Is it Always Best to “Stay for the Kids”? No, Not If the Home is Toxic

by gbaskerville | Sep 26, 2020 | Divorce and Children, Featured, Myths

This myth suggests that kids will be so destroyed by your divorce, that you should never leave, even if there is a pattern of abuse, sexual immorality, addictions, criminality, other destructive behaviors in your marriage. It also suggests that your kids will have substance abuse problems, or get suspended or expelled from school if you divorce. (No, they aren’t likely to.) You’ve probably also heard the myth that your kids’ own marriages will end in divorce if yours does. (No, it isn’t likely to.)

None of these things are likely to happen if you divorce for serious reasons. If fact, if you needed a life-saving divorce, one to find a relief from a destructive marriage, your children are still likely to have a high commitment to marriage and still likely to go though life with no serious lifelong problems.

Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. Some people will accuse me of blithely excusing any divorce just because there are a few ups and downs in the marriage. That is not true. I am a devout Christian and I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I believe God meant marriage to be loving, undefiled, and lifelong. I’m no proponent of the “I’m bored” divorce, or “I miss the party life” divorce, or “I feel unfulfilled” divorce. Nor do I think people should give up early in the face of normal marriage problems.

But we are not talking about normal marriages. We are talking about marriages that are unsafe. We’re talking about marriages with serious problems, such as a pattern of infidelity, sexual immorality, physical abuse, chronic emotional abuse, abandonment or severe addictions. These problems account for half of divorces in the U.S. These are relationships with “marriage-endangering” sins, not normal run-of-the-mill sins. We’re talking about the big sins that destroy marriages.

These are not the good or even so-so two-parent married homes. These are destructive homes where the beleaguered spouse feels betrayed, gets angry, and lashes out, but due to religious pressure they cover for their spouse, put on a brave face, pray harder, forgive over and over, and excuse the other spouse’s bad behavior because they’ve been taught to “not let the sun go down on your anger.” They may conceal it from outsiders, but they aren’t fooling the kids. The kids may be too young know the details; they may have been shielded from the truth; they may not have words for what’s happening. But they sense it.

These bad marriages have real, long-term negative effects on kids’ emotional well-being. Researchers compared the outcomes of two groups of adults who were brought up in destructive homes: those whose parents divorced versus those whose parents who stayed. They discovered that the kids whose parents divorced had much better well-being on average.

A peaceful, single-parent home or stepparent home is a good choice over a high-conflict two-parent home. Below you will see the studies on kids of divorce. You’ll be surprised at how well they turn out. They aren’t likely to be “seriously troubled.” They aren’t likely to abuse drugs or alcohol. They aren’t likely to get suspended or expelled from school, and they aren’t likely to get divorced themselves.

There are people who claim that a two-parent home is always better than a single-parent or stepparent home.

A safe home where the two parents don’t have much conflict is indeed best for children. Warm, encouraging, yet firm parents are very important to children’s outcomes. But this isn’t the case in homes where there is ongoing bad behavior such as abuse or sexual immorality. In these destructive homes, there is lying, deceit, manipulation, mind-games, and false accusations, which are very damaging to children. Kids need to understand what a good marriage looks like. And it doesn’t look like this.

In high-conflict homes, where bad behavior causes tension or violence, children have much higher odds of dropping out of high school, earning poor grades, smoking, and binge drinking. They are also much more at risk for early sex, out-of-wedlock pregnancy and/or childbirth, and separation and/or divorce.

Children raised in these bad-quality, high-conflict marriages are no better off than those brought up in single-parent families (even when the single parent is poorer than before), and in some areas, they are far worse![1] Even substance abuse-which, fortunately, is rare for kids and teens regardless of their background-doesn’t happen to children of divorce much more than it does to children in two-parent homes.

Researchers have found similar good news about emotional trauma in situations of divorce.

Traditionally, society has taught that divorce is very harmful to children and that children of divorce have negative short-term and long-term emotional consequences. (See Chapter 7 for several studies that show your kids are likely better if you leave an abusive, high-discord marriage.)

“Twenty-five percent of youths from divorced families in comparison to 10 percent from non-divorced families did have serious social, emotional, or psychological problems. But most of the young men and women from [the study] looked a lot like their contemporaries from non-divorced homes. Although they looked back on their parents’ breakup as a painful experience, most were successfully going about the chief tasks of young adulthood: establishing careers, creating intimate relationships, building meaningful lives for themselves.” -E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly (emphasis mine)[2]

In most cases, divorce does not ruin kids’ chances in life or traumatize them forever. But being exposed to chronic abuse and conflict for years could very well do just that! Many Christians who filed for divorce said:

Kaiser Permanente did a large study in 1998 that showed the health effects of adults who, as children, were abused or had witnessed their mother being abused, or had lived in a household with substance abuse.

