Long Reaching Impacts of Childhood Trauma on the Efficacy of Divorce Education Programming

Objective: To understand how emergent patterns of childhood trauma correspond to baseline indicators for parents entering a divorce education program. Background: Families experiencing divorce frequently attend divorce education programs to help mitigate strains intrinsic to the divorce process. Existing research suggests there may be differences in how individuals experience divorce based on experiences of childhood trauma. Method: Latent class analysis was used to identify homogenous subgroups based on eight adverse childhood experiences categories, using a sample of 1,719 individual parents who participated in an online divorce education program. A series of ANOVAs, MANOVAs, and MANCOVAs were used to examine mean differences across demographics, baseline knowledge, and internal and external resources. Results: In addition to a predetermined “No” Adversity group, three classes were identified: Low Adversity, Moderate Environmental Adversity, and High Environmental Adversity. Differences were found on demographic indicators, and internal and external resources, with gender moderating some effects. Conclusion: Childhood trauma plays an important role in an individual’s experience of the divorce process and divorce education programs need to be attuned to who parents entering such programs are. Implications: Decision makers should consider using trauma-informed and tailored designs to meet the needs of diverse parents in divorce education programming.