Does parental conflict explain why divorce is negatively associated with child welfare?

This article uses data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine whether parental conflict prior to divorce can explain why child ren with divorced parents exhibit more academic and adjustment difficulties than children with parents who stay together. Children whose parents divor ce are exposed to more conflict and acrimony than children who grow up in s table marriages, and this may explain why the former do less well than the latter The results indicate that parental conflict is partly but by no mean s completely responsible for the association between divorce and child welf are. The results also suggest that, for four of the sixteen measures of chi ld well-being examined, children exposed to high levels of parental conflic t are neither better off nor worse off, on average when their parents divor ce, while those exposed to low levels of parental conflict appear to suffer severe disadvantages when their parents separate. this suggests that, in s ome areas, marital relations prior to divorce help determine when the conse quences of divorce are particularly harmful for children and when the conse quences of divorce are relatively benign.