Rauni
12-13-2003, 10:46 AM
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. The negative impact of divorce on both children
and parents has been exaggerated and that only about one-fifth of
youngsters experience any long-term damage after their parents break
up. One of the most comprehensive studies of divorce to date, the
research will bring balm to the souls of parents who have chosen to
end their marriages. It probably also will incense those who see
divorce as undermining American society.
After studying almost 1,400 families and more than 2,500 children.
<some of them for three decades <trailblazing research E.Mavis
Hetherington. Finds that about 75% to 80% of children from divorced
homes are "coping reasonably well and functioning in the normal
range." Eventually they are able to adapt to their new lives.
About 70%. Of their parents are leading lives that range from "good
enough" <the divorce was "like a speed bump in the road" < to
"enhanced," living lives better than those they had before the
divorce.
About 70% of kids in stepfamilies are "pretty happy," Hetherington
says. And 40% of couples in stepfamilies were able to build "stable,
reasonably satisfying marriages."
Critics will cite a laundry list of studies with contrary findings,
including the work of Judith Wallerstein. She is the high-profile,
controversial researcher whose dire 1989 findings that children
basically never get over divorce caught the public’s attention and
helped spark a national debate.
Hetherington is publishing her relatively positive findings in For
Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered (Norton $26.95), Out Jan. 21
Her co-author is journalist John Kelly. The summation of her life’s
work is long awaited by polarized academics<and aimed at clearing up
confusion among moms and dads worried about divorce.
Much of the current writing about divorce, both popular and academic,
"has exaggerated its negative effects and ignored its sometimes
considerable positive effects," Hetherington writes.
Ending a marriage, she says, "is an experience that for most people is
challenging and painful. But it is also a window of opportunity to
build a new and better life."
The gold standard of research
Hetherington, whose research methods are regarded by her peers as the
gold standard, is professor emeritus in the department of psychology
at the University of Virginia. She writes:
The vast majority of children within two years. After their parent’s
divorce "are beginning to function reasonably well again."
Most young adults from divorced families were "behaving the way young
adults were supposed o behave, choosing careers, developing permanent
relationships, ably going about the central tasks of young adulthood."
For every young adult from a divorced family that is having social,
emotional or psychological problems, these are the problems, which are
detailed more a few grafs below four. Others are functioning well.
Most divorced women "manage to provide the support, sensitivity and
engagement their children need for normal development." Single moms
"deserve a prize" for their efforts, she says. "Many of them are real
heroes."
Women tend to come out of divorce better than men, despite the
financial dilemmas many experience. "A subset of our women and girls
turned out to be more competent, able people than if they had stayed
in unhappy family situations."
Hetherington’s new book comes at a pivotal time. The divorce rate
actually has dropped slightly in the 1990s, from a high of more that
50% of new marriages ending in divorce to about 43% currently. But for
most experts, the numbers still are unacceptably high.
Just how much damage divorce does to kids is a real hot-button topic.
Hetherington’s findings contradict those of several renowned experts
who say the children are at risk for a variety of difficulties,
including dropping out of school, emotional problems, substance abuse,
having babies out of wedlock and having their own marriages end in
divorce.
Over the past decade, researchers highlighting such results have
dominated the public deliberations, leading some state legislatures to
debate changes in divorce laws.
Hetherington now steps in, hoping to alter the national dialogue. The
country has been so caught up in believing that the long-term effects
of divorce are inevitably harmful that it is almost becoming a
self-fulfilling prophecy, Hetherington says. "I think it is really
important to emphasize that most do cope and go on to have a
reasonably happy or sometimes very happy life," she says.
She adds a caveat. To ensure an emotionally healthy youngster, "there
must be a competent, caring parent," she says.
The 75 year-old. Developmental psychologist < she volunteers her age <
does have credentials. She invented many of the in-depth tools now
commonly used to measure well being in families, producing a nuanced
look at what happens in divorce. And she has a control group of intact
families for much of her work, so she can make comparisons with the
normal troubles non-divorced families encounter.
That control group, the size of her sample, the length of time she has
gathered data and the thoroughness of her work awe her peers. "She is
the leading social scientist who studies the effects of divorce on
children," says Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore. "She was the first serious researcher to do
excellent, rigorous studies of children and families. Everyone has
read her work and learned form it."
