THE EFFECTS OF FAMILY DISSINTEGRATION

ON CHILDREN
As seen in Delicias, Chihuahua on children ages 6-8
Preparatoria Activo 20-30 Albert Einstein
5o U
ESEM, GABINO REZA QUINTANA
Written by:
Daniela Olvera Rodrguez
Isis Yareli Gonzales Martnez
Mara Fernanda Mireles Meza
Nahomi Salgado Contreras
Ana Luisa Mata Snchez
07/04/2016
Presentation
In the process of this project we are going to explore the various reasons
of divorce, and we are also going to learn about its consequences, such
as the emotional problems that the children and parents present on
these high stress situations.
Family disintegration is a really big problem, even if it seems to be the
solution to problems in the household. In most cases there are lots of
children that end up emotionally affected.
In Delicias Chihuahua, the divorce rate is alerting, 59 out of 100
marriages divorce, which makes Delicias the city with the most divorces
in the country. There are also increasingly less families constituted by a
mother, father and children in the state of Chihuahua, because most
marriages end in divorce and the trend of non-traditional families is
increasing.
More than 70 percent of registered children are part of non-traditional
families or are born in a traditional marriage but their parents got
separated.
According to information of the Poder Judicial del Estado, during 2013,
10,923 cases of divorce were presented to a judge, while in the
Direccin de registro civil de estado 18,769 got married, which means
that 59 of 100 marriages get divorced.
Of all divorces that occurred within the last year, 9,391 were voluntary
and 1,532, were court-ordered trials to address proper division of
property. The principal motives were domestic violence and
incompatibility.
And all of the divorce-related talk that we discussed previously was
presented in order to direct this towards the problem that we will be
addressing, the effects of said divorce on children.
Behind most divorces in the community, there are thousands of children
suffering the consequences of an abrupt change in their family
environment, some are in the early stages of life and, thus, unable to
properly digest their situation.
Children exposed to daily divorce-related discussions, disagreements
and fights often show signs of guilt, depression, trust issues and poor
school performance. As members of society we want to help children
from a very young age to understand and adapt to their new
surroundings so that they may live a better life.
Preventing scarring or trauma will allow children to reintegrate society,
and also help reduce divorce rates in the future, helping children stay
away from the paths that their parents took.

Justification
Nowadays there has been an increase in divorces in our country. Statistics
show that divorces have been growing progressively in Chihuahua.
During 2008 17 852 marriages and 4 804 divorces were registered, being 2012
the year with the highest number, with 6 203 divorces and only 16 295
marriages. In Delicias a higher rate is present with 58 out of a 100 marriages
ending in divorce.
This tendency continued until now, that the 32 % of the married couples get
divorced. The most common range of age in which the people get divorced is
between 40-49 years old with 18 725 of both genders. Followed by 50-59 years
old with 13 352 people and then the range between 35-39 years old with 5 558
women and 3 332 men.
Why? One of the most influent causes is the lack of wealth, causing internal
struggles between the couple. The lack of wealth is caused by the amount of
income received; in 2014, 91 610 people received only the minimum wage
being 45 200 women and 46 410 men, and 24 658 people didnt receive any
wage where 11 338 were women and 13 320 men; in consequence of the lack
of job.
In the year 2014 the 10.2% of Chihuahua citizens were unemployed, being the
majority women with 5.9%.
In some divorces the only ones involved are the couple but in others, children
come into the picture. 9 out of 25 couples had children and 9 out of 25 couples
who had children, the children were underage.
 MARRIAGES AND DIVORCES
25000

20000

15000

10000

5000

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013-
Divorces Marriage

Graphs
Causes
Underage pregnancies
Teenage married mothers have 80% or more probability to experience
divorce than married women who become mothers at the age of 20.
In the state of Chihuahua, 23% of the female population between the
ages of 12 and 19 is pregnant or already a mother. Chihuahua ranks first
nationally in teenage pregnancy, which is a serious problem.
There is a high rating of young girls that become mothers at the age of
13, consequently, by the time they reach 20 years, they have up to 3 or
4 children. Said children deal with the consequences of unplanned
pregnancies.
The 80% of the teenage mothers come from dysfunctional or non-
traditional families, or are daughters of single mothers; according to
experts these young mothers are more likely to experience divorce.
We think that this is the main cause of family disintegration in our city.
Domestic Violence
Domestic violence is one of the principal causes of divorce in Chihuahua.
In Delicias relationship abuse is sadly, very common. It is possible that
this may be one of the causes of the rising family disintegration rates in
our city.
In Delicias an average of 3 people are arrested daily with charges of
domestic violence, authorities say that 8 out of 10 reported cases of
domestic violence in the city are directly related to the consumption of
alcoholic beverages or other kind of toxic substances.
The first 6 months of 2015, 676 people were arrested for the same
felony; less than 5% of them were females
With domestic violence being rampant in our city, we consider this one
of the principal causes of divorce.
Economic issues
With no doubt, the need of money and economic problems drive married
couples to strong arguments, making their fights become more and
more frequent and prone to unleash periods of violence and finally
resulting on the dissolution of the marriage.
We investigated this probable cause in our community, looking for
statistics about economic issues in the population that may be causing
family disintegration in the city.
We found that in the state of Chihuahua in the year 2014, the
unemployment rate was 4.9%, in the same year 91,610 people received
a minimum wage as their total income, and 27 015 people received no
income at all.
Strategy
The main strategy that we want to implement on elementary schools on
grade one and two with children between the ages of 6 and 8 is reading
children-appropriate story books about divorce. We plan on first
consulting the teacher to obtain information on which children have
divorced parents or a single parent, so that we can later program an
afternoon activity with them where we read with them the stories and
then have them chat with an older volunteer student that I willing to talk
about how they feel.
The books that we will be reading to the kids will be:
Los juegos de Berta. Clara Redondo and Chema Gmez de Lora.
Todo doble o cmo divorciarse con buen humor. Cole, B. (1997).
Simn. Das sin cole. Poms, J. (2004).
Cundo se irn estos? Ute Krause
Vaya lo de familia! Pascale Francotte.
Cuando pap y mam se separan: consejos prcticos para nios.
Emily-Menndez Aponte. R. W.
Vivo en dos casas (y qu?). Miren Agur Meabe, Jokin Mitxelena
(il.).
Cuentos para ensear a tus hijos a entender el divorcio. Janet R.
Johnston.
Carlota es feliz. Guillermo Caballero.
Note: Not all of the tales are short but we will try to read fragments of
most of them.
We also have found a printable card game for 8 year old kids that is
called Mi familia ha cambiado that is available for free printing on the
internet.
The sessions are meant to be an hour long, 30 minutes of reading and
30 minutes of chatting with volunteers. During the chat dynamic,
children will be given a blank sheet and a pencil so that they can draw a
picture of their family. The objective of the picture is to capture the
achievements of the sessions and to address particular problems.
Sessions will take place on a public space, such as a library or a park
that are both free to use. The only money spent will be about 20 to 50
pesos on printing, blank sheets and pencils.
The sessions will only take place with the permission of parents and on
the presence of an adult. They will also be on Saturdays or Sundays in
the late morning.
Student volunteers willing to share their divorce stories will be recruited
of all around school and will be asked questions beforehand. If we do not
get support we will still go on with the reading and printables.

Goals
We hope that this strategies will help the children to relieve their stress,
by interacting with other people with similar problems. This will help
them understand that they can get through it and they are not the only
ones. The main goal is to help them understand their situation, so they
can move on and be happy with both of their parents and their current
situation.
Putting a stop to child trauma is the first step towards stopping the
repetition of past mistakes.