HealthyGamerGG - What Divorce Does To A Child

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K examines the long-term psychological, relational, and emotional impacts of divorce on children. Dismantling common societal myths and "copium" statements used by parents, he breaks down how two-household dynamics disrupt basic stability, why children struggle in adult relationships, and how to address the unspoken grief of a broken family unit. Mental health resources designed by Dr. K and made with love: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQTalk to a HG Coach 1-on-1: https://bit.ly/46bIkdoDr. K's NEW Guide to Love, Sex, & Relationships: https://bit.ly/4dO3x0VDr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3SztHG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Alokinoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Hey, kid, let's sit down. Oh, let's look at this album from four years ago.

You remember when we were a happy family? That's gone. That's finished. Oh, man. And like there were some real, man, we had some really great times. That's never happening again. Your mom and dad are now split up. Let's like grieve together.

Let's look at this stuff. Sit together and like do what grief is, which is reflect on the positive and like acknowledge. You're like, oh, fuck. Today we're going to talk about the longstanding impacts of divorce on the kids. So I saw this meme, which I think represents it very well, a loss of a sense of stability, difficulty feeling at home anywhere, difficulty forming social bonds. And the scary thing about this meme is that most of this is supported by the evidence, which is not something that a lot of people really realize because nowadays divorce is so common that we're all

huffing a lot of copium around divorce. So like parents will say things like kids bounce back. And that's like sort of true, right? Like children are absolutely resilient. But I think they bounce back kind of like if I drop a basketball. Sure, it bounces, but it never goes back to the same height, right? It bounces like, it kind of bounces back some. And this is what's scary about divorces.

We see a lot of the most severe problems, like the ability to form relationships or the inability to form relationships, the higher rates of divorce later in life. So yeah, we bounce back, but like never quite all the way. So data shows that if you compare kids from intact households to kids from divorced households, kids from divorced households underperform intact households in so many ways. Academic performance, self-concept and confidence, psychological problems, behavioral problems, even things like social competence is lower. And the effects are like relatively small. They're about a 10% of a standard deviation to about 25% of

a standard deviation. So it's like not huge, right? So like kids do bounce back, but it sort of remains as a debuff. The bigger problem is like some of this copium like, okay, it's better for kids to have a quiet household. Right. So it's not like it's healthier. for children to have like a peaceful household than it is for parents to be warring all the time, which makes sense. So conflict between parents within the household is an adverse childhood experience that is damaging to children, absolutely. But there's a flip side of this that is like really scary, okay? So this meme is great because it says a distrust of stability for like the rest of your life. And let's understand what's happening there.

So let's say I'm in a household where my parents are fighting all the time. And it can be a relief that are like, thankfully they're out of the same household. they're no longer fighting. That's so much better for me. So yeah, that can be an improvement. But what do a lot of parents try to do? They're like, oh, we shouldn't fight in front of the kids, right? This is not the kid's fault. We shouldn't show them. We should present a united front. We're going to fight over here. And now I want you guys to think about what is the experience of the child in that situation. So child comes home one day. Parents sit them down and say, hey, little sunny, we're mom and dad are getting a divorce. We still love you. We love you, but mom and dad just have some problems.

You guys aren't fighting in front of the kids. You're doing a good job. Don't fight in front of the kids, right? Imagine how bewildering this is, and there's data to even support this, that this actually creates the fear of stability, the distrust of stability, because now your child that hasn't seen any fighting doesn't know what's going on. You've protected them from it. Now it's like suddenly they come home and this foundation that I had faith in no longer exists. The most fundamental foundation that I've grown up with, stability in the household, mom and dad are home at the same time. Like, you know, like we're, we're a family. The family unit, which is the foundation of my life, is suddenly gone. And I didn't have much of a warning sign. Maybe I had some warning sign, but I

didn't really know because there's not overt conflict. So interestingly enough, a lack of overt conflict that results in divorce can lead to a child mistrusting stability even more. And these are the kinds of nuances that we don't understand about divorce. And my take as a psychiatrist is there is no such thing as a good divorce. Now, there may be some harm reduction because overt conflict is bad. The problem is that divorce in general has negative consequences. And the biggest issue is while we're huffing copium, we don't directly address those negative consequences. A. All, if y'all want to learn a little bit more, by all means, watch another YouTube video. If you guys are actually interested in finding the practical tools to change on your own,

that's where memberships comes in. And if y'all are interested in, getting some help or achieving a particular milestone four weeks, eight weeks or 12 weeks from now, check out coaching. So if you all are interested, check out the link in the description below. So let's start with this idea of like never feeling okay, not talking about it, not being checked in on, because a lot of parents will try to actively address this. They'll kind of be like, okay, like I know this is hard for you. Like let me ask my kid, like, can I talk to them? Like let's talk. Like, how are you feeling about it? Like maybe let's get you a therapist. So parents can be proactive. and this is the scary thing about divorce, is unless you really understand what the impacts are and address them directly, you can mitigate the damage, but you can't really prevent it.