Family historian Stephanie Coontz, co-chairman of the Council on
Contemporary Families, says Hetherington is "the perfectly balanced
scholar. She is absolutely respected among her peers. Her advice is as
good as you are going to get."
Seated in her 100-year-old home, a renovated schoolhouse overlooking
the Blue Ridge mountains, Hetherington elaborates on her incendiary
goal: altering the national debate. Her voice takes on a slightly
sharp edge. She does not believe that divorce is all right. "I am
saying it is painful," she says.
But it is also true that the disastrous results of splitting up have
been exaggerated for both children and parents. A lot of people
believe that "if you have gone through a divorce, you are inflicting a
terminal disease on your children," she says.
Few criticize Hetherington outright. But even as many tip their hats
to her, the disapproving already are lining up.
David Blankenhorn, . one skeptic, is the author of Fatherless America
and a leader of the growing "marriage movement," which seeks to reduce
the number of marriages that end in divorce.
Hetherington’s book will stoke "a sort of backlash," Blankenhorn says.
"WE have made so much progress in the last 10 years in what I would
call realism about divorce. Reputable scholars have led a trend away
from a kind of happy talk’ approach to divorce. Even the title of her
book says something: that we are reconsidering divorce, the fact that
divorce is harmful to children." He takes issue with those like
Hetherington who believe, he says, that "we shouldn’t worry so much"
or that "the kids will be fine."
Judith Wallerstein, a rival doyenne of family research, is ready to do
battle with Hetherington. In 1989, Walllerstein’s Second Chances
became a surprise best seller. While some academics faulted the small
size of her sample (about 60 families), some of her research methods
and her sweeping generalizations, the public noticed her results.
Parents worried about what the children of divorce said, that while
splitting up might be seen as a second change for happiness by adults,
it is not by their kids.
The problems of divorce
Wallerstein found that children of divorce lack role models for
healthy marriages, have a longer adolescence as they help heal wounded
parents, have less of a chance at college, greater substance-abuse
problems, less competence in social relationships and often difficulty
bonding in stepfamilies.
Wallerstein’s follow-up in 2000, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A
25 Year Landmark Study, continued her troubling findings. A parental
split is not something that children get over, she emphasizes, and in
fact the consequences follow them throughout their adult lives.
Wallerstein sees statistics in Hetherington’s book as representing a
glass half empty, not half full. Hetherington, for example, found that
40%. Of the adults who divorce are living what she calls "good enough"
lives and have the same problems they had before their divorces though
they are now with different partners.
Having the same problems is not progress, Wallerstein says, adding,
"That is not a finding to go dancing about."
And while Hetherington’s findings may initially seem positive, many of
her comments about the children themselves could have come from
Wallerstein’s own writings, Wallerstein says. "She could be quoting
me. She finds the two most common themes with the young men and women
in divorced families involve trust and safety. She writes that the
children display a reluctance to commit and an uncertainty in
relationships."
Linda Waite, sociologist at the University of Chicago and co-author of
the Case for Marriage, questions one of Hetherington’s key findings,
that perhaps the surest way for a child of divorce to avoid a divorce
himself is to marry someone from an intact family. "Then what she is
really saying is that if you are a divorced person, nobody should
marry your child, "Waite says.
When one goes deeper into Hetherington’s wide-ranging book, some
alarming findings do emerge:
70% of young people from divorced families see divorce as an
acceptable solution, even if children are present. Marriage is forever
"if things work out". Only 40% from intact families do. Fewer than 20%
of young adult stepchildren feel close to their stepmoms. The divorce
rate in remarriages is greater than those in first marriages,
frequently because the stepmother is unpopular: She is often caught in
the middle, expected to be nurtures of sometimes difficult and
suspicious children. Men and boys adjust emotionally less well after a
divorce in the family than women and girls. Divorced men do poorly
alone and remarry quickly, while boys become challenges to the single
moms they tend to live with, often losing touch with dads.
Still, most children of divorce make it through. Rather than thinking
about "the inevitability of any one kind of outcome of divorce,"
Hetherington hopes readers think about the " diversity of outcomes.
