Iranians Children’s Adjustment to Parental Divorce

ABSTRACT

Despite culture’s importance in divorce, gaps on cultural factors and various racial/ethnic groups remain. In the present mixed methods study, we retrospectively explored the experiences of Iranian adult children of divorce (ACOD) in the US. Participants completed quantitative and qualitative measures of divorce adjustment, beliefs, anxiety, stress, cultural identification, and culture’s role in divorce. Quantitative results indicated maladaptive beliefs negatively predicted adjustment to divorce. Divorce adjustment and beliefs were negatively and positively linked to current stress and anxiety, respectively. Cultural aspects, family dynamics, and psychological distress emerged as qualitative themes. Implications for individual and family therapy are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Divorce
• adjustment
• Iranian
• Persian
• Iranian American
• children
• beliefs
• stress
• parental divorce

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [BA], upon reasonable request.