And that's the problem with divorce. So this is where we're going to introduce a really interesting concept. Disenfranchised grief. Okay. This is why kids are not okay. So normally when something bad happens in our life, the appropriate human response is to grieve. Okay. So like if someone passes away, what does grief look like?

Let's say you lost grandma. So mom and dad and you go to the funeral where we all sit together and we say, we look at pictures of grandma or grandpa and we're like, man, this is like he was a wonderful person. It was great. Like he had such a wonderful life. But that's gone and we're not going to see him again. And we can remember him in these ways. This is the process of grief, right? Acknowledge the loss.

So what is the equivalent in divorce? Hey, kid, let's sit down. Oh, let's look at this album from four years ago. You remember when we were a happy family? that's gone, that's finished. Oh man, like there were some real, man, we had some really great times. That's never happening again. Your mom and dad are now split up.

Let's like grieve together. Let's look at this stuff. Sit together and like do what grief is, which is reflect on the positive and like acknowledge. Like, oh, fuck. Look at that Christmas. Man, like look at the three of us around the Christmas tree. That's never going to happen again because now we have split Christmases. Disenfranchised grief was this really cool concept that came out in 1989.

Someone made a paper about it. Everyone was like, oh my God, this is huge. So we don't really allow children to grieve for the family that was lost, especially because it's like a six-year-old, seven-year-old, 10-year-old, right? And it is so counter to how parents approach it. Because sitting down with your kid and telling them, hey, buddy, this shit, this shit of stability and us being together as a family, that ain't ever happening again. We don't do that.

And so then you're left with disenfranchised grief. And when you have disenfranchised grief, you can't grieve. The whole point of it is that you are not allowed to grieve. So then you stay stuck. And that's one of these things that leads to some of these like psychological problems. So this disenfranchised grief sits with the person and then predisposes them to mental health problems in the future. So greater risk of things like substance use, greater risk of things like mood disorders, especially major depressive disorder, greater risk of anxiety disorders. But there are other things that contribute to that as well, which is this.

whole like being in two households think. And so this is really scary because if you look at what happens post-divorce, there is just an overt resource loss. Like we're just operating at a loss post-divorce. Okay. So here's how this works. Your parents have shared finances, work together to contribute to like, let's say one rent, right? And they work together. They're in the household on any given day. If one parent is busy, the other parent may be available for you in some way to help you with your homework. The moment that your parents get divorced, presumably they're moving out, right? Now there is a very real financial strain. So now you're paying for two rents. You're paying alimony. You're paying child support, whatever. The total cost has increased. Now, when that total cost increases, your parents have to

manage that. Working extra shifts. Working extra shifts means less time with you. Now, half of your stuff is over here. Half of your stuff is over there. You no longer have a home, right? You have two places that you stay. And studies show that post-divorce, the parent that you live with has less time for you, which then creates problems with emotional mirroring, right? So your parents are not emotionally available to you because they're busy working. They have to now cook, like, right? So I'm a solo person who's cooking and cleaning. So the workload on the single parent increases because now you're, while they're there, you have to do the work for two. Time for reviewing homework goes down. And so we see all these lingering impacts. We see drops in academic performance. We see fewer financial. We see fewer

resources, kids of divorced households are less likely to go to college because their parents are less likely to be able to afford it. So this is one of these like basketball is dribbling really low late into the game. We're not bouncing back the same way. And so as we have less parental support from a financial perspective, from an emotional perspective, we learn a different way to manage our problems. So our emotions rise because there is like physiologic instability because we now have two households. Oh, crap, did I forget my book report at mom's place? Oh, shit. I really, I don't like the pillow at dad's place. I like the pillow at mom's place. Like, I wish I could have one sleeping routine. So routine is so important. So we see things like I've seen

children of divorced parents have more difficulty sleeping has been my clinical experience. Because they're not trained to sleep well. Sleep is disrupted. Different parents have different routines and things like that. Right. So there are all these small lingering downstream effects. And then a big one is once I am feeling more negative emotion because my parents are able to handle it less, then I turn to externalizing behaviors, which is where addictions begin to rise. Because now in order to manage my emotions, because mom or dad isn't available to do it, right? And I'm like 12. So what I'm going to do is one of my friends is at a party. They pull out the vodka and I'm going to have a shot. Boom. Bought yourself an addiction. So there are lingering

mental health impacts that are related to the physical structure of the divorce. And we're sort of assuming relatively ideal conditions, right? Or like not like super toxic weaponization of you by your parents. Like that's a whole different ballgame. This is just like flat, regular divorce, median divorce. And so when people say like, oh, yeah, good for you. Like you get two Christmases. Not only are they disenfranchising your grief,

