By
Rebecca Missel
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Mothers revealing divorce details can hurt daughters, UA prof says
Divorce can psychologically damage adolescent daughters who hear too much information about family finances and their fathers, said a family and consumer resources professor.
Mothers should talk to their daughters about divorce but not in explicit detail, said Susan Silverberg Koerner, a University of Arizona Family and Consumer Resources associate professor. Koerner recently finished a study on the relationships of mothers and daughters following divorce.
"They're not clinically depressed," Koerner said. "However, do exposed daughters have more psychological stress? - Yes."
Sixty-two pairs of mothers and daughters, mostly from Central and Southern Arizona, responded to the survey conducted by Koerner. All the mothers had been divorced within the last two years and they had at least one daughter between 11 and 17 years old.
Koerner said there were already many case studies looking at relationships between mothers and adolescent daughters following divorce but few large-scale studies.
"We looked at the extent to which divorced mothers turn to adolescent daughters with revealing topics," Koerner said. "They expressed financial concerns and often negative comments about their ex-husbands."
In the daughters' part of the survey, a psychological scale measuring levels of psychological distress, such as anxious feelings, was incorporated. While daughters often did not want to hear about their mothers' emotional problems, especially when it concerned their fathers, they still felt obligated to listen, Koerner said.
"They feel torn, hurt and confused between their mom's talking and their experiences with their dads," she said. "But their dads aren't all bad."
Mothers knew they should probably refrain from these types of conversations, but they often admitted it "just popped out."
Koerner said that there is a difference between mothers bringing up the divorce and talking about the divorce at length.
"How much detail is the question because it's not in the best interest of the child to talk about it often," she said. "The detail is more than most kids can handle."
Ken Marsh, director of Counseling and Psychological Services for Campus Health Services, said that parents should talk to their children, but they also need to keep emotional information to themselves.
"If the mom has inadequate resources herself she can overburden the child," he said. "The parents need to deal with the nitty-gritty with others of the same age."
The study found that 75 percent of mothers did discuss their ex-husbands with their daughters at one time or another, however only one-third went into detail.
"That's the third I have concern about," Koerner said.
Rather than relying on a child for venting frustration, parents ought to have at least one other adult with which to discuss the issues of the divorce.
"Take an extra three to four seconds to think and stay in parent mode instead of friend mode," Koerner said.
The study was important for a number of reasons, said Meghan Raymond, who helped Koerner research. Raymond is also the assistant director for research and program development at Strategic Alternative Learning Techniques.
"The divorce rates are high enough that a significant number of single moms are going through stressful times," Raymond said. "The study clarifies some areas where it's ok to talk or not."
In another study of divorced mothers and their children, Koerner is including sons in the data and she is surveying 250 mother-son, mother-daughter groups. This study, which is funded by a $180,000 grant from the W.T. Grant Foundation, will include personal interviews and will continue during a two-year period.
Although Raymond is not involved with this second study, she said she believed it would help discover more information.
"The findings from the first study are so intriguing that if (Koerner) gets the sample size up, we can have that much more confidence," Raymond said. "The study will be relevant to divorce support groups and have practical implications in giving moms guidance."
While the study focused on younger adolescent children, the psychological effects of divorce are just as pertinent to college students, Marsh said.
"A group we get a lot is where the divorce comes out of the blue just after the student leaves for college," Marsh said. "It's disturbing because their own ability to see what is going on in a relationship is called into question."
Marsh said how a divorce is handled can affect children more than the parents actually splitting up.
"In an open situation where the child is left with intact relationships with both parents - those tend to be fine," he said. "Basically, parents need to be open about the facts of the divorce but handle their emotions themselves."
