Divorce is a terrifying situation. "Today's children are the first generation in this country's history who think divorce and separation are a normal part of family life," says Andrew Chrerlin of Johns Hopkins University. A promise the husband and wife made earlier to be loyal and faithful to each other forever is being broken. A divorce not only affects the husband and wife, but the children as well. Many of them suffer from severe stress, and the divorce affects them emotionally. Also, the odds increase of children of a divorced family getting a divorce when they are older.

ed largely by absent fathers as a result of divorce made too easy. According to Patrick Fagan, “each year, over 1 million American children suffer from divorce of their parents.” Consider this chilling forecast, when we passed the year 2000, we will see two groups of working age adults emerging. One group will have received psychological, social, economic, educational and moral benefits and the other group will have been denied them all. The first group will have grown up with a father present in the house and the second group will have not had a father present. The groups will be roughly equal in size. "Fatherless families . . . generate far more delinquency and personality disorders than do normal or motherless families," declares Daniel Amneus. "The ratio of delinquent children living with the mother only compared to those living with the father only is about three to one." In order to be divorced in the era of the fifties, one mate had to be proven adulterous. Legally, one party was deemed guilty and one was innocent. That finding affected each party financially and socially enough so that most couples tried hard not to divorce. According to McGovern, “in Canada the rate of divorce in 1951 was one out of twenty couples.” In the late sixties, the "sexual revolution" began and couples rebelled against the constraints of marriage (McGovern 2). Moviemakers and journalists became rich extolling the virtues of free love and liberation.

The divorce picture is not all rosy. According to sociologist Lenore Weitzman, divorced women get by on about 64% of the income they had during marriage. For their children, this translates into less money for school activities, clothes, opportunities for traveling and

The lack of the father's presence greatly damages the son's self-esteem and confidence. The lack of a male role model at home is compounded by the lack of male role models at school. Eighty-five percent of elementary school teachers are women. And a system that insists that little boys learn as if they were little girls contributes to this sad litany of educational problems. Some experts say that boys are not mature enough to begin school until they are six-and-a-half years old while girls seem to be ready for the classroom at five years and nine months. I agree that many boys are not ready for school at the usual age of five. But this is not necessarily because they are immature. Could it not also be that teachers are not ready for normal five-year-old male behavior? Momism author Hans Sebald argues,

Without the father present, children are ripe for becoming anything their peers want them to be. They find it hard to resist temptation to be dishonest or criminal. There is no father to answer to. Yes, there is Mom to answer to but she is usually not as intimidating as a father. In the community, a safer street is one where there are fathers out mowing the lawn or fixing a car. A child is less apt to commit a crime with

Some topics in this essay:
Hans Sebald, Edwin Cole, Yes Mom, Lenore Weitzman, According McGovern, , Patrick Fagan, Hopkins University, Survey Youth, According Fagan, male role, youth crime, divorce rate, lack male role, children divorced, lack male, divorce affects, elementary school, husband wife, male role models, rose 300%, role models,