The Effects of Divorce on School Aged Children and Their Coping Strategies: The Case of Gojo Town
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Date
2019-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main objective of this study was to find out the effects of divorce on children and coping
strategies that the divorcees‟ children employ, in case of parents‟ divorce in Gojo town. The
study focused particularly on school aged children whose parents‟ were divorced in Gojo town.
The study was designed to explore the experiences of children of divorced families using
qualitative approach. An indepth interview was employed as main data gathering instrument.
The study included six (6) female and five (5) male children from divorced parents, four(4)
custodies of children whose parents divorced and six (6) key informants from the three
concrened sector offices including Children &Women affair, Social affair and court office of
Gojo town as data sources, and purposive sampling technique was used to select the
participants. The findings of the study indicated that the effects of divorce on children regardless
of sex had economic, social, psychological and academic problem among others during the postdivorce time. Besides, divorce had effects of internal behavioral impact on female children and
external behavioral impact on male children. Furthermore, divorce had physical stress effects of
household burden on female children and outside work load on male children at post-divorce
condition. Apart from this, both female and male children of divorced families were able to use
different stratagies such as self-employment in their post- divorce lives to cope with divorce
related problems. The coping strategies that female children were using after their parents
divorced were working at ‟gulit‟/labor marketing and domestic work. Moreover, the coping
strategies that male children were using at post-divorce condition were shoe shining, street
vending, washing cars and carrying load/sack. Hence, the study has recommended both
governmental and non-governmental organizations ought to provide evening school at woreda
level in order to enhance the academic status of children of divorced families since they are
challenging with educational dropout. In addition, to keep the well-being of street children,
woreda governmental sectors and societal parties should contribute their part in supporting the
marginalized children. Likewise, since the offered donation couldn‟t include all children of
divorced families, governmental and non-governmental parties had better to make the donation
all inclusive.
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Children