What is striking is that we go from those who are totally defeated,
mired in depression poverty, to these ebullient, happy, satisfied
people making wonderful contributions to their families and society."
Mavis Hetherington’s interest in family goes back in part to her
father: She was raised with her folks in British Columbia, Canada. "I
have always been interested in fathers. My own played such an
important role in my life." Even when she was 60 and toying with the
idea of shifting careers and becoming an architect, "He told me to go
for it." Honey, he said, when you’ve lived as long as I have, you know
you can always change careers." All her life, she says, he has told
her to "go for it."
She has < writing or editing 15 books, collecting a dozen
distinguished science awards, lecturing and teaching classes. She
never uses notes in a lecture. "I have something of a photographic
memory," she says.
Not pro-divorce’
Hetherington has been married 46 years and has three grown sons and
three grandchildren. Neither she nor her sons have ever been divorced.
And she would like to make one thing perfectly clear. "The last thing
I want to do is sound like I am recommending divorce. I am not
pro-divorce. I think people should work harder on their marriages and
be better prepared when they go in and more willing to weather out the
rough spots and support each other."
But divorce, she says, "is a legitimate decision. If children are in
marriages with parents who are contemptuous of each other, not even
with overt conflict, but just sneering an subtle putdowns that erode
the partner’s self-esteem, that is very bad for the kids."
SIDEBAR: Problems Children Face
When comparing divorced families with a control group of intact
families, University of Virginia professor E. Mavis Hetherington
found.
* 25% of children from divorced families have serious social,
emotional or psychological problems; 10% from intact families do.
* 75%-80% of children in divorced families are able to adapt and
become reasonably well adjusted; 20% to 25% are troubled < depressed,
impulsive, irresponsible or anti-social.
* 20% of children in stepfamilies are troubled; 10% in intact
families have trouble with depression or anti-social behavior.
* 70% of children in divorced families feel close to their
biological moms; 80% in intact families do.
* 70% of young adults from divorced families say divorce is acceptable
even if children are present; 40% from intact families do.
http://www.divorcerecovery.net/resources/newarticles2002/Even_Trying_To_See_The_Bright_Side.htm
and parents has been exaggerated and that only about one-fifth of
youngsters experience any long-term damage after their parents break
up. One of the most comprehensive studies of divorce to date, the
research will bring balm to the souls of parents who have chosen to
end their marriages. It probably also will incense those who see
divorce as undermining American society.
After studying almost 1,400 families and more than 2,500 children.
<some of them for three decades <trailblazing research E.Mavis
Hetherington. Finds that about 75% to 80% of children from divorced
homes are "coping reasonably well and functioning in the normal
range." Eventually they are able to adapt to their new lives.
About 70%. Of their parents are leading lives that range from "good
enough" <the divorce was "like a speed bump in the road" < to
"enhanced," living lives better than those they had before the
divorce.
About 70% of kids in stepfamilies are "pretty happy," Hetherington
says. And 40% of couples in stepfamilies were able to build "stable,
reasonably satisfying marriages."
Critics will cite a laundry list of studies with contrary findings,
including the work of Judith Wallerstein. She is the high-profile,
controversial researcher whose dire 1989 findings that children
basically never get over divorce caught the public’s attention and
helped spark a national debate.
Hetherington is publishing her relatively positive findings in For
Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered (Norton $26.95), Out Jan. 21
Her co-author is journalist John Kelly. The summation of her life’s
work is long awaited by polarized academics<and aimed at clearing up
confusion among moms and dads worried about divorce.
Much of the current writing about divorce, both popular and academic,
"has exaggerated its negative effects and ignored its sometimes
considerable positive effects," Hetherington writes.
Ending a marriage, she says, "is an experience that for most people is
challenging and painful. But it is also a window of opportunity to
build a new and better life."
The gold standard of research
Hetherington, whose research methods are regarded by her peers as the
gold standard, is professor emeritus in the department of psychology
at the University of Virginia. She writes:
The vast majority of children within two years. After their parent’s
divorce "are beginning to function reasonably well again."
Most young adults from divorced families were "behaving the way young
adults were supposed o behave, choosing careers, developing permanent
relationships, ably going about the central tasks of young adulthood."
