ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses the child's loss of parental relationships as the major stressor in divorce, other losses are involved, also. It considers some of these stressors and how offspring of divorce cope. The divorce process leads to inevitable changes in offsprings' relationships with people to whom they are emotionally attached. Familiarity with the divorce experience may contribute to the understanding of stress and of coping. Significantly, a single stressor is unlikely to result in distress requiring psychological or psychiatric intervention. A national study of over 300 children whose parents had separated or divorced showed that some had frequently discussed separation, whereas others had done so only occasionally. Changes require mental energy to deal with new events; some changes are stressful because they involve the loss of the familiar or people to whom there is attachment, albeit at a level lower than that for parents.
