I’m going to my dad’s house this weekend,” is a phrase not uncommon to the teenage ear. In fact, it has become almost normal.

Think about it. Everyone knows someone who is divorced/has divorced parents. Roughly 50% of all marriages end in divorce; without trying to be a pessimist- that glass looks half-empty.

And unfortunately, other than the immediate issues with divorce (dividing possessions, love ending, etc.) there are serious effects on the children.

Much of our personality and the whole of our character are shaped by the home we grow up in and our environment. So then, what if our home is broken?

Many kinds of psychological effects on children have been proven to be linked with divorce: poor grades, social ineptness, higher crime rate.

Higher suicide rate, and the list continues. Some children feel that their parents’ divorce was their fault- but they couldn’t be more wrong. Out of the couples who have been divorced, only 44% had children, whereas couples who didn’t have children made up the other 56%. It’s clear that parents work a little harder at their marriages when they know their kids could be affected.

NHS senior Kevin O’Sullivan, whose parents divorced when he was three, discussed how it made him feel as though he had to choose sides in certain situations. “It was often left to me to please my mom and my dad, and I’d have to make a decision that would hurt their feelings the least. I never wanted one to think I favored the other.”

However, divorce is not always a negative thing; it can relieve a lot of built up tension and anger. O’Sullivan says, “In the end, I think it was a good thing. I would have rather grown up in an environment where my parents were at least friendly to each other. It’s better than them being together and always being hostile.”