EDMONTON, Alberta, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- A Canadian study finds that children whose parents divorce tend to suffer more before the marital breakup.
"Perhaps we should pay more attention to what happens to kids in the period leading up to parental divorce rather than directing all our efforts to helping children after the event occurs," said Dr. Lisa Strohschein of the University of Alberta.
Strohschein compared children whose parents divorced between 1994 and 1998 with kids whose parents remained married She used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, which began in 1994 and includes 17,000 children.
Strohschein found that in children from very dysfunctional families antisocial behavior tends to drop after divorce and that children whose parents divorce usually suffer from depression and similar symptoms before the breakup.
Earlier studies of the effect of divorce on children have not taken the quality of family life into account, Strohschein said.
She found that couples who eventually divorced reported more depression and lower levels of marital satisfaction.
The study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
