Hello, everyone.
Welcome to my blog and another wonderful edition of the Hive Learner's featured post. Divorce can be really heartbreaking as well as traumatic; it can be a really difficult time for the entire family, both the parents and the children included, if not the extended family too. Some divorces can change a person and the entire family. A divorce can turn a home that was once known to be a happy one into something else; it becomes a place where the entire family does not know peace anymore as they have to deal with the trauma the divorce caused for the rest of their lives.
Gone are the days when marriages and the union between a man and a woman were believed to be a forever thing. The rate of divorce these days has skyrocketed and is on the increase because people of this generation marry for personal reasons and not because of love, and when they no longer see those personal reasons, they opt in for a divorce, not minding how that divorce affects both their partner, the kids, and their entire family. Families that have experienced divorce never remained the same after that experience because of the pain and trauma it caused them.
Many kids who were raised in broken homes (divorced homes) are willing to do everything and anything possible to make sure that their kids do not experience what they experienced growing up in a broken home. In most cases being raised in a broken home comes with an effect many kids did not escape, and they will not like to pass such an experience to their kids.
Divorce can actually be caused by so many reasons. There can be personal reasons; maybe the partner realized they can no longer go on with the marriage. It can be as a result of cheating. Also, financial instability can cause divorce, as can lack of communication. Sometimes even extended families can pressure an individual into filing for a divorce, like in the Nigerian setting, and in cases where the wife fails to give birth to a child a few years after marriage, the husband's family comes down with all the pressure that there is to make sure he gets another woman that will do what the current partner fails to do.
Divorce leaves a psychological and emotional scar on both the parents and the children. Partners after a divorce can fall into depression; they can also miss their partner but cannot have them around, while when children grow up with just one parent, they end up missing the other one and wishing they had a complete home like the other kids in school and in their neighborhood, and that leaves a scar.
So who should be prioritised?
For me, I feel both the parents' and the children's mental health actually matters a lot because a divorce has an effect on both and not just one. If only one was at the receiving end, then we should consider the one at the receiving end, but from the look of things, both the parents and children suffer the emotional trauma that comes with a divorce, which makes it important that both parents' and children's mental health be brought in. Consideration before divorce becomes the only option.