For every young adult from a divorced family that is having social,
emotional or psychological problems, these are the problems, which are
detailed more a few grafs below four. Others are functioning well.
Most divorced women "manage to provide the support, sensitivity and
engagement their children need for normal development." Single moms
"deserve a prize" for their efforts, she says. "Many of them are real
heroes."
Women tend to come out of divorce better than men, despite the
financial dilemmas many experience. "A subset of our women and girls
turned out to be more competent, able people than if they had stayed
in unhappy family situations."
Hetherington’s new book comes at a pivotal time. The divorce rate
actually has dropped slightly in the 1990s, from a high of more that
50% of new marriages ending in divorce to about 43% currently. But for
most experts, the numbers still are unacceptably high.
Just how much damage divorce does to kids is a real hot-button topic.
Hetherington’s findings contradict those of several renowned experts
who say the children are at risk for a variety of difficulties,
including dropping out of school, emotional problems, substance abuse,
having babies out of wedlock and having their own marriages end in
divorce.
Over the past decade, researchers highlighting such results have
dominated the public deliberations, leading some state legislatures to
debate changes in divorce laws.
Hetherington now steps in, hoping to alter the national dialogue. The
country has been so caught up in believing that the long-term effects
of divorce are inevitably harmful that it is almost becoming a
self-fulfilling prophecy, Hetherington says. "I think it is really
important to emphasize that most do cope and go on to have a
reasonably happy or sometimes very happy life," she says.
She adds a caveat. To ensure an emotionally healthy youngster, "there
must be a competent, caring parent," she says.
The 75 year-old. Developmental psychologist < she volunteers her age <
does have credentials. She invented many of the in-depth tools now
commonly used to measure well being in families, producing a nuanced
look at what happens in divorce. And she has a control group of intact
families for much of her work, so she can make comparisons with the
normal troubles non-divorced families encounter.
That control group, the size of her sample, the length of time she has
gathered data and the thoroughness of her work awe her peers. "She is
the leading social scientist who studies the effects of divorce on
children," says Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore. "She was the first serious researcher to do
excellent, rigorous studies of children and families. Everyone has
read her work and learned form it."
Family historian Stephanie Coontz, co-chairman of the Council on
Contemporary Families, says Hetherington is "the perfectly balanced
scholar. She is absolutely respected among her peers. Her advice is as
good as you are going to get."
Seated in her 100-year-old home, a renovated schoolhouse overlooking
the Blue Ridge mountains, Hetherington elaborates on her incendiary
goal: altering the national debate. Her voice takes on a slightly
sharp edge. She does not believe that divorce is all right. "I am
saying it is painful," she says.
But it is also true that the disastrous results of splitting up have
been exaggerated for both children and parents. A lot of people
believe that "if you have gone through a divorce, you are inflicting a
terminal disease on your children," she says.
Few criticize Hetherington outright. But even as many tip their hats
to her, the disapproving already are lining up.
David Blankenhorn, . one skeptic, is the author of Fatherless America
and a leader of the growing "marriage movement," which seeks to reduce
the number of marriages that end in divorce.
Hetherington’s book will stoke "a sort of backlash," Blankenhorn says.
"WE have made so much progress in the last 10 years in what I would
call realism about divorce. Reputable scholars have led a trend away
from a kind of happy talk’ approach to divorce. Even the title of her
book says something: that we are reconsidering divorce, the fact that
divorce is harmful to children." He takes issue with those like
Hetherington who believe, he says, that "we shouldn’t worry so much"
or that "the kids will be fine."
Judith Wallerstein, a rival doyenne of family research, is ready to do
battle with Hetherington. In 1989, Walllerstein’s Second Chances
became a surprise best seller. While some academics faulted the small
size of her sample (about 60 families), some of her research methods
and her sweeping generalizations, the public noticed her results.
Parents worried about what the children of divorce said, that while
splitting up might be seen as a second change for happiness by adults,
it is not by their kids.
The problems of divorce
Wallerstein found that children of divorce lack role models for
healthy marriages, have a longer adolescence as they help heal wounded
parents, have less of a chance at college, greater substance-abuse
problems, less competence in social relationships and often difficulty
bonding in stepfamilies.
