Learning, growing, and navigating occupations in the face of divorce: Adolescents’ daily occupations and meaningfulness following a parental divorce or marital separation

In North America, adolescence is a period of learning, growth, and navigation of roles and occupations that will ultimately influence later occupational choices (Furstenberg, 2000). While navigating their social roles and exploring who they are and wish to be, adolescents are also forming their views on social norms along with their social and occupational identities. A parental divorce or martial separation at this period has been depicted as wholly negative for adolescents, leading to problems in development and adherence to social norms and values (Kelly, 2000). A parental divorce or marital separation will affect adolescents’ abilities to engage in some of the daily occupations that they need or want to due to changed economic, social, familial and emotional factors in their lives. The meanings that adolescents associate with occupations may also change at this time, which will impact their internalization of lifelong occupations.\nIn this study, we use a participatory critical visual methodology (de Lange, Mitchell & Stuart, 2007) to explore how adolescents experience parental divorce or marital separation. From our critical perspective, ‘adolescence,’ ‘family,’ and the nature and affects of divorce are all culturally constructed, therefore we have limited our ventures into the literature to North American, English-language studies that were published in roughly the last decade, and are limiting our data collection to the Toronto Jewish community, a culturally similar group to further solidify the cultural and social contexts in which family and divorce are constructed. We are working with both the adolescents themselves as well as service providers – including social workers, counselors, guidance counselors and teachers among others – to give anecdotal information on this population as well as to provide insight into the systems and social barriers that these adolescents and their families must navigate.\nWith this research we hope to contribute to the research that presents asset-based approaches to adolescent life following a parental divorce or martial separation, as well as the information that comes from the perspective of the adolescents themselves. We also hope to further explore occupations and occupation building in adolescents. Finally, we hope to add to the growing literature on the use of critical visual methodologies in both the field of occupational science, and in health research in general.\nObjectives for discussion period: The role of adolescent occupations and occupation acquisition The North American construction of ‘family’ and ‘divorce,’ and how they may affect societal perceptions of how a divorce will impact occupational engagement for teenagers Structural and financial impacts on occupational engagement What participatory research can offer occupational science, rather than researcher-driven inquiry

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