Divorce Is Hardest on the Very Young, Study Shows

Reduced earnings, teen pregnancy, and incarceration rates are all higher among children of divorce.

A May 2025 report titled “Divorce, Family Arrangements, and Children’s Adult Outcomes” concluded that children aged five or younger suffer more severe and long-lasting impacts when their parents divorce than older siblings. It is axiomatic that nurturing families rear healthy children, and that stepfamilies fare more poorly than those headed by biological parents. The new research reveals that divorce is decidedly harmful to younger children.

Divorce Report

The report’s authors compiled their study from linked tax and Census data covering all children born in the US between 1988 and 1993 – over five million. Focusing on the divorce consequences of income loss, neighborhood changes (often to a lower-income area), and family restructuring as parents work more to make ends meet, the data reflected that children whose parents divorced when they were under five years of age had a 13% lower income by age 27, but that there were little or no impacts for children older than 18 at time of divorce. Teen pregnancy increased for children under age 15 at the time of divorce, and younger children were also found to be more likely to be incarcerated or die.

“In the years following divorce, we observe sharp increases in teen births and child mortality. To examine long-run effects on children, we compare siblings with different lengths of exposure to the same divorce,” the report explains. “We find that parental divorce reduces children’s adult earnings and college residence while increasing incarceration, mortality, and teen births. Changes in household income, neighborhood quality, and parent proximity account for 25 to 60 percent of these divorce effects.”

The report found no variations in impact across demographic groups: harms to young children from divorce are colorblind. It did find, however, that poorer families more often faced this trauma.

More Children Out-of-Wedlock

While rates of divorce have recently declined overall, this may be attributable to lower rates of marriage, resulting in more children being born out of wedlock and suffering many of the same harms attributable to divorce. USA Facts reports substantial disparities in marriage rates along racial lines:

“In 2024, US adults were less likely to be married than at almost any point since the Census Bureau began tracking marital status in 1940.

“Black men and women have historically had the lowest marriage rate among all races and ethnicities. For Black men, that rate dropped from 45.1% in 1990 to 37.8%. For Black women, it dropped from 40.2% to 33.3%.

“In 2024, the proportion of Asian women who were married was nearly double the proportion for Black women, the biggest gap among genders, races, and ethnicities.”

According to CDC data, the proportion of unmarried mothers in the US increased from 18 percent in 1980 to 40 percent by 2023. For both unmarried and divorced mothers, the recent study of divorce outcomes did not assess the perils to children of being vulnerable to stepparent homes, which have also proven to be a major contributor to harm and future risk. Sometimes called “Cinderella Effect” after the harsh treatment of that famous Disney character by her abusive stepmother, studies suggest children are 40 times more at risk of abuse in a stepparent home than when residing with biological parents.

The ‘Cinderella Effect’

Researchers attribute this to a weakened bond when the biological connection is severed. “Research suggests that children living in stepfamilies are particularly vulnerable to violence due to the challenges of forming strong emotional bonds with non-biological family members,” reports the international child advocacy NGO Humanitarium. “Some step-parents may not feel as connected to their partner’s children as they do to their own, while others may bring unresolved issues from past relationships into their new families. These factors can contribute to dysfunctional stepfamilies, increasing the risk of cruelty (Debowska et al., 2020).”

Cultural focus in the US on personal identity and individual liberty may be aggravating these trends toward broken families that seed yet more dysfunction and harm to young children. In his recent book The Children We Left Behind: How Western Culture Rationalizes Family Separation & Ignores the Pain of Child Neglect, Adam B. Coleman argues that adult selfishness is devastating the US family unit:

“Nearly every major social problem in the West can be traced back to our declining appreciation for the nuclear family structure and our failure to plan for families properly. Our culture has shifted from prioritizing sacrifice for the benefit of innocent children to catering to the fleeting desires of the adults who bring them into the world.

“….The culture of radical individualism among adults has left children to bear the consequences of their parents’ choices.”

The recent study of five million American children supports Coleman’s findings. The report’s authors recommend increased responsiveness of schools and government policies to the observable harms from divorce to young children. Yet much like substance abuse, prevention is cheaper than treatment: The solution to America’s cultural destruction is stronger families, created by parents embracing the traditional virtues of putting their children’s needs above their own selfish desires.

(Originally published with Liberty Nation News.)