Word: hetheringtons
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...widely heralded study, published this week, indicates that the glass isn't quite full but isn't cracked either. In For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered (W.W. Norton; 320 pages; $26.95), E. Mavis Hetherington, a psychology professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, and her co-author John Kelly declare that 75% to 80% of children of divorce are functioning well, with little long-term damage. The claims are sure to stir debate over the delicate, brutal decision to end a marriage. They have already riled other family researchers...
...book tries to give a more optimistic look than people like Judith Wallerstein have done," Hetherington says. "A lot of the current work makes it sound as if you've given your kids a terminal disease when they go through a divorce. I am not pro-divorce. I think people should work harder on their marriages: support each other and weather the rough spots. And divorce is a painful experience. I've never seen a victimless divorce--where the mother, father or child didn't suffer extreme distress when the family broke up. But 75% to 80% do recover...
...Hetherington found that 25% of children from divorced families have serious social, emotional or psychological problems, as opposed to 10% of kids from intact families. That's 2 1/2 times the risk--on its face, a stat worth worrying over. Hetherington acknowledges the gap between kids in nuclear and postnuclear families: "You can say, 'Wow, that's twice as big,' as some clinicians like Wallerstein do. But what it also means is that 75% of kids are functioning within the normal range. People don't focus on the resiliency of children...
...academe, people are focusing on the Hetherington-Wallerstein debate--a battle of superstars. Both women earned degrees from Berkeley (Wallerstein is also a senior lecturer emeritus there). Hetherington is 75, Wallerstein 79; both are in marriages that have lasted 40-plus years. But their methods vary sharply. Hetherington amassed data on thousands of kids; Wallerstein intimately interviewed about 60. One tactic is broad but shallow, the other deep but narrow...
...Hetherington never interviewed any child," Wallerstein says. "I've talked to children for thousands of hours. I was interested in what they think, what they wish for. And as adults, these young people were frightened of failure, frightened of commitment, afraid they were going to follow in their parents' footsteps. She doesn't have that. I don't think her study adds to our understanding of children and adults of divorce, and I'm sorry that it doesn...