They found that children who’ve been abused or exposed to abuse are at a higher risk when they become adults for major diseases such as ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease. If children had been exposed to four or more of following seven categories listed below, their health as adults was likely to be affected.

The more categories they had been exposed to, the higher their risk, including increased health risks for alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempts.

- physical abuse
- sexual abuse
- violence against mother (later this ACE was changed to include violence against anyone in the home)
- living with household members who were substance abusers,
- mentally ill or suicidal, or ever imprisoned

For more than 20 years, researchers have known that watching or experiencing abuse is terrible for kids. In many cases it causes severe emotional and physical health problems.

This graph shows five types of marriages and how children turn out (on average) after divorce.[3] I’ll explain it below.

Very low distress marriages – The couple is able to resolve marital problems. And even though the children sense the stress, they observe genuine apologies, their parents making up, and behavior leading to a better relationship. There’s usually peace and calm in these homes.
Low distress – Couple resolves most of their problems.
Medium distress – Couple has some ongoing problems that aren’t resolved.
High distress – Couple has serious and ongoing problems that don’t get resolved.
Very high distress – Couple has recurring serious problems that do not get resolved. Family members may feel tense and anxious, trying to keep the next incident from happening. Often they control everything they can, keeping the house perfect or the children quiet, or a million other things to prevent the other spouse from doing something harmful. Sometimes the problems are masked under an air of calm: hidden and covert, with no fighting, screaming, or violence that would be noticed by an outsider.

The worse the marriage, the better off the kids will be if you divorce.

(The reverse is true too: if the marriage is very low conflict and both people are decent and fair-minded and conflicts are actually resolved rather than being swept under the carpet, divorce is really bad for kids.)

In fact, in a very high distress marriage, children were damaged 10 times more if the parents stayed together than if they divorced.

According to this study, even in a high distress marriage the kids were damaged one-and-a-half times more when the parents stayed together rather than divorcing.

Researchers have known for more than 20 years that divorce is likely best for kids in high distress and very high-distress marriages. (But no one told us that. Why didn’t Focus on the Family say something?)

The simplest way to summarize these graphics is:

If the marriage is good or pretty good, divorce is bad for kids.
If the marriage is bad or very bad, divorce is likely good for kids.

What Do Researchers Say? Actual Quotes

In the same book that Focus quotes from, the author Dr. Judith Wallerstein, wrote that growing up in a high-distress two-parent family has “tragic” consequences for children in their adult years.

“Children raised in extremely unhappy or violent intact homes face misery in childhood and tragic challenges in adulthood.” -Judith S. Wallerstein, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. 300.

“I am not against divorce. How could I be? I’ve seen more examples of wretched, demeaning, and abusive marriage than most of my colleagues. I’m keenly aware of the suffering… I’m also aware that for many parents the decision to divorce is the most difficult decision in their lives; they cry many a night before taking such a drastic step. -Judith S. Wallerstein, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. xxxix

“And I am, of course, aware of the many voices on the radio, on television, and in certain… religious circles that say divorce is sinful… But I don’t know of any research, mine included, that says divorce is universally detrimental to children.” -Judith S. Wallerstein, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. xxxix

“Many judges who deal with such families do not understand that merely witnessing violence is harmful to children; the images are forever etched into their brains. Even a single episode of violence is long remembered in detail. In fact there is accumulating scientific evidence that witnessing violence or being abused physically or verbally literally alters brain development resulting in a hyperactive emotional system.” -Judith S. Wallerstein, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (New York: Hyperion, 2000), p. 90

On the first page of Judith Wallerstein’s book, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, she says, “On the positive side, many young adults who weather their parents’ divorce are extremely successful in their own careers, having learned how to be independent, resourceful, and flexible…. they are decent, caring adults who manage to build good marriages in spite of their fears.” p. xiii

Wallerstein wrote The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce in 2000, more than twenty years ago. I am perplexed as to why Focus on the Family, which claims to give reliable advice under the command of Jim Daly, would post articles quoting Wallerstein in order to send a false message that divorce is bad for kids.

