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How older parents divorce affects their adult children

Divorce in later life is becoming more common – and scientists are beginning to explore the surprisingly deep impact this can have on adult children and their relationships.

Amid this trend, one aspect of grey divorce is beginning to receive more attention: the surprisingly deep and wide-ranging impact the split can have on adult children – and on their relationships with their parents, especially, their fathers. They feel like the bottom has fallen out of their lives – Carol Hughes"Many times I've heard adult children say, 'it felt like the rock that was my family […] my support network system that I grew up with […] was sucked into an earthquake fault'", says Carol Hughes, a marriage and family therapist based in southern California and the co-author of Home Will Never Be the Same Again: A Guide for Adult Children of Grey Divorce. Ultimately, a grey divorce "tilts adult-child solidarity toward mothers and puts fathers at a higher risk of social isolation", the study concluded.

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