Divorce Is Not the Problem with Your Child's Grades

I recently read an article in my hometown newspaper where one of the opinion columnists gave a “dad talk” for people who got divorced and all the problems it caused to their kids’ academic performance.

Stay Together for the Grades

According to the columnist, if you want your child to perform well in school, you should stay married no matter the circumstances. Never mind that the other parent is a deadbeat, a drunk, a criminal, or just an awfully mean person. Decades ago, my mother fled her abusive, crazy violent relationship with a career criminal (my father) in order to live a saner and safer life. Neither my nor my brother’s grades were affected by this. In fact, the divorce provided us with a much more stable and peaceful home that allowed us to excel in academics.

The Thinking Error

The columnist's failed attempt to find a cause-and-effect relationship between divorce and poor grades is a classic example of the thinking error, "After this, therefore because of this," known as far back as the Romans, when they said, "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc." In other words, since the divorce preceded the bad grades, the divorce is at fault. By this same reasoning, since the marriage preceded the divorce, one can say marriage "causes" divorce.

Source: Thomas Park / Unsplash

Human Behavior Isn't "Caused"

But human behavior is the result of human choice. Yes, we can look at contributory factors (education, family history, and other variables) that may have contributed to an impaired level of decision-making, but there is no “cause” of domestic violence. Impaired or not, people choose to become abusive. There is also no “cause” of sexual infidelity. People choose to have sex with others. In the same way, divorce doesn't "cause" our children to neglect their studies.

Divorce Is Not the Problem

As a licensed marriage and family therapist, I have listened to thousands of men and women talk about their flawed relationships. Many of these relationships are beyond repair and, in these cases, divorce is not the problem, or even a problem, because divorce is, actually, the solution.

People Are Human

People make mistakes, serious mistakes, in every single dimension of the human experience. Our relationships are no exception to our capacity for poor judgment. Pencils come with erasers, business failures are eased by bankruptcy proceedings, and nowadays, we all get to quit religious affiliations without negative consequences. But when it comes to divorce, many still insist on the moral diagnosis of shame and blame.

Avoiding Divorce

If you really want to avoid divorce (and who doesn't!), you can take action by engaging in rational thinking as a lifestyle choice. Most of us don’t do this before or after we fall in love. Most of us don’t spend enough time on mate selection; most of us don’t understand how to build intimacy; and most of us never talk about sex and sexuality in the way it needs to be talked about. Why are we so inept in such important decisions? Because no one ever taught us how to do better.

The Old Ways Aren’t Working

Rarely did family "birds and bees" talks ever help in educating us. What school sex ed program ever contextualized our future relationships and, so to speak, put the "human" into our sex ed classes? We could even teach our children to do the same by actually educating them about, get this, human sexuality as opposed to mammalian sexuality, where the body parts and the processes are largely identical from one species to another. Yes, we could take action—action far more effective than just telling people that they're irresponsible and their kids’ academic performance will suffer if they get a divorce.

A Real Sex Ed Curriculum

We, who believe that the family is the bedrock of American civilization, could expand our school's sex education curriculum to move beyond anatomy and physiology (body parts and how they work, plus diseases and pregnancy). We could actually teach children what healthy relationships look like, how to play their part in positive outcomes, and how to engage in a rational, evidence-based process of mate selection. Teaching kids what to look for in a partner? I know, I know. Crazy, right?

If We Wanted to Take Action, We Could

By taking action, we could go from a country where the divorce rates are so high that young people, by the millions, have decided to simply avoid marriage altogether to a country that properly educates our youth on how to build healthy relationships. However, since our legislatures are unlikely to fund such an education in healthy relationships, parents (including divorced ones!) can begin teaching their children to say "yes" to abuse-free relationships, "no" to unresolved mental health problems, and "yes" to intelligently managing their sexuality in a way that will build safer, healthier, and more fulfilling relationships. Who knows? Communicating to your children in a direct, honest, and proactive way about this stuff, whether you’re divorced or not, may also keep their grades up.