Divorce in America - Part 3

Experts discuss the effect that divorce has on children, with all agreeing that the quality of the relationship between child and parent is most important. Many feel joint custody is the best solution.

BOB EDWARDS, Host: This is Morning Edition; I'm Bob Edwards.

The welfare of children is a central issue in the debate over how to reduce the divorce rate. Many believe that divorce is psychologically harmful to children, but recent research suggests that divorce, although painful, does not necessarily cause long-lasting problems for most children.

In our continuing series on divorce in America, Michelle Trudeau reports on what child-development experts have discovered about children of divorce.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU, Reporter: When parents split apart, there is for the children a sense of loss, and it hurts deeply, says psychologist Mavis Heatherington [sp].

MAVIS HEATHERINGTON, Psychologist: Most children will view their parents' divorce as one of the most painful experiences they went through.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Heatherington has been charting the psychological progress of children of divorce over the past 25 years. And by studying these children as they've grown up, an unexpected picture has emerged. Yes, children remember the divorce as painful-

MAVIS HEATHERINGTON: But this kind of distressed memory doesn't mean that it had adverse consequences in the long run in terms of adjustment.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: In fact, her landmark studies of over 1,500 children of divorce show that the majority does just fine, growing up well- adjusted and psychologically healthy. Now, there is, predictably, a rocky beginning following the divorce, Heatherington says, when most kids go through a period of psychological problems. But this upheaval typically lasts only a year or two, and over the long run most - about 80 percent of the children in her study - grow up to be emotionally stable, young adults.

MAVIS HEATHERINGTON: So, for most kids resilience in the face of divorce and remarriage is the outcome, not vulnerability in the face of this.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Although the majority of children are resilient, Heatherington emphasizes that 20 percent of children of divorce do develop serious behavior problems. This is about double the 10 percent rate of children of non-divorced parents who have psychological problems.

PAUL AMATO, Social Scientist, University of Nebraska: There's two ways to look at that, of course.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Social scientist Paul Amato [sp] from the University of Nebraska-

PAUL AMATO: One is that any factor during childhood that doubles the risk of a problem is something we should take seriously.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Divorce doubles the risk of a variety of problems for children, like dropping out of school, unstable relationships, depression.

PAUL AMATO: On the other hand, the studies uniformly show that most kids in divorced families don't experience that clinical level of problems. Most grow up to be pretty well-adjusted, successful people.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: But some psychologists disagree, arguing that divorce is harmful to many more children. Psychologist Judith Wallerstein [sp], for example, maintains that for most children divorce is, in her words, `wrenching and devastating.' She studied 130 children of divorce.

JUDITH WALLERSTEIN, Psychologist: These children were really, really suffering.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: The psychological trauma, Wallerstein says, is long-lasting, persisting at least 15 years after the divorce itself. Wallerstein has recently looked again at the children in her study, now grown up.

JUDITH WALLERSTEIN: Late adolescence and entering into adulthood is a very difficult time for these young people because it's a time that, sort of, the ghosts arise from the basement.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Wallerstein reports that over 50 percent of the children in her study have serious, long-term behavior problems. That's more than twice as many divorce casualties as several other researchers have found.

ANDREW CHURLIN, Researcher, Johns Hopkins University: The picture is not as grim as Dr. Wallerstein paints it to be.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: That's researcher Andrew Churlin [sp] from Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on those children who do do worse - the troubled kids of divorce. He has recently uncovered antecedents that foreshadow many of these children's problems.

ANDREW CHURLIN: In our studies in the U.S. and Great Britain, we found that some of the problems that we attribute to divorce are visible even before the parents separate. When we look back in our records to a time before anybody's parents were divorced, we find that the kids whose parents would later divorce are already doing worse in school and in behavior problems.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: A substantial portion of the problems these children encountered were there before the divorce.

ANDREW CHURLIN: That doesn't mean divorce has no effect. There's an additional effect of what happens after a divorce that's very important, but we should not make the mistake of ascribing every problem we see in a child whose parents have divorced, of ascribing every problem to the divorce itself.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Other studies amplify this finding. Kids do worse in a two-parent home where the parents are at war, than in a well- functioning single-parent household. Staying together in an unhappy marriage for the sake of the children is not what's best for the children, says researcher Paul Amato.

PAUL AMATO: We found that the worst outcome for children was to be in a continuously intact family where the parents did not get along well and had a high level of conflict. Under those circumstances divorce benefited children by removing them from an aversive and unhappy home environment.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: So, what seems to be critically important - and all the experts agree on this - is the quality of the relationship that the child has with the parent. Psychologist Judith Wallerstein-

JUDITH WALLERSTEIN: Of the children that I saw, those who did well had good mother-child relationships that really helped them.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Mothers, Wallerstein and others have found, who were consistent and reliable in their love and support had children who weathered the divorce. Psychologist Ann Peterson [sp] of the National Science Foundation has extended this finding to teenagers whose parents have just divorced.

ANN PETERSON, Psychological: Adolescents still need their parents, even though peer relationships become increasingly important over the course of adolescence. And young adults who continue to have a good relationship with each parent after a divorce will get a better start in their own lives as a result.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: It's been argued that an effective way for children to continue a relationship with each parent after a divorce is through joint physical custody, a legal arrangement where children divide their time between mother and father. Marjorie Engle [sp], an expert on custody arrangements, says that joint custody is one of the fastest- growing trends in the divorce arena today.

MARJORIE ENGLE, Child Custody Expert: In almost all states if the parents agree to this there can be joint custody. In other cases it is a presumption, which means that unless there's a reason not to do this it will be joint custody.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Proponents argue that joint custody results in fathers staying more involved with their children and paying their child support more dependably. But the question has arisen - is this custody arrangement the best arrangement for the child?

ELEANOR MACABEE, Researcher, Stanford University: Joint custody is either the best or the worst arrangement.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Stanford University researcher, Eleanor Macabee [sp]-

ELEANOR MACABEE: Depending on whether the parents can be civilized and do business together.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Macabee has studied over 1,000 families, comparing the impact on children of different custody arrangements.

ELEANOR MACABEE: If they're in conflict, it's harmful.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: Harmful to the equilibrium and mental health of children to be caught in the middle of two hostile, warring parents.

ELEANOR MACABEE: If there is not high conflict, and most of our joint- custody families don't have high conflict, the kids are doing quite well - significantly better than the kids in father custody - and slightly better than the kids in mother custody. And I think this is because they are able to maintain good, close relationships with both parents.

MICHELLE TRUDEAU: There is much that science can't measure in children' s psychological development. Each child is unique, each divorce is distinctive. But from all the thousands of individual stories there emerge common themes about how children cope, underscoring that divorce is psychologically painful for children and can have long-term consequences. But most children successfully navigate through the bumpy beginning and survive the divorce well-adjusted and emotionally intact, especially with the help of good parents.

I'm Michelle Trudeau reporting.

BOB EDWARDS: Next week, how the fathers'-rights movement has helped change child-custody laws.

Copyright © 1996 by National Public Radio. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Divorce in America - Part 3., Morning Edition (NPR), 04-29-1996.

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