The divorcing parents provided us with detailed accounts of the years of marriage, accounts infused with the intense emotion of their recent separation. As they reviewed their courtship, the evolution of the family, including the birth of the children and the course of the marital failure, we were struck with the diversity in the kind of marriages that eventually came to divorce. What was unexpected as well was that the divorcing families included not only those suffering from loneliness and isolation, with each family member going his or her own way, hardly communicating and rarely touching, but also families whose members shared a rich history, common recreational interests, and religious beliefs. Their conflicts were sometimes explosive and highly visible; other differences were muted and carefully concealed. A significant number of these families, however, were neither bleak nor overtly conflict ridden and were, to outward appearances, well-functioning, close-knit family groups which had been regarded as good, or at least good enough, by their children, friends, and neighbors. A full one-quarter of the divorcing families in our study had been close-knit and had engaged in many shared activities over the years. Some of these maintained careful constraint and reserve. Others, to be sure, were occasionally, or even frequently, afflicted with angry fighting and physical violence; but the web of family life had not been disrupted by such turbulence and the family's activities had included camping trips, shared vacations, holiday festivities, and birthday parties for the children.
             For children and adolescents, the separation and its aftermath was the most stressful period of their lives. The family rupture evoked an acute sense of shock, intense fears, and grieving which the children found overwhelming. Over one half of the entire group were distraught, with a sense that their lives had been completely disrupted. Less than 10 percent ...