PN’s Mument misquoted Australian study, expert: ‘most children are not adversely affected by divorce’

In correspondence from Dr Bryan Rodgers of the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Centre at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, seen by MaltaToday, the expert declares that divorce does not have consequences of mental health, substance use and educational progress.

According to the Sunday Telegraph report quoted by Il-Mument, called ‘Government urged to provide divorce help’, Rodgers is quoted as saying that “most children were not adversely affected by divorce.”

While the study found that children of divorced parents were almost twice as likely to have behavioural problems, perform less well in school, use drugs and suffer from depression and lower incomes in adulthood, Rodgers “stressed” with the Sunday Telegraph that these negative outcomes “occurred only in a minority of cases. Most children were not adversely affected by divorce.”

Indeed, while Mument claimed in its report that chidren of divorced parents were likely to have premarital sex, the Sunday Telegraph’s report actually stated that while divorce is “a very distressing event for children… it does not have to result in long-term developmental damage, a study by an ANU researcher shows.”

In fact the study showed that one of the best things parents could do to help children overcome the trauma of divorce was not involve children in conflict between the divorcing couple.

In new correspondence seen by MaltaToday, sent to the psychiatry expert by a reader, Rodgers says that there is a large body of research indicating that “most of the apparent effects of parental divorce on the long-term development of children arises from other types of family adversity experienced before, during and after family separation.”

Rodgers goes on to say that family separation can be extremely stressful “for children and parents in the shorter term.”

However he also adds that when it comes to years later and adult outcomes, “it is likely that divorce benefits some children (eg those from conflicted and violent marriages) and leads to poorer outcomes in others and these changes may well balance out across the population.”

Referring the correspondent to the study allegedly ‘quoted’ by the PN newspaper, Rodgers said the disadvantages in adults from separated families which “could not be accounted for by other forms of adversity… were not the majority of outcomes,and they related quite specifically to adult relationships like age at first sex, age at marriage and age of having a first child.

“It is possible, therefore, that parental divorce has a particular consequence in these areas but it does not for outcomes such as mental health, substance use and educational progress.”

Rodgers added that divorce was such a highly contentious area that it was “common for research to be misquoted or otherwise misrepresented and it is very difficult for the researchers to respond or correct such reports.”

This is the second instance in which experts’ studies appeared to be mischaracterized to push an anti-divorce stance.

Joan B. Kelly, the co-author of a study cited by Commissioner for Children Helen D’Amato, rejected the anti-divorce interpretation given to her work. “They have misunderstood the research. The comparisons have been made between groups of children whose parents remain married, and those children whose parents have divorced.

“There is no reason to expect that the psycho-social outcomes for children whose parents divorce, get an annulment, or legally separate would be any different. Divorce and legal separation are the same, from the perspective of the children.”

Her work was cited by D’Amato during a meeting with the anti-divorce movement Zwieg bla Divorzju, in which D’Amato quoted the study to attribute harmful effects on children by divorce.

“I don’t like my articles (or interpretations of the research of hundreds of researchers) to be misinterpreted or misrepresented,” Kelly said.