When parents divorce: what a teenager really needs

“I honestly don’t care where I spend Christmas. As long as you two don’t fight on the phone again.”

A fifteen-year-old says this without looking up from his screen. His mother breathes a sigh of relief: he’s taking it quite well. His father, when she passes it on later, is relieved too. Neither of them notices that the sentence contains nothing about him. It is simply a report on what is happening between his parents, and a request for less of it.

I have already written about what research says on children and divorce in Children and divorce: what the research really says about what protects them, and about the everyday negotiating between former partners in Co-parenting after separation. This time I want to focus on one age only — the years between twelve and eighteen. A teenager experiences divorce differently from a preschool child, and what helps a younger child sometimes doesn’t work for a teenager, or even does harm.

Most cope — but not all, and not on their own

Mavis Hetherington and her colleagues followed many families through the decades after divorce. In the book she wrote about it with John Kelly, she reports that around a quarter of children of divorced parents had more serious emotional, social or behavioural problems — compared with around a tenth of children whose parents stayed together. You can read this figure in two ways. The risk is noticeably higher. And at the same time, the great majority of children of divorced parents grow up without serious problems.

Paul Amato’s 2001 meta-analysis painted a similar picture: on average there are differences between children of divorced and non-divorced parents, but they are small, while the differences within both groups are enormous. Joan Kelly and Robert Emery, in their review of the research, described what mostly explains these differences. Not the divorce itself, but what comes with it: how much conflict there is between the parents, how the parents themselves are coping, whether the child keeps contact with both, how the family’s financial situation changes.

This matters, because it means that a great deal is in your hands. It also matters because teenagers, as we will see, often don’t show how they are doing — so “he’s fine” is a poor yardstick.

Why adolescence is a particular age for divorce

A younger child often understands divorce magically: if I had been good, they would have stayed together. Most teenagers no longer think like that. They understand the reasons — sometimes better than their parents would like. They see who did what to whom, they hear sentences that weren’t meant for them, and they pass judgement on them. In these very years, a teenager’s thinking has become capable of abstract judgement, and that judgement is often sharp, black and white, and moral.

On top of that, a teenager has a life of their own that a younger child doesn’t yet have: friends, training, a first love, a holiday job, a school that may be in another town. Every change of living arrangement is not just a change of bed but a change of access to everything that matters to them. And they have a phone — which means they are constantly reachable by both parents, including for messages they should never be receiving.

When a teenager is already pulling away from both

Adolescence is the time when a young person gradually moves away from their parents. This is not rejection but a developmental task: they need to form their own identity, their own values, their own view of the world. In relational family therapy we call this differentiation — the ability to stay connected to your family while becoming a separate person.

To pull away, a teenager needs something solid to push off from. If the wall they are pushing against collapses in the meantime, one of two things happens. Some teenagers stop and turn back: they become carers, guardians, they stay home “so Mum won’t be alone”. Others speed up and leave too early — emotionally, sometimes literally, to friends, into a relationship that became serious too fast.

It helps if the parents can still be the “wall” in at least one respect: if they remain the adults who decide adult matters, and don’t leave the teenager to carry those matters for them.

Caught in the middle: messenger, judge, ally

In the early 1990s, Christy Buchanan, Eleanor Maccoby and Sanford Dornbusch interviewed several hundred teenagers a few years after their parents’ divorce. They wanted to know what harmed teenagers most. One of the key factors was the sense of being caught between their parents. Teenagers who carried messages, who were questioned about the other parent, or who had to hide what was happening in the other home more often reported low mood and behavioural problems. This feeling was more strongly linked to conflict between the parents than to the living arrangement itself.

Grych and Fincham had already shown that not all conflict is equally harmful. The conflict that hurts most is frequent, loud, unresolved — and centred on the child. That last kind is common after divorce: schedules, maintenance, school, new partners. Suddenly the teenager is the thing being fought over.

In relational family therapy we call this pattern triangulation: tension between two people is relieved by pulling a third person into it. In the triangle, a teenager most often ends up in one of three roles. The messenger, who passes on messages (“tell your dad he can’t do Friday”). The judge, who is asked who is right. Or the ally, who shares one parent’s anger at the other.

