Her findings are serving as the springboard for a gathering this week in San Francisco of authorities on children's issues, called the Second World Congress on Family Law and the Rights of Children and Youth. The children, as adults, look back and appreciate and respect what their mothers had to do, but they wish it could have been different. They look at their fathers with compassion, but also disappointment. In their report, the researchers say the impact of divorce hits children in a critically different way than their parents. On the contrary.
Divorce is a cumulative experience for the child.
The effect of the parents' divorce is played and replayed throughout the first three decades of the children's lives. This group, the researchers say, was the most vulnerable, the one that spent the longest time living with the fallout of divorce. For the most part, their parents divorced in a relatively amicable manner. Nevertheless, the small children, who now are from 27 to 32 years old, bear stark emotional scars. Even well-intentioned parents were preoccupied not only with making a living, but with putting their own lives back together.