young girl in her teens, is going through a hard time. Her parents are getting a divorce because they just don't have the same feelings anymore and are always fighting. Sally and her parents live in Butte, Montana, where all her family and friends live too. Sally’s dad doesn’t want to live in Butte, Montana, anymore but her mom wants to stay there. Sally is having to choose whether or not she wants to go with her dad to a new place or stay with her mom and be able to keep all her friends and still be able to see all her close family. In the article “AFTER DIVORCE: Parents are struggling to put kids first”, they state that in 1994 the custody outcome for mothers is 69.6%. The outcome …show more content…
They say the teens only think for themselves, that they constantly make mistakes, and are always procrastinating on things. People also say that the teens won't know how it will affect them in the future. By this they mean that whatever they choose could be either the right decision where they could have the best possible life for them or they could choose the wrong decision and have a hard life ahead of them. Lots of divorced parents have said that they don't want the kids to choose because whoever has the child for most of the year will get to claim the child on their taxes and get a reduction. This then puts a dispute between the parents. The teens are told that they don't have enough power or say to choose who to live with. Furthermore, people/ divorced parents don't want the teens to be able to choose who to live with in the case of a …show more content…
Not only does it have a psychological effect on them, but as well of an emotional effect. The definition of emotional is “relating to one's emotions”. The definition of emotionally unstable is “a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by unstable relationships with other people, unstable sense of self, and unstable emotions”. A divorce can affect the kids/teens emotions positively but also negatively. For example, “It is thus likely that many of the problems since experienced by their children stemmed from the parents' bad marriages rather than their divorces, and would not have been averted had the couples stayed together. Other researchers studying children who do poorly after divorce have found that behavior problems were often already evident eight to twelve years before the divorce took place, suggesting that both the maladjustment and the divorce were symptoms of more deep-rooted family and parenting issues”(Coontz 2). If kids/teens become more and more emotionally unstable, it is going to be harder for them in them in the future, or they may not even make it to the future because suicide is a factor. This is why teens should be able to choose which parent to live with. “Senator Cools advocated shared-parenting because currently 95% of custody settlements are to the mother, with the father granted limited or no access. She also wanted compulsory courses on the impact of