In 2003, four years before a particularly bad Focus on the Family article was published, Judith Wallerstein authored another book on kids and divorce.

When asked when is the “best” time to divorce, she wrote (emphasis mine):

“The trouble is, there’s no simple answer… If there’s chronic violence at home, the answer is ‘the sooner the better,’ unrelated to the age of your child. By violence I mean physical attack-hitting, kicking, throwing objects-or chronic threats of physical violence. Exposure to violence has serious consequences for a child’s development that may last well into adulthood. They fear for your safety. They fear for themselves and their siblings. If there’s repeated high conflict in your marriage, accompanied by yelling, screaming, and pounding the table, then I’d also say the sooner the better… In some high-conflict homes, serious differences between the partners are a recurrent theme in everyday life.”
-Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, What About the Kids? (New York: Hachette Books, 2010), pp. 127-128.

Other researchers quoted in Christian marriage websites are Dr. Paul Amato, Dr. Alan Booth, Dr. Andrew Cherlin, Dr. Sara McLanahan, and Dr. Mavis Hetherington. But they don’t suggest all divorce is tragic for kids either. Here are their conclusions.

“Our results show that if conflict between parents is relatively high, offspring are better off in early adulthood if their parents divorced than if they remained married.” – Paul Amato, Laura Spencer Loomis, Alan Booth, “Parental Divorce, Marital Conflict, and Offspring Well-being during Early Adulthood, 1995, p. 895

“This result is consistent with the notion, advanced by a number of observers, that children are better off in divorced single-parent families than in two-parent families marked by high levels of discord…” – Paul Amato, Laura Spencer Loomis, Alan Booth, “Parental Divorce, Marital Conflict, and Offspring Well-being during Early Adulthood, 1995, p. 911

“We have long known that while the average effect of divorce is negative, for some families it may actually improve family functioning and child well-being. Work by Amato (1993), for example, shows that in families with high levels of conflict, divorce improves child outcomes. More recently, Jaffee et al. (2003) have found that children are better off not seeing their fathers in cases where these men are violent or antisocial.” – Sara McLanahan and Elizabeth Thomson, Reflections on “Family Structure and Child Well-Being: Economic Resources vs. Parental Socialization,” Social Forces 91(1) 45-53, September 2012

“In the short run, divorce is brutally painful to a child. But its negative long-term effects have been exaggerated…” “Twenty-five percent of youths from divorced families in comparison to 10 percent from non-divorced families did have serious social, emotional, or psychological problems. But most of the young men and women from [the study] looked a lot like their contemporaries from non-divorced homes. Although they looked back on their parents’ breakup as a painful experience, most were successfully going about the chief tasks of young adulthood: establishing careers, creating intimate relationships, building meaningful lives for themselves.” -E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly, For Better or For Worse (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2002), p. 7

Focus on the Family mentions Dr. Andrew Cherlin as talking about the negative effects of divorce on children in their article “How Could Divorce Affect My Kids?” They attribute this to him: “Children of divorced parents suffer more frequently from symptoms of psychological distress.” BUT, in reality, that’s not the whole story. Dr. Cherlin talks about the affects of marital conflict, addictions and violence on kids (emphasis mine):

“…part of the seeming effect of parental divorce on adults is a result of factors that were present before the parents’ marriages dissolved.” (p. 2)

“It is likely that, in many cases, elevated behavior problems at [age] 7 were a reaction to other sources of stress in the family such as continual marital conflict, substance abuse, or violence…” (p. 28) -Andrew Cherlin, Johns Hopkins Cherlin, Chase-Lansdale, McRae, Effects of Divorce on Mental Health Through the Life Course, 1997, p. 2, 28

Further, these nearly all Focus on the Family articles ignore the massive 19,000-participant ACE Study in 1998 that shows that children brought up in a home experiencing or witnessing physical, sexual, or psychological abuse, or violence to a parent, substance abuse, mental illness, or criminality may have lifelong health effects evident when they reach adulthood.

No one told us this. So it’s not your fault if you stayed in an abusive marriage “for the kids.” We were given inaccurate information.

Our pastors and leaders said it.
Our Christian marriage authors claimed to be experts.
Our Christian websites repeated this myth.
Our pastor’s wife and our women’s Bible study leaders pressured us to stay.
Focus on the Family posted articles and discussed it on their radio show. They never made a distinction between deeply troubled homes and “good-enough” homes. They convinced us to believe that divorce is a horrific calamity in every case.

