How emerging adults cope with parental divorce and how it impacts family relationship

What is it about?

This qualitative project explored how emerging adult women cope with the experience of parental divorce during emerging adulthood, as well as how the experience of divorce during this developmental stage impacted family relationships. Main themes spoke to: 1) the feeling of emotional loss, which emerging adults coped with by both using their social support networks (friends, other family membeers, romantic partners) while simulatenously using isolation, 2) the struggle of finding a happy balance of being involved in the process yet having a healthy distance from it, and 3) how emerging adult women experienced changes in the amount of closeness with parents, yet relationships with extended family remained largely the same.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Rates of parental divorce during the child's emerging adult years has steadily been growing. There is a breadth of research regarding the adjustment of children to parental divorce, but more information is needed to understand how emerging adults cope with, and adjust to, parental divorce, as well as how it impacts family relationships.