ASU Research E-Magazine: Wonder Moms and Healthy Kids

Divorce throws lives into disarray. Noncustodial dads can face serious post-marital challenges. But life is by no means a picnic for most divorced moms who have full custody of the children. Expenses for divorced mothers tend to rise just as their incomes fall. Divorce often means that they must return to the labor force, take courses to enhance careers, and increase their paid work hours—all while simultaneously increasing their household and parenting duties.

Mom’s day starts before dawn with housework and a shower. She must wake, dress, and feed the kids by herself. The rest of her busy day might look like this:

Take children to school.
Rush to work to avoid being late.
Struggle to finish work assignments before daycare closes.
Pick up children from school or daycare.
Start dinner. Inhale dinner.
Clean the kitchen while bathtub is filling.
Wash dirty kids and their hair.
Blow-dry hair and dress kids for bed.
Help each child with homework.
Tuck children into bed.

Then, and only then, can mom turn her attention toward paying bills, mending what’s broken, washing dishes and clothes, or cleaning the house.

Of course, she would probably love to walk the dog or run errands while the kids sleep, but she cannot leave them home alone.

The routine continues, day after day after day, until her every-other-weekend-parenting-reprieve—when she can finally collapse and rest.

Sharlene Wolchik says that it is no wonder so many custodial moms report feeling like they are in “task overload” after divorce. Many women report feeling overwhelmed, angry, and depressed. Having young children, no extended family nearby, money problems, or significant conflict with the ex-spouse can intensify such feelings.

Wolchik is an ASU psychologist who studies such realities. She has designed a program that seems to help. Her handiwork is called “New Beginnings.” Wolchik’s program is incorporated into the “Dads For Life” program run by ASU colleagues Bill Griffin and Sanford Braver.

“Being an effective parent is a very, very large part of how women tend to define themselves,” Wolchik explains.

The more unhappy, unstable, and distant the kids, the less likely the custodial mom will function effectively. Likewise, the less functional the mom, the more unhappy, unstable, and distant the kids become.

The cycle perpetuates.

“New Beginnings targets custodial moms. The program begins by reassuring mothers that while some children do ‘sink’ after divorce, many ‘swim’,” Wolchik explains.

“In fact, some studies show that the average difference between children from divorced homes and children from intact homes can be relatively small. Parents do have the capacity to help kids adjust to a divorce—often just by being there.”

The current reality in America’s post-marital households is that mothers are more often the custodial parents.

Not surprisingly then, the mother/child relationship is one of the four main risk factors Wolchik has identified. Her three-month program focuses heavily on enhancing the warmth and quality of such relationships; not an easy job given the task overload factor.

“How to begin? We urge moms to figure out ways to be more available emotionally for their children,” Wolchik says.

One such recommendation involves ways to establish a “family fun time” each and every week. This is a “budgeted and unbreakable” time that is set aside specifically for fun. The time might include bike rides, a picnic, cooking a meal together, anything that everyone enjoys.

There are conditions. Family fun time has to be inexpensive and must include everyone in the family—and only the family.

Another lesson helps mothers set aside relatively short times each week to be alone with every child, doing whatever that child enjoys. Such times can be as short as 15 to 20 minutes once per week, if necessary. More is better in this case. The important thing is maintaining strong one-to-one relationships.

“Many moms report positive changes pretty quickly once they start doing both on a regular basis,” Wolchik says. “They say their kids are less whiney and have fewer sibling fights. Moms also report that they really start enjoying time spent with their children.”

Wolchik’s program has other keystones. They address maintaining clear, consistent discipline, minimizing interparental conflict, and setting up appropriate contact with the noncustodial parent.

Participants in New Beginnings are advised to consciously seek out things their kids do well. People under stress tend to perceive more negative issues. Likewise, participants are encouraged to make sure that their reaction to situations fits the “crime,” rather than falling prey to a stress-induced overreaction.

Anger management is a large part of the program. Moms learn how and when to put themselves in “time-out.” They also learn the necessity of and some skills for keeping children out of the “war zone.”

Irwin Sandler takes a slightly different approach to divorce studies. He works with kids, looking for coping skills that help children to help themselves.

