Sorry Jim I don’t agree. They are affected sure. Traumatized and psychologically damaged are too strong of words.
Also children brought up in homes of high conflict are just as affected.
You can play semantics with it, but it is never NOT traumatizing to have your family broken up... even as an young adult. And i came from a "high conflict" home (no violence, but plenty of conflict) and i can absolutely 100% tell you that it is still traumatizing to have your parents split. The scholarly literature on this point is clear-- all else being equal children are almost always "better off" when mom and dad don't split. The amount of "conflict" has to rise to the level of "extreme" and/or include actual abuse before the calculus flips. Hell, I've even known people(cousins) to come from actually abusive situations that were still broken up when their parents split. Their whole paradigm of existence, safety net, whatever you want to call it, has just been blown up. That "kids will be okay" or "better off" is a little white lie that WAS's or, in fact, any willing party to a divorce tells his/herself to ease their own psyche/conscience. How often do you see this narrative with the WWs? I have seen multiple cases involving friends/family where the parents tell themselves and others that "the kids are doing great" or "they're so strong we're so proud of them" while in actuality the kids are being torn up inside and, frequently, do not feel like they can confide their feelings to their parents but rather tell their friends and others... who then also don't tell the parents for fear of "interfering". World we live in.
Look, I'm not saying that children of divorce are all going to turn into psychopathic axe murderers or try to commit suicide at the drop of a hat,nor even to say that all marriages should be saved... but to say that your parents splitting up is "not traumatizing" borders on the nonsensical unless you come from an EXTREMELY dysfunctional home... which most are not. Dysfunctional, yes, to the extreme, no. We'll have to agree to disagree.
My parents had nasty arguments and ended up divorced...
I was raised by a single mom, and fortunately, her love was more than enough to make up for it - she never dated / remarried. I feel like my hardships growing up made me stronger and more self-confident. However, the impact was that I had really nasty arguments in my relationship, and I don't want to have kids in fear of being here.
My WW had both biological parents growing up healthy middle class family, and she's a serial cheater...
