More than a quarter century ago, Judith Wallerstein began talking to a group of 131 children whose parents were all going through a divorce. From those conversations have come two bestsellers: Surviving the Breakup and Second Chances. This third volume of the longitudinal study, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, brings all of her research up to the present and shows for the first time how children are affected by divorce long into adulthood. Using a comparison group of adults who grew up in the same communities but whose parents never divorced, Wallerstein shows how adult children of divorce essentially view life differently from their peers in intact homes, and also sheds light on the question that so many parents confront—whether to stay unhappily married or to divorce.
