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The Effects of Recent Parental Divorce on Their Children' s Sexual Attitudes and Behavior

Abstract This study tests whether children whose parents were recently divorced (within the past four years) maintained different attitudes and behaviors regarding pre-marital sex than their counterparts in single-parent divorced families, whose parents had been divorced four years or more. Several researchers have argued that divorce has a greater impact on children during the first few years than in the later years following a divorce (Hetherington, Hagan, & Anderson, 1989). We will call this perspective the Recency Hypothesis. Other researchers have argued that the effects of divorce are longer lasting than just a few years (Wallerstein & Lewis, 1998). We will call this perspective the Constancy Hypothesis. If the Recency Hypothesis is correct, one would expect that children whose parents had recently divorced would be more likely to have permissive attitudes and behaviors regarding pre-marital sex than those children from single-parent homes whose parents had been divorced four years or more. Using the NELS 1988-1992 data set, the attitudes and behaviors regarding pre-marital sex of children, whose parents had divorced during the 1988-1992 period, were compared to the attitudes and behaviors regarding pre-marital sex of children whose parents had been divorced previous to that time. The results showed support for the Constancy Hypothesis. Children from recently divorced homes did not show a tendency to have more permissive attitudes and behaviors towards pre-marital sex than their counterparts whose parents had been divorced four years or more. Nevertheless, as the Constancy Hypothesis would predict, children in both the recently divorced parents cohort and the entire cohort of children whose parents had been divorced showed a tendency to have more permissive attitudes and behaviors towards pre-marital sex than their counterparts in intact families. The significance of these results is discussed.