Parental Separation and the Academic Self-concepts of Adolescents: An Effort to Solve the Puzzle of Separation Effects.

This article tests the hypothesized detrimental effects of parental separation on academic achievement and academic self-concept using multivariate analysis of covariance in data from public school students in the seventh and ninth grades in Columbia, South Carolina. Every year, more than one million American children experience the divorce or separation of their parents, and the vast majority of these children subsequently live without the full-time presence of their biological fathers. Many studies have indicated that the vast majority of children and adolescents whose parents separate or divorce suffer extensive emotional pain and distress for a considerable period of time. Problems that may be associated with the emotional distress have been identified. Some investigators have found that adolescents whose parents have separated or divorced are more susceptible than others to peer pressures to engage in deviant behaviors, and that they actually engage in more deviant behavior than others. There is considerable evidence also that lower academic achievement of children and adolescents is related to parental divorce, a relationship that might also be mediated by emotional distress or by other mechanisms.