they're not really acknowledging how difficult having two households is. And so this kind of stress physiology, which we have a membership's video all about deep dive into stress and how to rewire it. And like, this is the scary thing about divorce, is that if you're a child of divorced parents, like, you have to fix this mess. They don't realize what the impact of the mess is. There's high-level copium statements

as long as we don't fight in front of the kid, the kid will be fine. That's actually more, that leads to more distrust, right? And the real problem here is that parents, like, don't want to acknowledge that they're making choices that are harming their child. And another really good example of something that I think is not clear,

is like parents will say like, yeah, the healthiest thing for a child is to have happy parents. Actually, the data doesn't support that, right? So present parents, another good example of happiness that comes at the child's cost is engaging in another relationship, which is even further destabilizing. Does your child get a say in your romantic relationship? Does a child get a say in the partner's romantic relationship? Usually the answer is no, like we want them to like them. But now, in order for mom and dad to be happy, we're going to enter into a romantic relationship. which sort of makes sense, right?

Like everyone's entitled, I suppose, to be happy in life. But now this is another huge change, which could involve blended families and siblings and stuff like that, which the child has no agency in. These are just things that you have to accept. And so as the child's agency is removed, this creates all kinds of other downstream problems. Like, I've now learned to take the shit that life shovels into my mouth, right? What impact does that have on their competing from a promotion for their tolerance of abuse? This is once again where externalizing behaviors come in, addictions, things like that, because you have to deal with it.

Then we get to the big one, which is relationships. So studies suggest that children of divorced parents have more difficulty in relationships, are more likely to engage in short-term relationships, and also have a higher rate of divorce. So why is that? The first thing is that we learn how to navigate. navigate relationships primarily from our parents. So when a child has divorced parents, they miss out on conflict resolution. They miss out on seeing how to make things work. They miss out on perseverance. They miss out on compromise. They miss out on sacrifice, right? And a divorced family can still have

those elements. You can have a healthy co-parenting relationships. I'm not saying that these things are completely absent. What I'm saying that the data really suggests is that you can have a a healthy co-parenting relationship, but it's going to be the basketball dribble again, where it's like, yeah, you can like mitigate that damage, but you can't really remove it. And there's overwhelming data that children of divorced parents have more insecure attachment styles, right? So we have a deep dive into attachment styles over here. But they're more anxious in relationships.

They're more clinging relationships. They feel less secure in relationships. Or they flip on the other side, which is they're more avoidance. So they're afraid of commitment. And why are they afraid of? commitment because the foundation in their life disappeared. There is a fundamental mistrust of other people. That's a huge part. And the second thing is that they lack the skills for conflict resolution because they didn't really see them. And this can become a really scary self-fulfilling prophecy because

you've seen that things can end in divorce. So you're more hesitant to go all in. You're more hesitant to make a commitment. And this is compounded by the fact that you may lack the skills. to solve problems. So not only are you less likely to commit, as you get into bumps in the relationship, your ability to navigate those problems actually becomes weaker, right? Which means things are more likely to fall apart. And as you saw this happen in your parents and you saw it in your relationship number one and relationship number two, that only reinforces your fear of commitment. So now you're like, okay, like this is scary. This doesn't really work well. You don't really think, like, I don't know how to do this, that that conscious awareness is oftentimes

rarely there, although sometimes it's there, right? And so this creates a lot of problems for relationships. And the last thing that's kind of related is that there was something that you were taught, which is that if a relationship doesn't work, you just leave. That's the solution. So there is modeling, a fundamental level of modeling, of avoidance of relationships, when problems happen, just split up. And that can be the most devastating. And so there's a, There's a video that we have about kind of basically dealing with emotional baggage and processing trauma in the guide to love sex and relationships where we sort of talk about if you want to date successfully. Here are all the things that you need to know how to do that are kind of boiled down. That becomes really relevant for people like this.

So the biggest problem is that despite all of the things that you do right, there is no such thing as a good divorce. And so as a psychiatrist, the tricky thing is when I work with children of divorce parents, it's not the chief complaint that they come in. Oh, Dr. Cam, I'm afraid of commitment. What we start to uncover is when they enter into a relationship, they have a stress system that's miscalibrated because their fundamental safety from home was never there. So they're prone to anxiety. They're prone to see the worse than things. They don't know how to manage when they feel uncomfortable outside of video games, addictions, things like that. And so that's why, like we have these fundamental things like this two and a half hour deep dive into stress is to help you rewire that stuff.

And my clinical experience with people like this is you have to start. solve a lot of problems that they're not even aware of, which then allows them to tackle the problem that they came in for. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.