ABSTRACT
When Richard Gardner’s textbook, Family Evaluation in Child Custody Litigation, appeared in 1982, it filled a vital need in the growing divorce industry. It came at a time which capped off a decade of surging divorce rates and the gradual involvement of psychologists and psychiatrists as experts to assist the court in making custodial decisions about the children of these divorces. The passage of the first “no fault” divorce law in California in 1969 is often used as a marker to gauge the beginning of the divorce revolution in the United States. Prior to that time, divorce was rather infrequent, and the party seeking the divorce had to obtain the divorce by proving the other party had engaged in morally egregious behavior-adultery, desertion, physical or mental abuse, drunkenness, drug addiction, imprisonment, or insanity. With the passage of no-fault divorce laws all over the country, divorces were much easier to obtain and did not carry the rancor and moral stigma that they had prior to that time. Demographer Paul Glick (1979) noted that the proportion of children living with only one parent doubled between 1960 and 1978, from 9% to 18.6%. He predicted that the number would increase to 25% by 1990. He estimated that the proportion of children whose parents would divorce before they turned 18 was about 28% in 1976 (as compared with 12.6% in 1960), and that it would rise to 33% by 1990.
