Wallerstein's central argument is that divorce harms children far more than anyone realizes and that staying together for the sake of the children is an idea that should be resurrected. I completely disagree with her assessment, and I find the manner in which she chooses to argue condescending and downright rude. Stigmatizing divorce as the cause of unhappiness, instability, and more divorce, as Wallerstein does, achieves nothing. She addresses herself to children of divorce, claiming to explain their own emotions to them, dictating without any acknowledgement that she should be listening. In all the debate that Wallerstein's book has generated, I have noticed a general lack of compassion for the children of divorce.
Divorce traumatizes all involved.
It realigns your universe along a different axis, but the fact that my universe includes divorce does not mean that I am irrevocably warped and doomed to a lonely life. The wounds of divorce will heal, and the scar, while it may always itch, will not cripple. Wallerstein has tried to address this cold atmosphere by setting herself up as a child advocate. She writes that in the bonanza of no-fault divorces, adults have forgotten to consider the happiness of their kids. Her attempt to style herself as the one party qualified to understand children whose parents have divorced is entirely fallacious.