ABSTRACT
One of the most commonly asked questions about divorce is whether it is better to stay in an unhappy conflictual marriage for the sake of the children or to get divorced. In attempting to answer that question researchers have used two main strategies. First, a few investigators have compared the adjustment of children whose parents later divorce to those who do not divorce. The assumption in these studies is that marital conflict and dysfunction will have affected the adjustment of children before divorce and that many of the adverse effects on children's adjustment attributed to divorce are related to earlier marital conflict. Children whose parents later divorce show more problems than those in families that later remain intact; however, even with these predivorce levels of adjustment controlled there are significant differences in the adjustment of children in divorced and non-divorced families (Amato & Booth, 1996; Amato & Keith, 1991a; Block, Block, & Gjerde, 1986; Cherlin et al., 1991).
