Parental divorce and adult well-being: a meta-analysis

A meta-analysis was conducted of studies dealing with the long-term consequences of parental divorce for adult well-being. Effect sizes were calculated for 15 outcome variables across 37 studies involving over 81,000 individuals. Mean effect sizes were significant and negative for all outcomes; this indicated that adults who experienced parental divorce exhibited lower levels of well-being than did adults whose parents were continuously married. The strongest estimated effects occurred in the areas of one-parent family status, psychological adjustment, behavior/conduct, and educational attainment. Effect sizes were significantly stronger in clinical studies than in studies based on community samples. In addition, effects sizes tended to be stronger for whites than for blacks, stronger in earlier studies than in more recent studies, and stronger in studies that did not use statistical controls than in studies that did.