So we did what we were told. But we weren’t given the right information. It was available, but no one told us. In fact, to this day there are multiple articles on the Focus on the Family website that don’t mention the distinction. And it’s confusing to me! After all: Focus was founded by a genuine PhD child psychologist who taught at a major university. How could he not have known? And if he knew, why didn’t he tell us?

To summarize: Divorce can be a gift from God to parents and children in bad situations. You can love your children AND get a divorce. In fact, in some cases it’s the best option.

Footnotes:

1 “Adult Wellbeing,” (Cornell University, University of Minnesota, 3/5/09): 814, 826. See also: Paul R. Amato, ” Reconciling Divergent Perspectives: Judith Wallerstein, Quantitative Family Research, and Children of Divorce,” Family Relations 52, no. 4 (10/03): 332-339, accessed 03/09/19, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3700314.

2 E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly, For Better or For Worse (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2002), 50-51.

3 These graphs were adapted from the Parents’ Marital Discord chart in Paul Amato, Reconciling Divergent Perspectives: Judith Wallerstein, Quantitative Family Research, and Children of Divorce,” Family Relations 52, no. 4 (10/03): 332-339, accessed 03/09/19, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3700314. For those wishing to learn more, this is one of the most interesting and highly detailed comparisons of “staying” versus “leaving” and the effect on children.

For an entire chapter on children and divorce, including quotes from the top experts and many important studies, read Chapter 7.

Regarding Focus on the Family: I’ve listened to FOTF’s radio program since the 1980s. I bought a lot of Dobson books. It was one of my favorite shows. I supported Focus financially for many years. I gave thousands of dollars in donations. I sent my kids on their BRIO missions trips, twice! But FOTF is giving mixed messages to marital abuse victims. Despite having some good radio guests who address abuse well, their website fails to mention that many of the researchers they quote are actually in favor of divorce in cases of high-distress homes. In my opinion, their ministry is not safe.

People contact me and tell me story after story of spending roughly $3000-$5000 on Hope Restored marriage intensives only to realize their home was no safer as a result. In fact, they reported that the abusive spouse took the communication skills they learned, and used them to discover more ways to abuse, manipulate, and control their spouse! I have asked abuse victims for proof that they actually attended and was sent a lot of evidence. I believe them.

For the story of one mother who stayed in an abusive marriage and was nearly killed after reading a Focus on the Family newsletter, see p. 322 of The Life-Saving Divorce. This is her video testimony. This woman gave me evidence of having attended their marriage intensives three times. She is happily divorced today: She and her children are safe at last. She loves the Lord, but would never send anyone to a Focus marriage intensive. In her opinion, they are unsafe.

Do You Need Support? I’d like to invite you to my private Facebook group, “Life-Saving Divorce for Separated or Divorced Christians.” This is a group for women and men of faith who have walked this path, or are considering it. Allies and people helpers are also welcome. Just click the link and ANSWER the 3 QUESTIONS.

What happens to the kids if you stay in a highly toxic home?

- - - binge drinking
    - using marijuana
    - marrying too early
    - divorcing

And it makes sense: If a marriage is full of chaos, and problems don’t get resolved, the children find ways to escape the misery somehow. They may numb themselves with alcohol or drugs or run off to marry the first person who will get them away. If the victimized parent stays in the nightmare, instead of setting boundaries and saying “no” to the abuse and leaving, the children may even develop serious problems such as personality disorders themselves. Kids need to have at least one safe parent who can model good boundaries.

3. Lower Well-being. From 1995 to 2003, researchers analyzed adults who had been brought up in very high-conflict homes. They discovered that offspring whose parents divorced had 10 times better wellbeing than those whose parents stayed together in a very high-discord marriage. (See more about this in the section below: “When Is Divorce Good for Kids?”)

If I Divorce, Will My Children Likely Have Long-Lasting Damage?

About 8 in 10 kids from divorced homes have no serious lifelong problems. While researchers acknowledge that the first two years of the divorce are stressful, most kids bounce back after a few years. Moving, going to a new school, observing legal and personal conflict between parents, and going back and forth between homes does cause real pain for children during the transition, but in the long run, the kids turn out a lot like their friends from two-parent homes.

Landmark researcher Dr. Mavis Hetherington (University of Virginia) wrote[6]:

Sociologist Andrew Cherlin (Johns Hopkins University) confirmed Hetherington’s findings but added two bits of information:

The mental health risk for children of divorce was lower than 25%, ranging between 20% to 25%[7] and later researchers using larger samples, verified the 20% figure.
Part of the children’s mental health problems existed before the divorce, rather than being caused by the divorce itself.[8] In other words, the toxic environment was already damaging the children many years before the divorce took place.

