Psychological Impact of Parental Divorce on Children:A Qualitative Study

The present qualitative research was conducted in Delhi-NCR using the Children's Apperception Test to study the Psychological Impact of Parental Divorce on Children. A total sample of 20 was taken with an age bracket of 6-10 years. 10 children out of these belonged to intact families and 10 to divorced parents. A thematic analysis was done of the children's responses based on which common themes were derived under the 2 categories, namely-Adaptive Mechanism Schedule and Story Dynamics (as in the original study by Haworth&Lawton) Overall result showed that children are negatively impacted by the divorce of their parents. It has a massive impact on the internal environment of the child as is visible by the predominant usage of unhealthy mechanisms and the frequency of negative responses to define the theme of a story on the test as compared to children who belong to intact families. The results are therefore in line with the hypothesis.