Eriavez 1

Justin Eriavez

Professor Sheila Fielding

WRTC 103

3 October 2017

Negative Effects of Divorce on Children

There used to be a time when marriage was a sacred thing. It was about vowing to commit to

your significant other through sickness or health, and for good and bad. Nowadays, marriage is

becoming more of a broken promise in some cases. The rate of divorce has increased over the years and

it doesnt look like its slowing down. The effect of divorce is tremendous between the couple, but even

more so for the children that may be involved. Sarah-Marie Hopf attacks this dilemma to the core,

describing what exactly it is about divorce that causes children to be negatively affected and how. In the

article, Most Children Adjust to the Negative Effects of Divorce, she uses appeals such as ethos, logos

and pathos in order to illustrate her viewpoint on the troubling lives of the children effected by divorce.

In Hopfs piece, her main claim is right in the title, being that children suffer negative effects

from divorce. She describes the hardships children of divorce go through as well as the challenges

parents go through while in the process of divorce and how that can lead to a decrease in quality

parenting, which, in turn, negatively affects the kids. The author elaborated on what exactly causes such

challenges. According to Hopf, depending on how the custody is determined, the children can end up

growing up without a father figure, which hurts the boys more than the girls. Also, because the father is

not present, the mother takes on all parenting duties and therefore is unable to produce as well for the

kids. The overall parenting and support for the childrens emotional, physical, and financial needs is, at

the very least, considerably diminished. Hopfs article is written for the general public, but more
 Eriavez 2

specifically, married couples. Her article is mainly controversial, as the topic of divorce itself is

controversial. Some argue that the negative effects would be worse if no divorce took place to end

supposed toxic relationship, but she disagrees and lets her viewpoint be known. Hopf organizes her

viewpoint or argument into specific topics having to do with divorce. Divorce is such a hot topic and is

normally hard on everyone, therefore, it contains a lot of things that need to be addressed. Subtopic

such as financial situations, internal and external facts, and the loss of relationship all come into play

when addressing the negative effects that divorce causes for children.

Throughout her piece, Hopf uses many strong sources that strengthen her credibility and appeal

to ethos, helping her build her argument. We learn a bit of information about the author before the

argument has even begun. The article states that, Sarah-Marie Hopf is a project strategist fellow at the

consulting firm 17 Triggers, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Paragraph 2). We are informed from the start

that Hopf is familiar with topics such as divorce. The firm that she is involved with, 17 Triggers, is a social

innovation agency located in 20 countries. The group deals with social issues and divorce definitely falls

under that category. Hopf also cites a list of books and internet sources after her article, illustrating how

she became familiar with the topic, as well as how she got the facts needed to make her argument.

Along with the ethos appeals, Hopf makes effective appeals to logos in order to support her

viewpoint on the negative effects divorce has on children. In the article, logos is the most dominant

appeal. Towards the beginning of the piece, Hopf brings up a statistical fact writing, Today over 45

percent of marriages in the United States end in divorce and "about 40 percent of children will

experience their parents' divorce, with about 80 percent of them placed primarily in the physical

custody of their biological mother". (Paragraph 4). The likelihood of divorce being around 50% is

already enough to capture ones attention. In addition to this Hopf states there are numerous situations

where children lose contact with their fathers; Between 18 and 25 percent of children have no contact

with their fathers 2-3 years after divorce". (Paragraph 12). Hopf elaborates on the significance of this
 Eriavez 3

statistic saying that children, especially boys, need a relationship with their fathers. Having only one

parent around is hard for both the mothers and the children, as the mother need to take on a bigger

role and the children normally dont receive nearly as much attention. Its situations like these that lead

the reader to have empathy for children of divorce.

Hopf intends to trigger emotion in her readers by using pathos appeals in her article. She goes

going deeper and looks at the consequences of divorce. The articles first sentence starts out inflicting

emotion into readers, with Hopf writing, Children are exposed to stressful risks and events when

parents divorce, including high conflict, lost relationships, and remarriage, which can result in the

development of externalizing or internalizing disorders. (Paragraph 3). What really draws out the

emotion is the fact that these complications were out of the kids control, it is all because of their

parents. The author goes into more detail about such disorders explaining, Externalizing disorders

include "antisocial, aggressive, noncompliant behavior and lack of self-regulation, low social

responsibility, and diminished cognitive agency and achievement" whereas "anxiety, depressive

symptoms and problems with social relationships" represent common internalizing disorders.

(Paragraph 8). Knowing that kids are at risk to all these disorders is saddening. Children of divorce did

nothing to deserve what they have to go through with divorce. The childrens innocence is whats

intended to get readers emotional about this topic because they are undeveloped human beings trying

to figure out the world they have recently been brought in and already the two people in whom they are

supposed to rely on the most cant rely on each other.

In conclusion, the strong usage of ethos, logos, and pathos is what drives Hopfs viewpoint. Its

clear she has the credentials to talk about a touchy social issue such as divorce. In addition to that she

lays out facts to draw out the passion she desires from her readers. She rightfully wants everyone to be

aware of the consequences of divorce. When children are being subjected to potentially having this
 Eriavez 4

amount of conflict early in their lives, its unhealthy at best. Its important for parents to know what

theyre getting their kids into when they file for divorce; Hopfs viewpoint should not be ignored.
 Eriavez 5

Works Cited

Hopf, Sarah-Marie. "Most Children Adjust to the Negative Effects of Divorce." Divorce and Children,

edited by Roman Espejo, Greenhaven Press, 2015. Opposing Viewpoints in Context,

link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010953202/OVIC?u=viva_jmu&xid=bff16e77. Accessed 3 Oct.

2017.

Our Mission: 17x Impact. 17 Triggers, http://www.17triggers.com/about/. Accessed 4 October 2017.