The Impact of Divorce on the Academic Performance of Children: The Case of Gulele Sub-City

Abstract

Parental separation/ divorce is associated with academic difficulties, including lower grades and prematurely dropping out of school, and greater disruptive behaviors (e.g., being oppositional with authority figures, getting into fights, stealing, and using and abusing alcohol and illegal drugs). This paper specifically has assessed the impact of divorce on the academic performance of children. And to come up with the intended results; the study has recruited 158 respondents; children from both divorced & intact families, mothers and teachers; from Gulele sub-city and used structured questioners, observation and case stories as primary data collection tool and different books, journals, brochures, web sites, different government organization reports and strategies, and other relevant sources were used as secondary data collection sources. Six Community Development Workers (CDW) from World vision Ethiopia (WVE);Gulele Area Development Program (ADP);were recruited to collect the required data from both mothers and children. After data collection, data cleaning was made to reject substantially incomplete ones and also the process of coding instruments. A data analysis for the questionnaires was performed by using the SPSS statistical data analysis program, with frequencies and percentages as the main tools for summarizing the data. And as a result the study has identified that between divorced and married family, there is difference in income and in post-divorce the participation of divorced women in an employment is mainly in the informal sectors that include selling “enjera”, “ambasha”, and charcoal. And since these informal economic activities cannot support the whole family needs, children are forced to join this sector one way or another which has created a shortage in their study time.