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Pathways Linking Parental Divorce With Adolescent Depression *
This article examines the intervening pathways linking parental divorce with adolescent depression, using both cross-sectional and prospective data from a study of high school students in the Boston metropolitan area. Overall, findings reveal that parental divorce is linked with adolescent depression in two ways: (1) it is a source of numerous secondary problems and stresses that are causally related to depression, and (2) it alters youths' reactivity to these stresses, in some cases enhancing, but in other cases mitigating, their depressive effects. Analyses demonstrated the central role of economic hardship in linking family status with depression, with the strength of this indirect pathway partly attributable to the greater vulnerability of youths in single-parent families to financial stresses. In contrast, family conflict did not account for the distress of youths in single-parent families, largely because of their immunity to the effects of such conflict. Finally, prospective data failed to support the hypothesis that differences between youths in single-parent and intact families predate the divorce.
After nearly 30 years of research, there is an emerging consensus in the sociological literature regarding the impact of parental divorce on depression in childhood and adolescence. Parental divorce is associated with substantial short-term elevations in children's emotional distress, which tend to dissipate within 18 months to 2 years (Aseltine 1992; Hetherington, Cox, and Cox 1982; Wallerstein and Kelly 1980; see Emery 1988). There is a great deal of evidence, however, that for some youths divorce remains problematic throughout adolescence. Small but stable differences in the emotional well-being of youths with stably married and ever-divorced parents have been repeatedly observed (Allison and Furstenberg 1989; Amato and Keith 1991; Furstenberg and Seltzer 1986; Peterson and Zill 1986), indicating that this experience continues to be a source of stress among youths who are several years removed from the physical separation of parents.
Despite the enormous literature on this subject, the reasons why divorce has lasting emotional effects are not entirely clear. Many investigators have argued that divorce is stressful for children because it is either accompanied by or is the source of other problems and stresses that pose more serious threats to children's well-being-in particular, persistent family conflict and economic hardship (e.g., Amato and...