As I write this review, the unfortunate marital break-up of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman is splashed all over the tabloids. Inside the Beltway, Washington's politicos and pundits are talking about strengthening welfare reform legislation to promote and support married, two-parent families. And on Valentine's Day, I hurt my wife's feelings when-well, I don't need to go into all the details, but I checked my pride and apologized, and she apologized back, and we kissed and made up.
Fortunately, the books I've read during the past few months have prepared me to analyze these disparate events with a little more skill. The year 2000 produced important books on marriage and divorce in our contemporary culture. I have benefited from reading three books that I enthusiastically recommend. The first book has been publicly discussed more than the other two: The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Judith Wallerstein, Julia Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee. If you watch or listen to the talk shows, read the national newspapers or news magazines, or listen to the casual conversation around the water cooler, you have probably heard about this book. Wallerstein began studying children's experiences of divorce as a clinical psychologist in the wake of California's no-fault divorce revolution in the early 1970s. She has followed a small, clinical sample of these children for more than 25 years now. Unexpected Legacy is the culmination of her unique effort.
Wallerstein's conclusions are generating controversy. The effects of divorce on children are not as fleeting as their parents had hoped and been taught. Wallerstein and her co-authors claim that the effects are deeper, longer-term, and more troubling than most social scientists have suggested. Divorce rips apart a child's world and irrevocably changes its direction. Its most harmful and profound effects are not visible until early adulthood, when children of divorce are trying to form intimate relationships. The authors assert that without an inner model of a loving, committed, stable marriage, children of divorce struggle to choose mates, are shy of commitment, and are at a clear disadvantage in finding and maintaining true love. But as if this shot across the bow of our divorce culture weren't enough, the authors go even further. When faced with the question of whether children are better off if their unhappy parents stick it out for the sake of the children, the authors offer an unflinching, politically incorrect "yes" (with appropriate asterisks for situations of violence, abuse, addiction, and severe pathology). They base their assertion on a quasi-scientific comparison of these children of divorce with a group of their childhood peers whose parents were reportedly unhappy but stayed together nonetheless. In many ways visible to a therapist's probing eye, these children of stable but supposedly unhappy marriages were better off as young adults than were their friends whose unhappy parents divorced.
As a researcher myself, I understand some of the critiques of Unexpected Legacy by those who have studied the effects of divorce in larger, nationally representative samples of children, and who find the negative effects less pronounced. There are inherent weaknesses in Wallerstein's study that limit her ability to speak the final word on the effects of divorce on children. But Unexpected Legacy should not be read with that purpose in mind. It is better read, I believe, in a more personal way. That is how I found myself reading it. More and more, the objective researcher part of me sat back and the husband-of-a-child-of-divorce part of me came forward as I found myself better understanding things about my wife that have confused me over the life of our marriage. When I finished the book, I suggested she might be interested in reading a "biography about her life." She read it, and more than once I saw her in tears, sad or angry about her experience of divorce. Not a book for the faint-hearted.
In many ways, the book was healing for my wife. I'm sure it will not feel quite that way for those readers who are struggling with the decision to divorce. As difficult as it may be, however, Unexpected Legacy, in its unflinching candor, is also the best advice book to date on the topic of divorce. Wallerstein understands how divorce affects children. Accordingly, she provides sensitive, child-centered advice on how to help children through this gut-wrenching change and the best list of "do's" and "don'ts" for divorced parents I've seen. Her advice ranges from a caution about sending unaccompanied young children on airplanes to visit their non-custodial parent to a good, old-fashioned tongue lashing to divorced fathers who fail to help pay for their children's college educations. By looking at divorce through a child's perspective over the past quarter-century, I'm confident Wallerstein and her co-authors would first encourage Tom and Nicole, and others struggling in their marriages, to do the hard work of working things out.
Fortunately, the books I've read during the past few months have prepared me to analyze these disparate events with a little more skill. The year 2000 produced important books on marriage and divorce in our contemporary culture. I have benefited from reading three books that I enthusiastically recommend. The first book has been publicly discussed more than the other two: The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Judith Wallerstein, Julia Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee. If you watch or listen to the talk shows, read the national newspapers or news magazines, or listen to the casual conversation around the water cooler, you have probably heard about this book. Wallerstein began studying children's experiences of divorce as a clinical psychologist in the wake of California's no-fault divorce revolution in the early 1970s. She has followed a small, clinical sample of these children for more than 25 years now. Unexpected Legacy is the culmination of her unique effort.Wallerstein's conclusions are generating controversy. The effects of divorce on children are not as fleeting as their parents had hoped and been taught. Wallerstein and her co-authors claim that the effects are deeper, longer-term, and more troubling than most social scientists have suggested. Divorce rips apart a child's world and irrevocably changes its direction. Its most harmful and profound effects are not visible until early adulthood, when children of divorce are trying to form intimate relationships. The authors assert that without an inner model of a loving, committed, stable marriage, children of divorce struggle to choose mates, are shy of commitment, and are at a clear disadvantage in finding and maintaining true love. But as if this shot across the bow of our divorce culture weren't enough, the authors go even further. When faced with the question of whether children are better off if their unhappy parents stick it out for the sake of the children, the authors offer an unflinching, politically incorrect "yes" (with appropriate asterisks for situations of violence, abuse, addiction, and severe pathology). They base their assertion on a quasi-scientific comparison of these children of divorce with a group of their childhood peers whose parents were reportedly unhappy but stayed together nonetheless. In many ways visible to a therapist's probing eye, these children of stable but supposedly unhappy marriages were better off as young adults than were their friends whose unhappy parents divorced.
As a researcher myself, I understand some of the critiques of Unexpected Legacy by those who have studied the effects of divorce in larger, nationally representative samples of children, and who find the negative effects less pronounced. There are inherent weaknesses in Wallerstein's study that limit her ability to speak the final word on the effects of divorce on children. But Unexpected Legacy should not be read with that purpose in mind. It is better read, I believe, in a more personal way. That is how I found myself reading it. More and more, the objective researcher part of me sat back and the husband-of-a-child-of-divorce part of me came forward as I found myself better understanding things about my wife that have confused me over the life of our marriage. When I finished the book, I suggested she might be interested in reading a "biography about her life." She read it, and more than once I saw her in tears, sad or angry about her experience of divorce. Not a book for the faint-hearted.
In many ways, the book was healing for my wife. I'm sure it will not feel quite that way for those readers who are struggling with the decision to divorce. As difficult as it may be, however, Unexpected Legacy, in its unflinching candor, is also the best advice book to date on the topic of divorce. Wallerstein understands how divorce affects children. Accordingly, she provides sensitive, child-centered advice on how to help children through this gut-wrenching change and the best list of "do's" and "don'ts" for divorced parents I've seen. Her advice ranges from a caution about sending unaccompanied young children on airplanes to visit their non-custodial parent to a good, old-fashioned tongue lashing to divorced fathers who fail to help pay for their children's college educations. By looking at divorce through a child's perspective over the past quarter-century, I'm confident Wallerstein and her co-authors would first encourage Tom and Nicole, and others struggling in their marriages, to do the hard work of working things out.
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