For people who need a life-saving divorce, this gives hope. And this is why we can say,

If I Divorce, Will My Kids Likely Have Drug and Alcohol Problems?

Your kids are not likely to have alcohol or drug problems. The vast majority of kids in single-parent and stepparent families do not have any substance abuse problems. In fact, the majority of all adolescents don’t have any drug or alcohol abuse problems, no matter what their parents’ marriage was like.

Only 6 in 100 adolescents in single-mother families had substance abuse problems. 94 in 100 have no substance abuse problems.
Only 5 in 100 adolescents in two-parent families had substance abuse problems. 95 in 100 have no substance abuse problems.[9]

Substance Abuse Problems Among Twelve- to Seventeen-Year-Olds^[9]
Number of kids with abuse problems	Family Type
3.4 in 100	Mother + father + other relative (Example: grandmother, aunt, etc.)
4.5 in 100	Mother + father
5.3 in 100	Mother + stepfather
5.7 in 100	Mother only
6.0 in 100	Mother + other relative
7.2 in 100	Other relative only
8.1 in 100	Other family type
11 in 100	Father only
11.8 in 100	Father + stepmother

If I Divorce, Will My Kid Likely Have Behavior Problems and Get Expelled From School?

Evangelicals Shooting their Own Divorcees (2)

Most adults whose parents divorced do not divorce. The majority of people whose parents divorced have lifelong marriages. However, children from divorced homes are a bit more likely to get divorced than children of married parents.

According to 2018 figures[11]–

- Most people who marry never divorce.
- Those people whose parents did divorce have a 47% divorce rate.
- Those people whose parents did not divorce have a 40% divorce rate.

In other words: There’s very little difference between these two groups, only 7%. (7 in 100). The gap, which once was much larger, has narrowed in the past 25 years.

Likelihood of kids being divorce if parents divorce

More Good News! If you divorced for a serious reason, chances are that your kids will still have a high view of marital commitment.

If I Divorce, Will It Hurt My Kids to Be Poorer?

Some people think they should stay in a destructive marriage for financial reasons. They say it is better to be in a home with two incomes than one.

But research shows that income makes only a small difference in your children’s outcome. Kids raised in single-parent families with less income have about the same outcome as they would in a deeply troubled two-parent home.^[12] In fact, single-parent households have less money for drugs and alcohol, so children are less likely to abuse them.

In other words, household income is not a big factor. If you are staying in an abusive marriage only because you’re worried about money, researchers say lifestyle is not as big a factor as having a safe environment with a nurturing parent.

You and your children may be better off on your own,
even if your home is smaller and there’s less money.

Be loving, warm and close to your children.
Spend leisure time outside of the home with the kids. (The park, window shopping, sports.)
Do projects together inside the home.[13]
Be a fair and consistent disciplinarian.
Inform children about upcoming changes well in advance.

Yes, single parents can do a good job, especially when they needed a life-saving divorce, a divorce to rescue the kids from trauma.

When is Divorce Good for Kids?

This graph [14] shows five types of marriages that end in divorce. It is a very complex graph, it was done for people with PhD’s, and it shows a lot of information in one diagram. So (below) I’m going to show you my own simple diagram using the same information.

If the marriage is good or even “okay,” divorce is bad for kids.
If the marriage is bad or very bad, divorce is good for kids.

Very low distress marriages– The couple is able to resolve marital problems. And even though the children sense the stress, they observe genuine apologies, their parents making up, and behavior leading to a better relationship. There’s usually peace and calm in these homes.
Low distress– Couple resolves most of their problems.
Medium distress– Couple has some ongoing problems that aren’t resolved.
High distress– Couple has serious and ongoing problems that don’t get resolved.
Very high distress– Couple has recurring serious problems that do not get resolved. Family members may feel tense and anxious, trying to keep the next incident from happening. Often they control everything they can, keeping the house perfect or the children quiet, or a million other things to prevent the other spouse from doing something harmful. Sometimes the problems are masked under an air of calm: hidden and covert, with no fighting, screaming, or violence that would be noticed by an outsider. For example, many spouses in these marriages know their marriage isn’t happy, but they cannot put their finger on it. They may feel controlled by the spouse. They may worry about their spouse’s secret behavior. They may walk on eggshells around their mate, even if they’ve never been hit. They sense the marriage is not safe and loving, or even respectful. There may be no fighting, screaming, or overt conflict, but the anxiety and agitation are palpable.

