When Separation Becomes Childhood Adversity: Understanding ACEs and High-Conflict Divorce
When parents separate, one of the first questions they often ask is, "How will this affect the children?"
It is an understandable question. Most parents worry about the impact of such a significant change, particularly when they are already navigating their own grief, uncertainty, and adjustment.
The reassuring news is that separation itself does not automatically harm children.
In fact, decades of research suggest that children are often far more adaptable than adults expect. Many adjust well to living across two homes, managing new routines, and maintaining relationships with all the important people in their lives.
So why do some children seem to cope relatively well while others struggle?
Part of the answer may lie in what researchers call Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs.
The landmark CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study, conducted in the 1990s, identified a number of childhood experiences associated with poorer health and wellbeing outcomes later in life. These included experiences such as abuse, neglect, family violence, parental substance misuse, mental illness within the household, and other significant sources of adversity.
The study helped shift the way we think about childhood experiences. It highlighted that prolonged exposure to stress and adversity can affect a child's developing brain, stress response systems, physical health, emotional wellbeing, relationships, and capacity to cope with challenges over time.
Importantly, ACE research does not suggest that children are permanently damaged by difficult experiences. Nor does it mean every child exposed to adversity will experience long-term difficulties.
Children are remarkably resilient, particularly when they have safe, stable, and supportive relationships with caring adults. However, the research does tell us that the more severe, frequent, and prolonged the adversity, the greater the potential impact.
Interestingly, parental separation was not included as one of the original ACE categories.
That may surprise many parents.
For years, divorce itself was often viewed as the problem. However, as researchers looked more closely at children's experiences, a more nuanced picture emerged.
What appeared to matter most was not simply whether parents stayed together or separated. It was the environment children were exposed to before, during, and after the separation.
Repeated studies have found that ongoing parental conflict is often a stronger predictor of children's adjustment difficulties than separation itself. In some cases, children whose parents remain together in highly conflictual relationships experience similar, or even greater, difficulties than children whose parents separate.
This distinction is important.
The end of a parental relationship is undoubtedly a major life event of all members of the family. But for many children, the greatest challenge is not having two homes. It is being exposed to ongoing hostility, unresolved tension and contempt, criticism and feeling caught between the people they love.
When conflict becomes destructive and children are repeatedly exposed to it, the experience can begin to resemble the kinds of ongoing adversity that ACE researchers have long been concerned about.
In other words, it is not simply the fact that parents no longer live together that matters.
It is what children are exposed to and experience along the way.
All parents disagree from time to time. Differences of opinion about routines, discipline, education, health care, finances, and what is best for a child are a normal part of family life.
Separated parents face some additional challenges. They are parenting from different households, juggling competing schedules, managing practical and financial pressures, and often trying to co-parent with someone who may have hurt, disappointed, or frustrated them.
Importantly, conflict itself is not necessarily harmful.
Children don’t need parents who agree on everything. In healthy relationships, disagreements are often followed by listening, problem-solving, compromise, repair, or resolution. Through these experiences, children learn how to navigate conflict, work through differences, and repair relationships. They come to understand that relationships can tolerate difficult moments and recover.
What tends to be most difficult for children is unhealthy conflict that is frequent, hostile, unresolved, visible and audible to them or places them in the middle.
High-conflict separation goes beyond ordinary disagreements. It is typically characterised by ongoing disputes that may include:
Frequent arguments, contempt and hostility
Unrelenting blame and an inability to compromise
Persistent communication difficulties
Repeated court proceedings or litigation
An inability to resolve day to day parenting matters as they arise
Undermining behaviour
Negative comments about the other parent
Children feeling pressured to take sides /or being used as pawns
Loyalty conflicts and divided allegiances
Direct or indirect exposure to unhealthy adult conflict
Children do not need to witness shouting matches to be affected. They are often highly attuned to tension and can pick up on conflict through overheard conversations, tense handovers, changes in behaviour, critical comments, facial expression (e.g., tightened, clenched jaw, glaring), body posture (e.g. rigid posture, or puffed out chest) or hostile gestures (e.g., pointing fingers, crossed arms) or simply the emotional space that exists between their two homes.
Children rely on the adults around them to provide safety, predictability, and emotional security.
