Listening to Children of Divorce: New Findings That Diverge From Wallerstein, Lewis, and Blakeslee*

I review new findings on (a) college students' perspectives on their living arrangements after their parents' divorces, (b) their relations with their parents as a function of their living arrangements, (c) their adjustment as a function of their parents' relocation, and (d) the amount of college support they received. Students endorsed living arrangements that gave them equal time with their fathers, they had better outcomes when they had such arrangements and when their parents supported their time with the other parent, they experienced disagreement between mothers and fathers over living arrangements, and they gave evidence of their fathers' continuing commitment to them into their young adult years. These findings consistently contradict the recent, influential public policy recommendations of Judith Wallerstein. Key Words: attachment, child support, custody, divorce, fathers, relocation. Despite much research on the consequences of divorce for children, many aspects of divorce from the child's point of view remain relatively unstudied. These include their preferences for their postdivorce living arrangements, their perceptions of behaviors on the part of either parent that threaten to alienate them from the other parent, their perspectives on what makes a good divorce versus a bad divorce, and their resolutions about how they would handle divorce with children. It is unlikely that many parents have heard their own children's perspectives on these issues. It is also unlikely that policy makers are aware of children's perspectives. In the research discussed here, my colleagues and I studied children's perspectives by questioning young adults who had grown up in divorced homes. The advantage of studying young adults is twofold: their perspectives are informed by all of their childhood experiences of their parents' divorces, and, because they are poised to begin their own families, their perspectives are likely to predict not only their own future parenting decisions should they become divorced parents, but also their stands on the important public debates about divorce policy in this country. Sample and Theoretical Foundation Our informants have been college students. College students are a convenience sample, and the possibility exists that college students from divorced families represent a select sample of divorced families. Although extending this research to include noncollege samples is important, three points are worthy to note in support of using college students. First, we have not encountered evidence that college students from divorced families represent a "select few" who escaped the ill effects of their parents' divorces. The percentage of students from divorced families in our samples over the last few years (ranging from 28% to 31%) matches estimates of the percentage of children in the national population from divorced families (approximately 30%; e.g., Bumpass & Sweet, 1989; Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991). We also are encouraged by the findings from two recent studies: (a) a meta-analysis of the effects of sole versus joint custody on children's adjustment (Bauserman, 2002) found no differences associated with convenience (including college) samples; and (b) a study of the distress felt by young adults over their parents' divorces (Laumann-Billings & Emery, 2000) found few differences between students from an elite university and low-income-community adults. Second, some college students report very negative experiences with their parents' divorces, and others report much more positive experiences. This allows us to investigate the processes that may lead to positive versus negative experiences. These processes should not differ even if the sample is somewhat select and higher functioning than normal. Third, college students constitute a substantial proportion of the population of young adults. For example, the university at which our research was done accepts roughly the top 25% of the state's high school graduates (Arizona State University Viewbook, 2003-2004). …