All three roles can be very subtle. A parent who asks “so how are things at Mum’s?” may really just be asking. A parent who asks “was he there again?” puts the teenager in a position where any answer betrays someone. Teenagers hear that difference with great precision.

A teenager is not a confidant

One of the most common traps with teenagers, almost absent with younger children, is that they become a parent’s confidant. A teenager seems mature, clever, understanding. You can talk to them like an adult. And a parent who is lonely, hurt and without anyone to talk to after a divorce starts leaning on them — telling them about past infidelities, about money, about how hard it all is.

We call this parentification: the child takes on a role that belongs to an adult. Gregory Jurkovic, who wrote a book on it called Lost Childhoods, distinguishes between instrumental parentification (the child cooks, looks after younger siblings, deals with bills) and emotional parentification, in which the child looks after the parent’s mood. The first can, in moderation, even be beneficial if it is acknowledged and time-limited. The second is almost always a burden.

A teenager who is a parent’s confidant often feels special and important. But at the same time they lose something nobody gives back: the right simply to be their parents’ child. They can’t be angry with the parent who confides in them. They can’t love the other parent without betraying the first. And they can’t calmly pull away, because they know the parent will be left alone.

How can you tell? If your teenager knows more about the reasons for the divorce than you would want your best friend to know, they have probably heard too much. If you feel better after talking to them and they feel worse, it is time to find someone else to talk to.

Two homes, one life

With younger children, parents usually agree on schedules between themselves. With teenagers this no longer works. A sixteen-year-old who has training on Wednesdays on one side of town and parties at friends’ on Fridays on the other won’t stick to a schedule that ignores this — or will stick to it and quietly lose touch with their peers, which at this age is a big loss.

So a teenager needs a say in the arrangement, not the decision. It’s an important distinction. You can ask: “What would be the easiest way for you to organise the weeks so you don’t miss training?” But don’t ask: “Who would you rather live with?” The first question gives them a voice. The second loads them with a choice between their parents that they should never have to carry.

In Slovenia, a child has the right to express their opinion in proceedings that concern them, and the Human Rights Ombudsman runs a programme called “Advocate – a voice for the child”, which helps children have their voice heard. It’s good to know this. But court is not a place you want to bring a teenager if it can be avoided. An agreement at home, where the teenager is heard and the parents make the decision, is almost always better.

It also helps if the teenager has something of their own in both homes: their own space, not just somewhere to sleep, their own things that don’t have to be carried back and forth every week, and the right to privacy, which is one of the things most valued at this age.

When everything seems fine

The fifteen-year-old at the start of this post seemed fine on the outside. He went to school, had friends, didn’t cry, didn’t cause trouble. This is a common way of coping for teenagers: don’t you be a problem too. When parents are carrying so much, some children decide that their own distress won’t be an extra burden.

What should you watch for? A sudden change in school performance — down, or even up, when they start studying all the time and doing nothing else. Withdrawal from activities they used to love. Sleep that has changed. Excessive care for younger siblings or for a parent. A new relationship that became very serious very quickly. Alcohol that used to be the exception and no longer is. None of these signs alone is an alarm; together, and if they persist, they are an invitation to talk. I have written more about how to open a conversation when a teenager won’t talk in When a teenager goes quiet: how family therapy opens the conversation.

The reverse is also true: not every angry teenager is “hurt by the divorce”. Some things are simply adolescence. If you attribute everything to the divorce, you may miss that your teenager is having trouble with a friend or has fallen in love, and you tell them that you see them only as a child of divorced parents.

What it sounds like

This is how a conversation might sound in which a parent stops before pulling their teenager into the role of ally (a composite, not a real person):

“Dad’s written again to say he can’t do Sunday. I honestly don’t know how he can…”
“Mum, can I go to my room?”
“Wait. Sorry. That’s between me and Dad, I shouldn’t be telling you this. How do you feel about him not coming?”
“Don’t know. A bit angry. But it’s not that bad.”
“You’re allowed to be angry. And you’re allowed to love him. Both.”

The conversation doesn’t have to be perfect. What matters is that the parent notices when they have started talking about themselves instead of with their child, and comes back. The teenager will notice, even if they say nothing.

