The impact of adult significant others on children of divorce

Abstract

Little is known about the role of adult significant others in facilitating children's adjustment to divorce. This study was undertaken to examine this important issue.;The research hypotheses were: (1) Children with a supportive relationship with their father and children with a supportive relationship with another adult will adjust better to divorce than children with neither kind of relationship. (2) Children without a supportive relationship with their father, but with such a relationship with another adult, will adjust as well to divorce as children with a supportive relationship with their father. (3) There will be no difference between the adjustment of children for whom the other adult they maintain a supportive relationship is a male and those for whom it is a female.;Three indicators of adjustment were examined: self-esteem, academic performance, and cooperative school behavior.;Hypothesis 1 was partially upheld. While the group that maintained a warm and supportive relationship with their father did manifest better adjustment than the other two groups, the group that had a supportive relationship with another adult did not achieve significantly higher scores on any of the outcomes than the group with no adult relationship.;Hypothesis 2 was partially upheld. While there were no significant differences between the adjustment of children with a supportive relationship with the father and those with such a relationship with another adult on academic performance and cooperative behavior at school, the former had higher self-esteem.;Hypothesis 3 was upheld. No significant differences on any of the outcomes were found between those children who maintained a supportive relationship with a male adult and those maintaining such a relationship with a female adult.;While all hypotheses were not fully substantiated, an examination of the trends in the data indicate that while children maintaining a supportive relationship with another adult do not adjust as well as those maintaining such a relationship with their father, they adjust better than those children who do not have a supportive relationship with either their father or another adult.