ABSTRACT
As prevalent as divorce is in our society, marital breakdown within a year of childbirth still startles us. We wonder how couples who loved each other enough to have made two major commitmentsfirst to marry, then to raise a child together-find their relationships deteriorating so quickly after achieving pregnancy. Unlike divorcing couples with older children, it would seem there had not been time for their marriages to unravel, and certainly not time to give up on them before attempting repair. As suddenly as a tornado destroys a summer’s day, divorce at childbirth shocks us, as it seems to strike unpredictably, discontinuous with our emotional landscape.
