A family helps shape each person into what they will eventually become. Family is a guide to the success of a child's future. Family stability is a fundamental element for the child's progress throughout life. When parents divorce, children are left without stability and lose basic childhood concepts that they can carry with them throughout their lives. Children of divorced parents have less success and happiness creating less productive citizens in our nation. Watching parents turn a home from a traditional family lifestyle into a "broken" home by divorcing is very devastating to a child's mental well-being. As Judith Seltzer notes, "Recent analyzes summarize the evidence that children are emotionally distressed by parental separation. Young children, in particular, are depressed and anxious and feel torn by loyalty to both parents" (283). While some researchers believe that "[p]amily divorce is associated with substantial short-term increases in children's emotional distress..., [t]here is a great deal of evidence... that for some young people, divorce remains problematic for throughout adolescence" (Aseltine 133). In my personal experience with parental divorce, depression has been one of the biggest challenges. My parents divorced when I was in high school and living in a small town. A month after the divorce I moved to a new city alone for two months, then my mother moved. I was left without my parents' supervision for the rest of my life. My mother was there for me when I asked, but I took care of myself. I didn't start suffering from depression until I was in college and faced with the normal stresses of working too much, taking fifteen hours of classes, and being in a serious relationship. These... middle of paper... or witnessing the separation of their parents and undergoing many life changes, tend to be more susceptible to depression, creating less productivity for society. Children of divorced parents also have a harder time learning and paying attention in class, which will put them behind their peers, creating more difficulty succeeding later in life. As stated previously, as children become teenagers and young adults they have a more open view of premarital sex than their peers. They tend to fear marriage more than other young adults from traditional families. This can create greater difficulties in success due to what they may encounter in their choices of premarital sex or in choosing to live as a single person. With rising divorce rates and more children facing these challenges, our society is threatened as citizens are less capable of helping our nation succeed.