ABSTRACT
In some communities, however, family courts have been set up with a referee, usually a trained social worker and psychologist, whose business it is to mediate between the contending would-be divorcees in an effort to reconcile them. The image of the deceased spouse may at times arise in fantasy and may benefit or injure the relations in the new family situation. There is a division of opinion among students of the family and of personality about the effects of divorce upon the children. Youngsters brought up in a household marked by quarreling, violence, and conflict between the parents are often characterized by nervousness, distraction, divided affection, and mental confusion. The more conservative leaders of religion and morals who have commented on divorce in the country tend to assume that it is a sort of social disease. They have advocated stricter laws prohibiting dissolution of marriage as one device among others to forestall this “pathological” condition, as they view it.
