ABSTRACT
Preliminary findings from a 10-year longitudinal study of 113 children and adolescents from a largely white, middle-class population of divorced families in Northern California suggest that some psychological effects of divorce are long lasting. Findings from the initial assessment at the time of the breakup showed widespread acute distress among the children accompanied by an almost universal wish to undo the divorce and restore the intact family. Young men and women, and especially young women, are apprehensive about repeating their parents' unhappy marriage during their own adulthood, and they appear especially eager to avoid divorce for the sake of their future children. The burdening of the opportunity for postsecondary education for children in divorced families, if found to exist in a wide population, represents a grave issue, not only for these youngsters but for society as a whole in the potential for educational and economic disadvantaging of these young people.
