How Adolescents Deal With Divorce

Millions of youth have divorced or separated parents, and many youth experience behavior problems or cope with this family transition in unhealthy ways. At the same time, evidence-based programs to help youth cope with their parents divorce are limited. Moreover, research with contemporary youth that was designed to inform such programming is further scarce. The purpose of this study was to explore emerging adults (N = 141) perceptions of the challenges, as well as their coping methods throughout their own parents divorce-related transitions. Themes surrounding feeling caught in the middle between parents and attempting to maintain contact with both parents emerged from the data as two of the most commonly coded categories. Participants also frequently reported struggles regarding parents new romantic relationships or the remarriage of their parents and feeling sad, depressed, or experiencing other negative emotions. The most frequently mentioned coping aid was friends, particularly someone with a similar experience dealing with parental divorce. These data provide insight into the types of topics and coping strategies that could form the basis for developing outreach efforts for helping youth who are coping with their parents divorce.Ope