One of the things teenagers rarely talk about during a divorce is their own relationships. Their parents’ divorce often shapes how they make sense of love and trust. When they go through their first break-up, it can hit harder than anyone expects — this is the subject of First love and a first break-up: why it is not an overreaction.

Something similar applies to parents’ new partners. A teenager will often accept a new partner less readily than a younger child — not necessarily because of the person, but because they clearly understand what it means: that their parents won’t get back together. There’s no need to hide a new partner, but there’s also no need to expect the teenager to take to them quickly. You can read more about when a new relationship is too soon in A new relationship after divorce.

Exercise: a conversation that takes the weight off

You can do this exercise this week. It works best if both parents do it, each separately. For younger children, the knowledge base has a tool called Telling a child about a separation; this exercise is adapted for teenagers.

1. Choose a moment during an activity. Teenagers find it easier to talk when they don’t have to make eye contact — while driving, cooking, walking the dog. The conversation doesn’t need an introduction like “we need to have a serious talk”.
2. Say what will change in concrete terms. Not the reasons for the divorce, but their everyday life: where they will sleep, what happens with training, what stays the same.
3. Say what they don’t have to do. “You don’t have to pass on messages. You don’t have to choose. You don’t have to look after me — I have other people for that.” This is probably the most important part of the conversation.
4. Ask what is hardest for them — and don’t correct. If they say “that you’re always fighting”, don’t explain why it was like that. Say: “I understand. We’ll try to make sure you don’t have to listen to that any more.”
5. Agree on where they have a say. On the schedule, on weekends and holidays, on what they will have in the other home. Be clear, too, about where they don’t: the decision to divorce is an adult decision.

Don’t expect the conversation to open much up. Teenagers often answer “ok” and walk off. But the sentences they hear stay with them — and the ones from step three often come back to them only months later.

Where this doesn’t apply

Everything I have written assumes that both parents are safe enough and that contact with both is good for the teenager. That isn’t always so. Where there has been violence in the family, the priority is safety, not maintaining equal contact. In that case, divorce and distance from one parent can be a relief for the teenager, not a loss — and pressing them to “keep a good relationship with both” can hurt them further. For domestic violence, the SOS helpline for women and children victims of violence is available on 080 11 55 in Slovenia, and in an emergency the police on 113.

Nor is every teenager who refuses to go to one parent “turned against them”. Sometimes they have reasons that need to be taken seriously. Sometimes it is loyalty to the parent who is more hurt. Telling one from the other is hard, and it is often a question for a professional, not for an argument at home.

And finally: divorce is not always worse than staying together. Research on conflict shows that children from families with high, persistent conflict often do better after a divorce. It is not the job of this post to tell you whether to stay or go. Its job is to help you make sure your teenager doesn’t carry more than they have to.

When to seek help

Help makes sense when changes in your teenager last for several weeks, when they withdraw from everything, when self-harm appears, or when the conversations between the parents seem to have stalled in a way that leaves the teenager permanently standing in the middle.

For the teenager themselves, a first port of call can be the school counselling service or their GP or paediatrician, who can refer them on, for example to a therapist for children and adolescents. Young people can call the TOM helpline free and anonymously on 116 111 in Slovenia. If a teenager talks about not wanting to live any more or is harming themselves, act straight away: the mental health crisis line on 01 520 99 00 in Slovenia (every day from 7 pm to 7 am), the Samaritans helpline on 116 123 in Slovenia (24 hours), and in an emergency 112.

For the family as a whole, family therapy can help — a space where everyone can say how they are, and where the teenager can hear that they are not the one who has to hold everything together. When it is time for a teenager to get help of their own is covered in When to take a teenager to a therapist: signs, routes and what if they refuse.

What to remember

• Most teenagers come through their parents’ divorce without serious problems. What decides it is not the divorce, but the conflict that comes with it.
• A teenager understands the reasons and judges their parents — which makes it even easier to catch them in the role of messenger, judge or ally than a younger child.
• A teenager is not a confidant. Take your pain to adults.
• Give them a say in the schedule, not the decision about which parent to live with.
• “He’s fine” is not a yardstick. Watch for changes in sleep, school, activities and relationships.