Research suggests divorce can have significant effects on the emotional well-being of children and adolescents. However, there are few studies of depression comparing young college women of divorce with young college women from intact families. Depressive symptoms during college could affect academic achievement and impact eventual socioeconomic success of these women.
Young women with multiple adverse family experiences, including parental divorce, appear to respond to recent negative life stress with depression. Some studies of the effects of parental divorce on offspring have examined whether related family issues moderate negative outcomes. However, these studies have focused on relatively mild types of family dysfunction, such as inter-parental conflict and parent-child discord.
No known studies examine serious parental psychopathology, such as substance abuse, mental illness and violence, in college women with divorced parents. The current study addressed a gap in the parental divorce literature by examining negative family factors, along with the effect of parental divorce, on perceived stress and levels of depression among college women.
Recent life stress was found to be significantly higher in the divorced group. Although the difference in levels of depression between the two groups was not statistically significant, a modest difference in the predicted direction was observed. Although negative family factors were much more common for women of divorced families, negative family factors did not relate more strongly to depression in this group. In summary, increased life stress and negative family factors did not lead to more depression in this sample.
These results differed significantly from those of other studies. An incidental finding was an unexpectedly high rate of substance abuse and violence among the fathers in the divorced families. The possible effects of significant psychopathology in the non-residential parent on adjustment to divorce were discussed. Finally, directions for future research, including a longitudinal study of academic progress and depressive symptoms of college women of divorced parents, were suggested.