What About the Kids? - Raising Your Children Before, During, and After Divorce, by Judith Wallerstein & Sandra Blakeslee. 2003. Hyperion.

Wallerstein's books have been difficult for me, being, as I am, a divorced parent. Perhaps I've just not wanted to hear the bitter truth about the ways in which divorce messes up the lives of children. But I also found her tone condescending and her stance overly pessimistic. It was therefore refreshing to me when an editor e-mailed me to ask if I would review Wallerstein's latest, What About the Kids?, which focuses on how parents can help their kids not only live through a divorce, but go on to prosper despite the pain.

Pain there always is. Wallerstein tells it like it is, in this regard, as, by now, we expect her to. You can't have worked with as many divorced children and families as she has without learning that divorce always entails pain--even when there has been obvious physical violence in a marital relationship and you might think everyone, including the kids, would be glad to be out of it.

In this book Wallerstein does more than detail the pain as the kids experience it...she gives parents wonderful tools, tips, a full-range guide to how to minimize the pain and cut parents' and childrens' losses in order to begin a new life.

Divorce, she points out, is a lifetime proposition when the people who are divorcing have borne children. In divorce, a parent is faced with three major challenges: to get your own life under control, to prepare children for the breakup and support them through it, and to create a NEW relationship between yourself and your ex.

The book gives you specific advice about myriad details, including what to say to what age and sex child, when to say it, who to bring into your confidence, considerations when planning custody and visitation. Here's what she had to say about a situation common to divorced parents: the kid doesn't want to visit the other parent--

"Children refuse to visit a parent for many reasons. . . . Many young children have difficulty separating from their mothers. . . Sometimes one parent really is difficult to be with, or is boring or unpleasant, or asks the child to do things he doesn't like. This is not at all uncommon. Parents whose children object to visiting are likely to be the architects of their own predicament. Some children refuse to visit because they're genuinely worried about the parent left alone. Or they may be highly critical of a [parent's] behavior during the marriage and divorce without having been influenced at all by [the other parent]. Children have a moral sensibility and a capacity to think that is not a product of progaganda by a parent." (pp 243-44)

Here I love her tone and her advice, and generally believe that throughout the book her views are sound and based on her extensive experience. I definitely recommend the book. If I have any caveat, it is that her directions to parents at times assume a financial capacity that not all parents will enjoy. Nonetheless, if you are a divorcing parent with limited means, the essential advice here is still excellent, and you need not buy the book--get it at the public library.

Recommended for all parents who are considering divorce, going through it, or have survived it, whether well or poorly.

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The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, by Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee. Hyperion, New York, 2000.

It took me several weeks to open the publisher's review copy of Wallerstein et al.'s latest. I told myself that my resistance was based on what I had decided was Wallerstein's vendetta against divorce. Divorced myself and certain that she would both condemn me and tell me just how greatly I'd hurt my children, I just didn't want to hear it.

Surprise: Wallerstein's book does not condemn divorce -- she points out that the "no fault" divorce laws passed in the 1960's meant a new freedom for people trapped in miserable marriages who before those laws were passed could not find a way out. She also writes that adults who have grown up in homes where misery and violence have been part of the daily fare, but where divorce did not occur, may find that they are unable to leave a similarly miserable marriage in their own adult lives.

The authors do, however, let me know the particular ways in which I, and other parents who have divorced, probably have hurt our children. Here's the rub: I don't know anyone who has gotten a divorce who thinks it wasn't hard for the kids, that there haven't been some, at least, bad effects.

What Wallerstein's group has done is to talk to young adults whose parents divorced during their childhoods and ask them how the divorce affected them. My reluctance to read the book is probably typical of divorced parents: we know we've hurt the kids, we think we know how, and we don't particularly want to hear the facts, thank you.

Yet I found it very enlightening and helpful to read these young adults' accounts of ways they felt the divorce in their family had affected their lives during their childhood and teen years, and even now, during their adult years. If anything, the book gives parents who have divorced a better chance to help their growing or grown children experience fewer deleterious effects. As usual, "What you don't know can hurt you." When parents don't have all of the information, they can't act in the best interests of their offspring.

Yes, there were parts of the book that were troublesome: I hated it when the authors seemed to embroider the happy childhood memories recalled by young adults who grew up in so-called "intact" families where the parents' marriage was "good enough." Sometimes it felt as if Wallerstein were enjoying pointing out the happiness of these lucky ones, at the expense of the rest of us.

But the parts to hate are few, relative to the parts of the book that make a real contribution to adults whose own parents divorced, parents who have experienced a divorce in a marriage where children were involved, counselors, teachers, legislators, and, especially perhaps, family court judges and attorneys. The authors correctly, I think, object to the ways in which the courts like to "declare" what will be done with children during divorce proceedings, without giving the children a say in what happens to them and, especially, without checking back after handing down their edicts to see how it turned out for the kids.

If anything, Wallerstein wants to be a voice for the children of divorce. She succeeds well enough for you to read the book.

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How to Help Your Child Overcome Your Divorce: A Support Guide for Families, by Elissa P. Benedek, MD, and Catherine F. Brown, M.Ed.

A constructive response to the books that highlight the destructive effects of divorce. Useful for parents of children of all ages. See also Wallerstein, What About the Kids?

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Breaking Apart: A Memoir of Divorce, by Wendy Swallow. Hyperion, 2001.

Wendy Swallow's book, "Breaking Apart," fully justifies the double-entendre intended by its title: she and her husband and her children all break as they are coming apart from one another. Then, they mend. Slowly, and only after a great deal of pain. But the message of the book is that mending is possible--if you work at it. Hard.

And in this respect, "Breaking Apart" is a wonderful book. Despite a negative review of it by a fellow journalist published on Amazon.com's page, I found it exactly the opposite of self-pitying. Swallow addresses her deficits, fears, and foibles with objectivity and compassion. She doesn't glorify divorce, and she doesn't glorify marriage. Which may be more than we can say for Wallerstein, at times.

I found "Breaking Apart" compelling and would not hesitate to recommend it to clients going through a divorce where there are children involved. Read it and weep--and laugh--and celebrate how people who continue to love one another if not in the same way as when they were married, nevertheless are capable of making good lives for themselves and their children.

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