ABSTRACT
Why are we (John Harvey and Mark Fine) writing this book? We are writing it because the loss of one’s close, intimate relationships is a daunting, sometimes devastating experience that each one of us will experience in life. It also has been occurring at a contagious rate for the last 30 years in U.S. society and now stretches to most parts of the Western world. All of us will experience such losses in the form of breakups of romantic relations, and millions of us will be directly affected by divorce in our lives. All of us will be affected at least indirectly by cultural changes attributable to divorce (e.g., see later discussion about the increased role of grandparents in taking on primary parenting duties in the 21st century).
