62nd Annual Conference

Described in rich, clinical detail, findings from a unique 25-year longitudinal study of 131 children and their divorced parents highlight the unexpected gulf between growing up in intact versus divorced families and the difficulties that children of divorce experience in achieving love, sexual intimacy and commitment to marriage and parenthood.  National statistics regarding the high incidence of divorce and low incidence of marriage in this population support these findings.  The study has significant implications for new clinical and educational interventions.  The request of these young adults for groups to help them to overcome troubled relationships is especially more relevant to group therapists.

Dr. Wallerstein is an internationally recognized authority on marriage and the effects of divorce on children and their families.  She is the founder of the Judith Wallerstein Center for the Family in Transition, in Marin County, California, a major center for research, education and counseling for families in separation, divorce and remarriage.  Findings from her groundbreaking investigations have been widely published in numerous books, scientific journals and lay publications.  The acknowledged standard reference work on divorcing families is her book, Surviving the Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope with Divorce.  Some of her other books include: Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce, The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts. 

Subsequently, she completed the 25-year follow-up of her original California Children of Divorce Study, published as The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Study.  Her most recent contribution is What About Kids? Raising

Children Before, During and after Divorce.

Learning Objectives:

The attendee will be able to:

1. Describe the serious long-term impact of parental divorce upon children, with special attention to their capacity in young adulthood to establish lasting and loving relationships.

2. Summarize the way legal and mental health professionals' conceptions of divorce as a time-limited acute crisis has inhibited our understanding of long-term consequences and of proper interventions in relation to them.

3. Explain why current proposed remedies such as curbing parental conflict and promoting joint custody so often fail to ameliorate long-term impacts.