Editor’s Note: The opinion essay below was written last fall as part of an assignment for 11th grade students taking the Critical Reading & Writing English Lab course at Mt. Ararat High School. Students were asked to articulate their opinion on a topic of importance to them in a way that might also engage local readers.

Tears run down children’s faces as they cling to their parent who’s moving out because of divorce. Fifty percent of marriages end up in divorce. Many couples who get divorced have one or more children. The children are the ones who usually take the news the hardest. They are also extremely likely to develop emotional problems. Children especially teens can be disdainful to one or both parents who caused the divorce. For some kids, though, the divorce helps them and makes life easier. Sometimes a marriage is toxic to both the married couple and the children. Sometimes the marriage is an abusive one, but many are not. Sometimes the announcement of divorce knocks a kid off the pedestal of how they view their life. It can come out of nowhere and really take a toll on a child’s happiness.

Staying in a marriage that has no love in it can be just as bad as a divorce. If the love in a marriage is one sided, then staying can be the worst thing for someone’s emotional life. The lack of returning the love that is given can slowly eat away at the person and their happiness. I know someone who it took seven years of unreturned love in her marriage before she filed for divorce.

Marriages can end on a happy note, with the two people still being friends, but most don’t end that way. Most end in anger, tears, heartbreak, sadness, and a sense of something being lost and just out of reach. Some, after a divorce, have petty revenge tactics between the two people and their families. I know a few kids, whose parents use them to hurt their former spouse. They use tactics like badmouthing the former spouse in front of the children.

Most parents don’t understand the effects divorce has on their kids. Children whose parents divorce at a young age are more capable of dealing with the situation than the teenagers who depended on their base, their parents’ marriage, go live their lives. If you knock away that base, the child is lost and doesn’t know what to do. Some kids shut down or do drugs and alcohol. Most kids don’t open up about the divorce with their parents unless it’s done by yelling at the parent.

Kids of divorce often become dependent on their friends, especially friends with divorced parents. For children with a sibling, there becomes a sense of dependency between them. A relationship of depending on each other for stability in their sometimes messed-up crazy lives. Kids also confide more of their problems to their siblings, not their parents.

I didn’t write this to say that divorce is or isn’t the answer to someone’s marriage problems. I just want people to try and make it work. If it still doesn’t work, then get the divorce. Although if you are in an abusive marriage or your children are getting abused, leave and don’t look back. Your safety is the most important thing. If you aren’t in an abusive marriage and you are thinking of divorce, make sure you really want and need it. Also, think of what it will do to your kids, and make sure it’s still worth it.