Blog
Mission Bronx: Flight of Snow
February 26, 2010
The argument seems to be that because parental conflict is bad for children, the solution is to make divorce easier. If only it were that simple.
In our nationally representative study of adult children of divorce, Prof. Norval D. Glenn of the University of Texas at Austin and I found that even successful young people are profoundly shaped by childhood divorce.
They described how they had to travel between two worlds, and make sense of their parents’ different beliefs and ways of living, something their parents were no longer required to do. Most said their parents did not have a lot of conflict after the divorce. Yet these grown children of divorce report a profound and lonely inner conflict, even when their parents did not fight.
As a culture, we can do better.