Wallerstein’s follow-up in 2000, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A
25 Year Landmark Study, continued her troubling findings. A parental
split is not something that children get over, she emphasizes, and in
fact the consequences follow them throughout their adult lives.
Wallerstein sees statistics in Hetherington’s book as representing a
glass half empty, not half full. Hetherington, for example, found that
40%. Of the adults who divorce are living what she calls "good enough"
lives and have the same problems they had before their divorces though
they are now with different partners.
Having the same problems is not progress, Wallerstein says, adding,
"That is not a finding to go dancing about."
And while Hetherington’s findings may initially seem positive, many of
her comments about the children themselves could have come from
Wallerstein’s own writings, Wallerstein says. "She could be quoting
me. She finds the two most common themes with the young men and women
in divorced families involve trust and safety. She writes that the
children display a reluctance to commit and an uncertainty in
relationships."
Linda Waite, sociologist at the University of Chicago and co-author of
the Case for Marriage, questions one of Hetherington’s key findings,
that perhaps the surest way for a child of divorce to avoid a divorce
himself is to marry someone from an intact family. "Then what she is
really saying is that if you are a divorced person, nobody should
marry your child, "Waite says.
When one goes deeper into Hetherington’s wide-ranging book, some
alarming findings do emerge:
70% of young people from divorced families see divorce as an
acceptable solution, even if children are present. Marriage is forever
"if things work out". Only 40% from intact families do. Fewer than 20%
of young adult stepchildren feel close to their stepmoms. The divorce
rate in remarriages is greater than those in first marriages,
frequently because the stepmother is unpopular: She is often caught in
the middle, expected to be nurtures of sometimes difficult and
suspicious children. Men and boys adjust emotionally less well after a
divorce in the family than women and girls. Divorced men do poorly
alone and remarry quickly, while boys become challenges to the single
moms they tend to live with, often losing touch with dads.
Still, most children of divorce make it through. Rather than thinking
about "the inevitability of any one kind of outcome of divorce,"
Hetherington hopes readers think about the " diversity of outcomes.
What is striking is that we go from those who are totally defeated,
mired in depression poverty, to these ebullient, happy, satisfied
people making wonderful contributions to their families and society."
Mavis Hetherington’s interest in family goes back in part to her
father: She was raised with her folks in British Columbia, Canada. "I
have always been interested in fathers. My own played such an
important role in my life." Even when she was 60 and toying with the
idea of shifting careers and becoming an architect, "He told me to go
for it." Honey, he said, when you’ve lived as long as I have, you know
you can always change careers." All her life, she says, he has told
her to "go for it."
She has < writing or editing 15 books, collecting a dozen
distinguished science awards, lecturing and teaching classes. She
never uses notes in a lecture. "I have something of a photographic
memory," she says.
Not pro-divorce’
Hetherington has been married 46 years and has three grown sons and
three grandchildren. Neither she nor her sons have ever been divorced.
And she would like to make one thing perfectly clear. "The last thing
I want to do is sound like I am recommending divorce. I am not
pro-divorce. I think people should work harder on their marriages and
be better prepared when they go in and more willing to weather out the
rough spots and support each other."
But divorce, she says, "is a legitimate decision. If children are in
marriages with parents who are contemptuous of each other, not even
with overt conflict, but just sneering an subtle putdowns that erode
the partner’s self-esteem, that is very bad for the kids."
SIDEBAR: Problems Children Face
When comparing divorced families with a control group of intact
families, University of Virginia professor E. Mavis Hetherington
found.
* 25% of children from divorced families have serious social,
emotional or psychological problems; 10% from intact families do.
* 75%-80% of children in divorced families are able to adapt and
become reasonably well adjusted; 20% to 25% are troubled < depressed,
impulsive, irresponsible or anti-social.
* 20% of children in stepfamilies are troubled; 10% in intact
families have trouble with depression or anti-social behavior.
* 70% of children in divorced families feel close to their
biological moms; 80% in intact families do.
* 70% of young adults from divorced families say divorce is acceptable
even if children are present; 40% from intact families do.
http://www.divorcerecovery.net/resources/newarticles2002/Even_Trying_To_See_The_Bright_Side.htm
