Loneliness and Life Satisfaction in Adolescents with Divorced and Non-Divorced Parents.

Abstract In this study, loneliness and global life satisfaction levels among high school students with divorced and non-divorced parents were examined. The study was conducted on a total of 836 high school students, 383 of whom comprised children with divorced parents and 453 comprised children with non-divorced parents in Denizli, Turkey. The data were obtained using the Satisfaction with Life Scale-SWLS, UCLA Loneliness Scale and a Personal Information Form. In the analysis of the data, hierarchical regression analyses, MANOVA, and one-way ANOVA were performed. The findings of the study showed that loneliness has higher negative effects on life satisfaction among adolescents with divorced parents. Adolescents with divorced parents are more susceptible to loneliness and global life satisfaction than are adolescents with non-divorced parents. A significant difference was found in loneliness and global life satisfaction levels among adolescents with divorced parents with respect to only number of siblings. Neither loneliness nor global life satisfaction levels significantly differed with respect to gender, grade, residential parent, contact frequency with the non-residential parent, and the age at the time of divorce. Key Words Divorce, Loneliness, Life Satisfaction, Adolescents. One of the experiences that can be considered as critical regarding mental health among children and adolescents is parental divorce. As a result of divorce, one of the parents departs from home, typically the father who provides emotional support, protection, assistance, guidance, and supervision to children. Thus, divorce is seen as a significant life experience which creates difficulty in psychological development and adjustment (Amato, 1994). A meta-analytical shows that children with divorced parents experience more problems in such variables as academic achievement, psychological adjustment, social adjustment and self-concept compared to children of continuously intact two-parent families (Amoto, & Keith, 1991). Life satisfaction is one of the psychological variables that may be negatively affected by parental divorce. Life satisfaction forms the cognitive component of the concept of subjective well-being, which is also used as synonymous with happiness in the field of positive psychology. Accordingly, subjective well-being has an emotional dimension, which constitutes positive and negative feelings, and a cognitive dimension which is also known as life satisfaction. Life satisfaction is cognitive judgments and evaluations that an individual makes about his or her life (Diener, & Suh, 1997). Numerous studies on adolescents have shown that the level of positive parental attitudes (Civitci, in press; Suldo & Huebner, 2006), parental attachment (Nickerson & Nagle, 2004), family's socioeconomic status (Huebner, Valois, Paxton, & Drane, 2005; Seligson, Huebner, & Valois, 2003), and positive relationships with parents (Chang, Chang, Stewart, & Au, 2003; Gilman & Huebner, 2006) increase as life satisfaction increases. Limited number of existing studies conducted on life satisfaction among children with divorced and non-divorced parents show that global life satisfaction (Pardeck et al., 1991; Shek, 2007; Zullig, Valois, Huebner, & Drane, 2005) and global well-being (Demo, & Acock, 1996) levels among children from separated families are lower than those from continuously intact two-parent families. Parental divorce often causes stressful events that threaten the psychological wellbeing of children. These events include one parent leaving the home, exposure to continuing interparental conflict and discord, parental distress, remarried parents, moving to a new home even in another city, changing school, a decline in economic resources, and etc. (Amato, 2000; Sandler, Tein, Mehta, Wolchik, & Ayers, 2000). It can be stated that marital dissolution has a detrimental impact on children with regard to both psychological development and life satisfaction due to new challenging experiences brought onto children's lives. …