Adolescents' perception of self and of immediate environment by parental marital status: a controlled study

Most studies on children of "broken families" are based on small and unrepresentative samples, are limited to children of divorce and do not control for basic demographic variables. In order to do a survey with fewer methodological deficiencies, we managed to obtain a completely representative sample of a Francophone urban population attending High School I, II and III, with the reasonable sample size of 1519 subjects and including 72 subjects from widowed families in addition to 174 children of divorce; furthermore, we were able to control for the following eight demographic variables: father's and mother's occupation, mother's work, respondent's, father's and mother's age, family size, and respondent's rank of birth. When comparing children from legally intact, widowed, and divorced families, on a wide range of psychosocial variables, we found that on the average, divorce is associated with the greatest disadvantage in children, followed by widowhood; children belonging to intact families show the least disadvantage. Besides, when comparing girls and boys, we did not find striking differences between them in divorced families, but, on the other hand, we found striking differences in widowed families, boys being at much more disadvantage than girls. It is concluded that on the average a family breakup should be considered as a serious risk factor for teenagers and that clinicians would be well advised to monitor the situation carefully when aware of an impending family breakup.