Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
Relationship Radio: Marriage, Sex, Limerence & Avoiding Divorce
The Hidden Cost of Divorce on Children
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Divorce is never easy. But when kids are involved, the stakes are even higher. Before making the life-changing decision to divorce, there are five essential considerations every parent needs to think about.
In this video, Kimberly shares heartbreaking real-life stories and powerful research that reveal the true impact divorce can have on children. You’ll learn:
✅ Why children’s greatest fear is losing a parent—and why divorce can feel even harder for them than a parent passing away.
✅ How stability and consistency directly affect a child’s ability to thrive.
✅ What shared custody really looks like—and the sacrifices many parents don’t anticipate.
✅ The hidden emotional toll kids carry when they blame themselves for their parents’ divorce.
✅ The financial realities that can drastically change a child’s lifestyle.
✅ How your marriage (or divorce) teaches your kids what love, forgiveness, and relationships look like.
Kids are resilient—but they shouldn’t have to be. Divorce doesn’t just shape your future, it shapes theirs too. Before you file, take time to truly count the cost—not just for yourself, but for your children
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Divorce is never simple and it's never an easy decision. But when you have kids, it's even more essential that you consider some major things before you make the decision to divorce. A couple of years ago, I was on Facebook just scrolling like we do, and I saw this reel of this little girl laying on a blanket outside in the rain, off of her front porch. And her mom had posted this reel and had written over the top of it and said, My daughter said she wanted to just go lay out in the rain because she was sad. And she was sad because her dad had left and her parents had divorced. And this daughter had internalized it so much and had been so depressed, and she was eight years old, and she just wanted to lay out in the rain. And she said, Because maybe the rain will just wash away my sadness. The truth of the matter is, people say that kids are resilient, and they are, but they shouldn't have to be. A child shouldn't have to endure the pain of parents breaking up. A child's greatest fear in life is loss of a parent, whether that be through death or through divorce. And honestly, sometimes divorce is a harder pain for children to try and overcome because when a parent leaves them because of divorce, that was a choice. And death wasn't. Now you might be thinking, but but divorce isn't always a choice. You know, maybe one spouse doesn't want to leave the marriage, but at the end of the day, all a child can do is internalize how maybe it was their fault. And honestly, you may be thinking, but but you know, it's better. It's better for kids to not have to grow up in a home where there's two fighting parents. And we're gonna get into that in just a little bit as we go through these essential considerations that you should think about before you file for divorce. But the bottom line is this kids are resilient, but they shouldn't have to be. No child should ever have to go through the loss of a parent. And honestly, resilience should not be a substitute for a child's stability. So let's go through the five things that you need to consider, the essential considerations before filing for divorce when you have kids. The first one is the impact on the kid's stability. The impact on your child. Children thrive with consistency. Any parent knows this. When you have a bedtime routine, the child can get into that routine and it's so much easier to put them to bed. When you don't have a bedtime routine and it's all chaos, it is so much harder to get your child to go to sleep. That's just one example of how stability and consistency is a key for children. It's something they thrive under. Being able to come home to the same parents, to the same room, all of those things help them to thrive. And it's true of us as adults. It doesn't change the older we get. Think about how much better you thrive when you have a daily routine, a set of habits. It's what we know in performance psychology can lead to people to performing at their highest level. Routine and consistency is essential because at its core, it helps us as humans to feel secure. It helps us as humans to feel like we can predict what's happening next. So that when stressors in the outside world do come to us, we're better able to handle them because there's a consistency, there is a predictability to our daily lives. And it's even more so true for kids. Children need consistency. Going back and forth between houses is a disruption to their stability. It's a disruption to their day-to-day life. If they have to switch schools, if they have to change the kind of lifestyle that they're used to because of the financial implications for divorce, which we're gonna get to in just a minute, all of that can impact the child. So the first and most important thing that you need to consider is how does this impact my child's stability? It's a very important consideration. The second consideration that you need to have is the realization and the understanding of the reality of what shared custody is going to look like. Judges don't really care about what is fair. They care about what is best for the child. And honestly, when lawyers get into it and they're both fighting for each parent to have the majority of custody, then it can get real messy as to what the courts end up deciding is best for the child, because a lot of feelings are put in the way in thinking truly about what's best for the child. What's best for the child is to grow up in a home with two parents. And again, more on that in just a minute. But when we're talking about shared custody, you very well likely miss birthdays, Christmases, holidays with your child if the courts deem certain types of custody agreements. Have you considered that? Have you considered what that's going to look like? Have you considered how hard it's going to be to say goodbye to your child every Friday at drop-off and go an entire week without them? A week where they are going to continue to grow and live life and do things and be a part of things that you will wish that you were a part of as well. This is something that you need to consider. The third thing that is absolutely essential that you consider is the emotional toll that divorce takes on kids. Children have a tendency to put the blame on themselves for many reasons. Number one, they don't have a fully developed brain or a fully developed prefrontal cortex. They can't understand why things happen or why things are happening to them or how things are happening. All they know is things are happening and it's so easy for them to accept the blame. For them to feel like this happened because of me. I've heard this even in adults who, when they were kids, their parents got divorced, and they remember how strong that feeling was of is this somehow my fault? Am I the one who's causing the stress on my parents' marriage? If I wasn't here or if I was nicer or better or smarter, fill in the blank. Would my parents be fighting? Would they want to be away from each other? Kids internalize that. And so it is essential to consider how divorce is going to possibly make those feelings worse in your child. And if you do divorce, really thinking through how are you going to make sure that your son or your daughter or both do not put all of that