This article originally appeared in the January-February 1998 Children's Advocate newsmagazine, published by Action Alliance for Children. Also see the accompanying stories, "Divorce Doesn't Go Away," "Divorce from Other Viewpoints," and "My Life as a Game Piece."

Stephanie Coontz is a family historian whose book, The Way We Never Were, launched an important challenge to the political uses of "family values" rhetoric. In an article in The Nation, Nov. 17, 1997 (excerpted here), she raises questions about Wallerstein's research on the long- term effects of divorce on children. Coontz notes that Wallerstein's studies are being used as "ammunition" for a national campaign to make divorce more difficult, although Wallerstein herself opposes legal restrictions on divorce.

Divorcing Reality

Other researchers question Wallerstein's conclusions

By Stephanie Coontz

[Wallerstein's] estimates of the risks of divorce are more than twice as high as those of any other reputable researcher... Her insistence that the problems she finds were caused by the divorce itself, rather than by pre-existing problems...represents an oversimplified notion...

Wallerstein studied sixty Marin County couples, mostly white and affluent, who divorced in 1971. Her sample was drawn from families referred to her clinic because they were already experiencing...problems. Participants were recruited by the offer of counseling in exchange for commitment to a long-term study. This itself casts serious doubt on the applicability of Wallerstein's findings. The people most likely to be attracted to an offer of long-term counseling...are obviously those [who] feel they need it.

Wallerstein says she tried to weed out severely disturbed children, yet the appendix to her original study, published in 1980, admits that only one-third of the families she worked with were assessed as having "adequate psychological functioning" prior to the divorce. Half the parents had chronic depression, severe neurotic difficulties, or "long-standing problems in controlling their rage or sexual impulses." Nearly a quarter of the couples reported that there had been violence in their marriages. It is thus likely that many of the problems since experienced by their children...would not have been averted had the couples stayed together....

This is not to say that all the problems Wallerstein found can be explained by pre-existing family dynamics. While children in intact families with high levels of conflict usually do worse than children in divorced or never-married families, children's well-being often does deteriorate when a marriage not marked by severe conflict comes to an end. Divorce can trigger new difficulties connected to loss of income, school relocation, constriction of extended family ties, or escalation of hostility over issues like custody and finances. (In Wallerstein's sample, many women had not been employed during the marriage; forced entry into the workplace increases the risk of depression and distraction, which can affect the quality of parenting.)

Still, more representative samples of kids from divorced parents yield much lower estimates of risk than Wallerstein's. Paul Amato and Bruce Keith, reviewing nearly every quantitative study that has been done on divorce, found some clear associations with lower levels of child well-being. But these were, on average, "not large."

Interestingly, children whose parents divorced in more recent generations are experiencing less severe problems than those whose parents divorced when laws and social stigmas were stricter. Indeed, a just-published study of 150 Boston-area families, conducted by psychologist Abigail Stewart, found that while more youngsters had slightly poorer-than-average mental health a few months after the divorce, their overall mental health had rebounded to average levels after eighteen months.

Wallerstein rejects these studies because they do not take account of what she terms a "sleeper effect," in which problems caused by divorce do not show up until years later. But larger long-term studies do not support this claim... Mavis Hetherington, who has studied more than 1,500 children of divorced parents, reports that the large majority grow up socially and psychologically well-adjusted....

Family-values crusaders often argue...that..emphasis on children's resilience may lead couples to take divorce too lightly....But rising rates of divorce and single parenthood come less from me-first individualism than from long-term historical forces that are not going to be reversed by trying to scare or guilt-trip people into staying married...

The economic autonomy of women means that dependence no longer preserves marriages, and the number of people who exist comfortably and happily outside marriage creates an ever-present alternative for people who are unhappy with their mates. No amount of coercion is going to put the toothpaste back in the tube....

We may be able to save more potentially healthy marriages than we currently do...by ...getting men and women to share child care and housework more equally, helping couples to manage conflict in less destructive ways, and building family-friendly workplaces. But such measures will also make it easier for divorcing couples, single parents, and unmarried partners to raise children, and, given that divorce is here to stay, that's as it should be. We must simultaneously help couples build healthier marriages and teach those who cannot do so how to minimize its impact on kids...

As divorce has gotten more acceptable it has also gotten less damaging. In 1978, a national sample found that only 50 percent of divorced couples were able to...control their anger in a way that allowed them to co-parent effectively. A more recent California study of divorcing couples found that three to four years after separation, only a quarter of divorced parents were engaged in conflict-ridden co-parenting.

Similar progress has occurred in post-divorce parental contact. Surveys at the beginning of the eighties found that more than 50 percent of children living with divorced mothers had not seen their fathers in the preceding year, while only 17 percent reported visiting their fathers weekly. But a 1988 survey found that only 18 percent had not visited their children during the past year, and 25 percent of previously married fathers saw their children at least once a week.

.....The Council on Contemporary Families [see "Think Tank on Family Changes"].... will counter politicized and oversimplified pronouncements such as those in the current anti-divorce crusade with a more nuanced account of the changing circumstances and challenges facing today's diverse families. Anyone interested in a more balanced assessment of the gains and losses connected to changes in American families should contact the Council on Contemporary Families.

Stephanie Coontz is a family historian at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Her most recent book is The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing Families.

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