The effects of contested divorce on children’s emotional state

based on their family drawings and life quality

 

Krisztina Tárnokine Töro

Dr, PhD, Hungary, torokrist1@gmail.com

Abstract

The aim of this study: Understanding children and adolescents who have experienced critic divorce, focusing on the aspects of their emotional experiences in the family, their overall emotions and quality of life.

Method: Comparing children who have experienced critic divorce with those who live in a complete family, based on drawing tests and questionnaire (Inventar zur Erfassung der Lebensqualität bei Kindern und Jugendlichen - ILK). There were 21 people in the examined group and 21 in the controll group. The answers to the questionnaire (ILK) gave us information about life quality, while drawing tests showed the bonding patterns inside families and the extent of family dissonance. The study was approved by the Ethical Committee of University of Karoli Gaspar, Hungary. The parents of each child and children older than 14 years included into this study provided written informed consent after being informed of the nature of the study. Children under 14 years received both written and oral information about the project.

Results: Looking at family ties, based in the ILK questionnaire we did not find any differences between the examined group and the controll group. However, drawings of the examined group held more signs of dissonance than the controll group’s. In the case of bonding there wasn’t significant difference between the groups. In the examined group, the signs of dissonance and bonding signs showed correlation.

Conclusions: Signs of dissonance in drawings apparently show that family disharmony has a strong impact on children and adolescents. Contradictory results in the questionnaire points out that while children might not verbally express their issues with the family, projective drawing tests susceptibly mark those feelings.

Keywords: Divorce, children, falily, drawings,disharmony