Dealing With 'Broken' Homes

It comes as no surprise to anyone in education today that the expectations we hold for students have a direct and powerful impact on student achievement and success.

What may come as a shock is the possibility that, in our attempt to help, we may be inadvertently encouraging failure for a sizable portion of our children. New research by psychologists and marriage and family therapists indicates that individual cultural biases about children of divorce inadvertently may be causing a self-fulfilling prophecy for these children.

The latest, most methodologically sound studies on the effects of divorce for children demonstrate that many children emerge from the period of transition following divorce psychologically healthy and perhaps even stronger, more independent and resilient for having successfully mastered the challenges associated with divorce. These new findings are a welcome respite to the former "dooms-day" forecasts that have saturated our thinking and significantly affected the way in which we perceive children of divorce.

As might be expected, teachers, school psychologists, and administrators often are influenced by their own internalized, socially created belief systems. And traditionally, divorce in our culture has been viewed as negative, an aberration from the "normal" two-parent family structure.

This is perhaps the single most important factor contributing to the discrepancies of the early studies "proving" that family divorce causes lower grades and poor school behavior. Researchers now recognize these findings only told part of the story. However, this partial information may have caused many educators to inaccurately predict lower grades and poorer behavior for these children, and in so doing, created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Flawed Premise

The flaw in many of the landmark early studies is that they relied on the ratings of teachers to compare children from one-parent families with those of two-parent families. Further, much of the data was drawn from a clinical population of children already identified as experiencing difficulties in adjusting.

We now know a large percentage of children show no such ill effects after a reasonably short period of adjustment. Indeed, studies matching the test-score performance of children from divorced or remarried families, when taken from the larger population, corrected for socio-economic factors, and not involving teachers' subjective ratings, showed little difference between the two groups.

Even more significant is the finding that in several studies where teachers were asked to rate the identical behaviors of fictitious children from single-parent families, remarried families, and intact families, teachers consistently gave low ratings for identified behaviors to the children from nontraditional families. This erroneous premise has created conditions for lower teacher-based academic ratings.

New research on the outcomes of divorce for children seems to indicate that conflict between parents has a far greater impact on school behavior, grades, and self-concept, irrespective of parental divorce. This conflict--fighting, violent behavior, or physical or verbal abuse--occurs between parents in traditional homes as well as between many former spouses.

Studies also show the lowered socio-economic circumstances of many women following divorce (mothers most often are the custodial parents) is a significant negative factor, because lack of money means moving to a new neighborhood, less advantaged school, and possibly decreased availability of access to parents due to the strains of balancing work, home, and child care responsibilities.

This new information should cause us to consider the possibility that our schools inadvertently but actively contribute to expectations of lower student functioning for as many as half of the student population in some schools.

Promising Practices

School administrators can lead the way in reassessing attitudes, policies, and programs that affect families involved in divorce transition. By emphasizing high expectations and a positive school environment and by providing supports to mobilize student strengths, we can significantly contribute to the likelihood of positive outcomes for our children. Recent studies identifying the factors most highly correlated with positive outcomes point to the following ideas:

* Support groups for all children, not just children of divorce.

The death or illness of a parent, grandparent, relative, or friend, alcohol or drug problems in the home, abandonment by a parent, physical or emotional abuse, unemployment of parents, moving from or to a new neighborhood, adolescent concerns, and test anxieties can contribute to difficulties for children. School administrators can help establish communication skills training groups so that all students learn to feel comfortable with their feelings.

While "Banana Splits" groups or special groups for children of divorce can be helpful, they also serve to perpetuate the idea that "children of divorce" need help.

School mental health specialists know that children from so-called "intact" families often ask to attend Banana Splits groups or to visit the counselor, thus demonstrating the need for all children to have a "safe place" to express their feelings. Drop-in or time-limited lunchtime communications training and support groups facilitated by mental health professionals at school can offer support and help to mobilize resources, competencies, and strengths instead of focusing on deficiencies, putting the emphasis on prevention rather than treatment, without singling out children in any one area.

* Updated training and consciousness raising for school personnel.

The negative connotations embedded in our language describing divorced families and families in transition are so pervasive that it is almost impossible to describe these alternative family configurations without reinforcing this negative perspective. Phrases like "broken home," "failed marriage," "ex-spouse," "step-parent," "step-child," and even "children of divorce" are difficult to replace, yet they serve as the basis for socially constructed stereotypes that perpetuate negative thinking.

Awareness workshops and in-service courses designed to disseminate new information and to raise consciousness about cultural biases of all kinds--language, gender, multicultural, and social--should be encouraged.

* After-school programs, support groups, and resource centers for parents.

Many school districts are beginning to establish parents' centers and to encourage parental attendance at special "parents only" programs and offer workshops for parents dealing with all types of stresses that can have a negative effect on children.

Parent programs and discussion groups can effectively provide support for divorcing families and will contribute directly to positive outcomes for children. Facilitators should emphasize the ability of families to rise to the challenge of a mentally healthy divorce transition. School leaders should accumulate materials to distribute to school personnel, students, and parents. These might include research studies, films and books that address divorce from a "potentials" perspective.

Powerful Support

School leaders long have been aware that high expectations and norms for achievement are strongly correlated with positive emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes for all children. It is incumbent upon all educators to maintain high standards for students and to work toward developing a school-community climate that provides positive support for families facing stresses of any kind--major illness, divorce, unemployment, bereavement, and physical, verbal, or substance abuse.

School administrators are in a unique position to assist in the process of attitude change. Schools can make the shift from self-fulfilling prophecies from a negative or "deficit" perspective to a positive "assets" perspective that builds upon the best in every child.

Joan Atwood is coordinator of graduate programs in marriage and family counseling at Hofstra University. Daphne Schuster is assistant superintendent for curriculum and general administration in Merrick, N.Y Maria Tempestini is a master's candidate at Hofstra.

COPYRIGHT 1994 American Association of School Administrators
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group