“In many ways, moms are very heroic and selfless after divorce,” says Sandler, an ASU professor of psychology. “They must somehow deal with their own issues while simultaneously focusing nearly all of their time and energy on their children to get them through.”

Sandler’s work helps moms by helping kids.

“Divorce is just the beginning of the story for kids,” he says. “It triggers a change in family structure that leads to a whole cascade of continuing stressors that kids must constantly deal with.”

The stressors Sandler refers to include things like less parental contact, interparental conflict, relocation, standard of living, and parent-stress issues.

Sandler has interviewed hundreds of children of divorce, mostly between the ages of 8 and 12. He always asks the children to express what they were thinking, feeling, and worrying about when facing each issue. As a result, he’s learned a great deal about coping.

“Much of effective coping involves dealing with appraisals: what the child believes; how he frames the situation; and what he perceives is going on,” Sandler explains.

The ASU psychologist’s work involves helping children identify and understand their feelings. For example, before divorce, kids can usually analyze problems at school or with friends, then take some type of direct action that improves things. The child studies harder and his grades improve; he learns to share and friends come back.

“With divorce, all the direct problem-solving skills kids have learned up to that point no longer work,” he continues. “They can’t stop the divorce, change their parents’ minds, or control their own destinies—no matter what they try. And that can be quite frustrating.”

According to Sandler, kids categorize divorce-related stressors into three main categories: threat to self; threat to others; and material loss.

Threat-to-self issues include feelings such as, “My parents don’t love me anymore. My parents are angry with me. I did something wrong.”

Threat-to-other issues include thoughts such as, “Someone I love is suffering. One of my parents has done something wrong.”

Material loss issues relate to what Sandler terms “decrease in fun”—things like fewer toys and trips, and moving to smaller quarters with shared bedrooms.

Having identified those stressors, Sandler was also able to recognize four main types of coping strategies: active coping; avoidance coping; abstraction; and support seeking. His research suggests that active coping often produces the most positive results, while avoidance coping does just the opposite.

“Active coping involves directly engaging the stressor and seeking out the positive,” he says. “You learn to identify your feelings, objectively gauge the situation, then take a course of action where you know you’ll be all right.”

With active coping, children recognize that while they can’t control parental choices, they can control the way they look at them.

Regarding fighting between parents, a child might say, “Yes, mom and dad are fighting, but that’s just the way they are. No one gets hurt and they both still very much love me.”

Or, if dad misses several visits, the child might say, “It has something to do with dad, not me. I know dad loves me; he just can’t show it in all the ways I need him to.”

When using avoidance coping, a child tries to block out the problem and pretends that there is nothing wrong. Sandler’s research suggests that this strategy often leads to high rates of depression and anxiety. He believes that may be because problems often rattle around in the child’s subconscious mind, where they never get resolved.

Abstraction is the third coping strategy. Abstraction involves continuing to do things you like to do, such as playing videos, reading, and riding bikes. The strategy involves getting on with life—not dwelling on the negative. This strategy seems to be effective when combined with an active coping strategy.

Support seeking is the fourth strategy. Support seeking involves finding someone to listen, empathize, and validate. While support seeking can be beneficial, Sandler says that simply talking to someone doesn’t necessarily guarantee positive mental health outcomes.

Sandler says that the key is finding someone who helps you understand what you are feeling and that you are not alone. Support seeking becomes even better if that person can teach you coping skills, just like someone had to teach you how to tie your shoes and how to talk.

If a child is coping effectively, he walks away from a situation feeling as if, “That worked. I handled it,” Sandler says. “The key is getting him to the point where he can say, ‘I didn’t like that. I may not like what’s ahead. But I know I can handle it.’”

In essence, that is the entire point of ASU’s divorce programs.

“None of these are what I’d call traditional divorce recovery programs,” Wolchik explains. “Our programs are designed primarily to ensure that moms and dads are on the same page as far as meeting their kids’ needs are concerned.”

“Our biggest challenge is that divorce is in and of itself a classic Catch-22 scenario,” Sandler adds. Just when children need love, stability, and parental contact the most, divorce usually makes both parents significantly less available. —Lindsey Michaels