blame on themselves because it affects their self-esteem, it affects their grades, it affects so many things about their future that have to be considered. The fourth thing to consider are the financial implications of divorce. Everything multiplies. And as a famous researcher, Dr. Mark Regnera says, divorce is the gift that keeps on taking. And it takes long after papers are signed. But one of the ways that divorce continues to take is it multiplies the amount of bills that you're responsible for. Where once there was one household payment, one mortgage, one grocery bill, one water bill, all of those things, now it's doubled. And on top of that, there are legal fees and there are child support fees and sometimes even alimony. You're not getting more money when you divorce. You're taking that same household income and basically splitting it in two, if it were to be split evenly, which most of the time it's not. In fact, 40% of women after divorce fall into poverty because they weren't working before. They don't automatically have a way to start working now. They were primary caregivers to their children. And so they are fully depending a lot of times on that child support and on that alimony, and it's not enough. And I don't have to tell you that things have gotten more expensive over the past several years. So it is 40% of women, 40% that no longer have the ability to give their children the same lifestyle that they were used to. This is a reality, and that's why it is an essential consideration to think of. Also, earlier, when I said that a child's greatest fear is losing a parent through divorce or through death, and divorce can be one of those harder parts, one of the harder things for a child to wrap their mind around. The other thing that you need to understand in because you may have been thinking, well, that's harsh. Just because someone's divorced doesn't mean they're gonna stop seeing their kids. But let me tell you what the research says that 25% of children, after one year of their parents being divorced, no longer see their dad anymore. That number shoots up to 50% of children no longer have any contact or communication with their biological father 10 years after their parents have divorced. One out of two. One out of two. Why? Because that dad has gone on and started a new life. He's gotten married to someone else, maybe had kids with someone else, and it has become harder. I know personally of people that this has happened to. Friends that we have had, where the the mom and dad, the friends that were ours, the husband and the wife, they got divorced and the husband had children with that previous wife. 10 years later, he doesn't have any relationship with his first daughter. This is a reality and it's heartbreaking to consider. So what you have to understand is you I know that you're going to be sitting there listening to this video and thinking, I know that happens for everyone else, but it won't happen for me. You are not the exemption to every statistic. And the statistics that I'm sharing with you in this video and the realities, they're adding up. You will not be the exemption to all of them. Maybe to one, but not to all. This is the reality that your children are going to have to face. And guess what? It is your responsibility as the parent and the person who brought them into this world to make sure that you are creating a strong future for your children. And that means really counting the costs, truly counting the costs of how divorce is going to affect your kids. Not just thinking about how divorce is going to bring you the peace or the happiness that you think it's going to bring you because it's not. That leads us to our fifth consideration, which is relational teaching, modeling, being able to show your children what a healthy marriage looks like. Children learn from you. They learn from you how to do a lot of things, not the least of which is how to love someone else. Several years ago, I was interviewing Dr. David Matsumato on my podcast. He's a fascinating individual. He was hired by the US government to research what it would take to end terrorism in the Middle East. And one of the things he said, I will never forget. He said, Kimberly, it was such a large undertaking. How do you even study what it means and how it what it would take to end terrorism? That's such a large scale thing to try and figure out. But actually, what we ended up finding out was that if we wanted to end terrorism, it had to start within the home. Because it's within the home that people learn how to love or learn how to hate. So, how does this apply to you and to your marriage? It is within your home that your child is going to learn how to love or how to hate based on how you model it for them. If your divorce is nasty and you're always talking bad about your spouse and you're triangulating your child, you're putting them in the middle of it and making them feel like they have to choose or like they have to take sides, you're teaching your child how to have a terrible marriage growing up. That's truly what you're doing. What the child needs to see modeled is what it looks like to love. What does it look like to forgive? What does it look like to fight and then make up? How can you model this to your child? And you may be thinking, Kimberly, it's too far gone. My husband and I, my wife and I, all we do is fight. There's no way I can model healthy love to my child. That's why we're getting a divorce because we can't. But here's what we know from the research. The worst thing that can happen to a child, the worst thing, is that his or her parents divorce and they continue to treat each other like crap. How many times do you think that happens when divorce happens? Absolutely the majority. The two parents don't co-parent well. They continue to fight, they continue to talk bad about each other, they continue to create an environment where the child is not seen, is not soothed, and does not feel secure. And what do you think happens to that child's future marriage? You know the answer. There's a reason why a person is more likely to get divorced if their parents were divorced. Because it's within the home that you learn how to love and you learn how to hate. It is essential that you consider these things before you divorce. Divorce isn't just a decision about your future, it's a decision about the future for your children and your children's foundation that they are going to grow from. Even if your children are already adults, you may be thinking this doesn't apply to me. It still does. It absolutely still does. Therefore, if you are feeling any bit of uncertainty after thinking through these essential considerations and thinking, I haven't done everything I can to really try and make this marriage work, or I am not sure how this divorce is going to affect my kids and I care about their future, I encourage you to pause and to do everything you can to try and make your marriage work before you make one more step to filing for divorce. I would love to hear from you in the comments. I'd love to know maybe how divorce has affected you or when you were a kid, if your parents got divorced, how did that affect you? I would love for you to share that in the comments below, as heartbreaking as it may be. But you know what? Your comments may be able to help someone understand the reality of what their children might face. As always, we would love for you to subscribe and follow us so that you can be sure to get all of the instant notifications when we release new content.
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