28 Nov 2005 “Good Divorce” a Myth for Kids

Elizabeth Marquardt, writing in the Boston Globe, explains why even low-conflict divorces are extremely difficult for children:

In a first-ever national study, the grown children of divorce tell us there’s no such thing as a ”good” divorce. This nationally representative telephone survey of 1,500 young adults, half from divorced families and half from intact families — supplemented with more than 70 in-person interviews conducted around the country — reveals that any kind of divorce, whether amicable or not, sows lasting inner conflict in children’s lives.Only a small minority of grown children of divorce — just one-fifth — say their parents had a lot of conflict after their divorce, but the conflict between their parents’ worlds did not go away. Instead, the tough job of making sense of their parents’ different beliefs, values, and ways of living became the child’s job alone…

The grown children of divorce also report that the job of traveling between two worlds, struggling alone to make sense of them, is a lonely one. They are three times more likely to agree, ”I was alone a lot as a child,” and seven times more likely to strongly agree with that sentiment. Over and over, their stories made it clear that being the only link between your parents’ two worlds is a lonely place for a child to be…