What Does This Graph Show?
It shows that the worse the marriage, the better off the kids will be if you divorce, on average. (And it demonstrates that the reverse is true too: if the marriage is very low conflict and both people are decent and fair-minded and conflicts are actually resolved rather than being swept under the carpet, divorce is really bad for kids.)

What about Kids in Very High-Discord Marriages?

In a very high distress marriage, children were found to be damaged 10 times more if the parents stayed together than if they divorced. (This is my simplified diagram enlarged from the original graph above.)

According to this study, even in a high distress marriage (one that is not quite as severe as the very high-discord marriages) the kids were damaged one-and-a-half times more when the parents stayed together rather than divorcing.

1. Single parents can do a good job raising kids.

2. Kids from divorced homes do almost as well as kids from two-parent married homes. From a practical standpoint, it may be worth the stress of divorcing to find relief from a highly toxic home.

3. Researchers have known for more than 25 years that divorce is likely best for kids in high distress and very high-distress marriages. (But no one told us that. Why didn’t our pastors, or Christian marriage book authors, or premarital workbooks, or Focus on the Family say something?)

4. Those first two years of the divorce process are tough on kids because of all the changes. For example, moving to a new home, legal conflict between parents, switching schools, worries about the future, and possibly losing friendships. During those early years, kids may blame the divorce on themselves unless the parents help them see they did nothing to cause it. If your child was fine before the divorce, within two years they are likely to go back to normal.

[1] Virginia Rutter, “Divorce in Research vs. Divorce in Media,” Sociology Compass 3, no. 4 (2009): 707-720.

[3] Musick and Meier, “Are both parents always better than one? Parental conflict and young adult well-being. 5 March 2009, page 826.

[4] Paul R. Amato, “Reconciling Divergent Perspectives: Judith Wallerstein, Quantitative Family Research, and Children of Divorce,” Family Relations 52, no. 4 (10/03): 332-339, accessed 03/09/19, https://www. jstor.org/stable/3700314.

[5] Paul Amato, Laura Spencer Loomis, Alan Booth, “Parental Divorce, Marital Conflict, and Offspring Well-being During Early Adulthood,” Social Forces, March 1995, 911.

[6] E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly, For Better or For Worse (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2002), 7.

[7] A. J. Cherlin, P. L. Chase-Lansdale, and C. McRae, “Effects of Parental Divorce on Mental Health Throughout the Life Course,” American Sociological Review 63, no. 2 (1998): 239-249, accessed 12/28/19, https://doi.org/10.2307/2657325.

[8] Virginia Rutter, “Divorce in Research vs. Divorce in Media,” Sociology Compass 3, no. 4 (2009): 707-720.

[9] Chart and description by Dr. Bella DePaulo, using data in the Hoffman and Johnson “Adolescent Drug Use” study, which draws information from the principle source of data about drug use in the United States. Bella DePaulo, Singled Out (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006), 176-177.

[10] Nicholas Zill, “Family Still Matters for Key Indicators of Student Performance,” Institute for Family Studies, April 6, 2020, retrieved 9-22-2020 https://ifstudies.org/blog/family-still-matters-for-key-indicators-of-student-performance. See the bar chart at the bottom of the article. It uses the 2016 National Household Education Survey. I’ve just taken that graph and extended it to show 100% on the y-axis.

[11] Nicholas H. Wolfinger, “Trends in the Intergenerational Transmission of Divorce,” Demography (Sept. 1999): 415-420. Updated with 2018 data and published the Institute for Family Studies blog on May 15, 2019: https://ifstudies.org/blog/trends-in-the-intergenerational-transmission-of-divorce-1973-2018 Updated again using GSS 2016-2018 data in April 2020.

[12] Paul R. Amato, Danelle D DeBoer, “The Transmission of Marital Instability Across Generations: Relationship Skills or Commitment to Marriage?” Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 63, No. 4 (November 2001), 1050

[13] Musick and Meier, “Are both parents always better than one? Parental conflict and young adult well-being. 5 March 2009, page 826.

[14] Paul R. Amato, ” Reconciling Divergent Perspectives: Judith Wallerstein, Quantitative Family Research, and Children of Divorce,” Family Relations 52, no. 4 (10/03): 332-339, accessed 03/09/19, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3700314.

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