Researchers Davies and Cummings proposed that exposure to destructive parental conflict can undermine a child's sense of emotional safety within their family. When conflict becomes chronic, many children begin directing their energy towards managing uncertainty rather than engaging fully in the ordinary tasks of childhood.
Some become anxious and watchful. Others become withdrawn, angry, or overwhelmed. Some try to keep the peace, monitor their parents' emotions, or take on responsibility for problems that are not theirs to solve.
Many find themselves caught in a loyalty bind.
They may avoid talking about one parent in the presence of the other. They may hide positive experiences, censor their feelings, or worry that enjoying time with one parent will hurt the other.
These are not signs that children are manipulative or difficult.
More often, they are signs that children are trying to protect relationships that matter deeply to them.
The effects of chronic parental conflict associated with separation and divorce can extend well beyond a child's emotional wellbeing, shaping their sense of safety, relationships, learning, and overall development.
Research has linked ACE’s, including exposure to interparental conflict associated with parental separation, with increased risks of anxiety, depression, behavioural difficulties, sleep problems, difficulties with concentration and learning, lower academic achievement, peer relationship difficulties, and challenges regulating emotions. There are also well documented intergenerational effects.
Children living with destructive and chronic interparental conflict are not simply adjusting to two homes. They are often living in an environment that feels emotionally unpredictable and stressful.
Viewed through an ACE lens, it is this exposure to unresolved, chronic conflict, stress, and emotional insecurity that raises concern, rather than separation itself.
The research also offers hope.
While ACE research highlights the potential impact of adversity, it also reminds us that children are not defined by a single experience. Safe, stable, and supportive relationships can help buffer children from the effects of stress and adversity.
For children navigating separation, protective factors often include warm and responsive parenting, predictable routines, emotional availability of caregivers, and relationships with trusted adults who help them feel safe and supported.
Children are also protected when they are shielded from unhealthy adult conflict, able to maintain relationships with both parents where it is safe to do so, and reassured that the adults in their lives are responsible for managing adult problems.
The end of a relationship does not have to become an adverse childhood experience.
When children are protected from adult conflict and supported by the important people in their lives, they are often remarkably resilient.
Further Reading: The information in this article draws on research examining the impact of parental separation, interparental conflict, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and children's emotional security, including work by Amato and colleagues (1991, 1995, 2008), Davies and Cummings (1994), Harold and Sellers (2018), the original ACE Study (Felitti et al., 1998), and the Harvard Center on the Developing Child's work on toxic stress.
Parents interested in learning more about ACEs, resilience, and protective factors may also find the Australian resources developed by Emerging Minds helpful, including Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Summary of Evidence and Impacts, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Children's Wellbeing: Parent Fact Sheet, and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Resilience: Parent Fact Sheet.
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., Koss, M. P., & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258.
Amato, P. R., & Keith, B. (1991). Parental divorce and the well-being of children: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 110(1), 26–46.
Amato, P. R. (2001). Children of divorce in the 1990s: An update of the Amato and Keith (1991) meta-analysis. Journal of Family Psychology, 15(3), 355–370.
Amato, P. R., Loomis, L. S., & Booth, A. (1995). Parental divorce, marital conflict, and offspring well-being during early adulthood. Social Forces, 73(3), 895–915.
Amato, P. R., & Cheadle, J. E. (2008). Parental divorce, marital conflict and children's behavior problems: A comparison of adopted and biological children. Social Forces, 86(3), 1139–1161.
Davies, P. T., & Cummings, E. M. (1994). Marital conflict and child adjustment: An emotional security hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 387–411.
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., … Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245-258. doi: 10.1016/s0749-3797(98)00017-8
Harold, G. T., & Sellers, R. (2018). Annual Research Review: Interparental conflict and youth psychopathology: An evidence review and practice focused update. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 59(4), 374–402.
Hughes, K., Bellis, M. A., Hardcastle, K. A., Sethi, D., Butchart, A., Mikton, C., … Dunne, M. P. (2017). The effect of multiple adverse childhood experiences on health: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Public Health, 2(8), e356-e366. doi: 10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30118-4
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (n.d.). Toxic Stress. Retrieved from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child website.
