Are the effects of divorce on psychological distress modified by family background?

This paper investigates whether an adverse family background amplifies the distressing effects of divorce. We use several waves (at age 0, 7, 11, 16, 33, and 42) of the British National Child Development Study to study the effect of divorce on psychological distress in middle adulthood (between ages 33 and 42). We measure family background with indicators such as father’s social class, poverty and parental divorce. We find a pattern of significant interactions between divorce and indicators of disadvantage consistent with the idea that an adverse family background amplifies the distressing effects of divorce. The family background influence remains even if we take current socio-economic resources into account. Especially women with fewer socio-economic resources (own and parental) appear to be vulnerable to divorce. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 13 4663575; fax: +31 13 4663002. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.J. Mandemakers), [email protected] (Christiaan W.S. Monden), [email protected] (M. Kalmijn).