Children’s accounts of family change

In public and practitioner discourse and in the research literature, separation and divorce are generally presented as distressing and damaging, especially for children. Numerous studies have looked at the effects of household change upon children focusing upon the economic effects, the relational aspects and the psychological (dis)stress (Maclean and Eekelaar 1997). Much of this research has been on the long-term effects and has focused upon behavioural outcomes rather than upon the perceptions and interpretations of the experience (see Richards 1996; Maclean and Eekelaar 1997 for an overview of the research). Children’s own accounts of their experiences of household change are much less well documented.