Is the life-transforming experience of divorce ever good? Is anything in the experience beneficial?

I think it is enormously beneficial to have the example of parents who take constructive action on their own behalf and really are able to understand all that's involved in the very difficult demands of the years right after the divorce. Parents are rebuilding their lives, maintaining parenting and finances -- all of which is overwhelming. I think it can be a great example of courage and responsible adulthood. But there has to be an improvement in the quality of life for the child so they can see the benefit.

The child should not feel that his life has diminished. He should be allowed to benefit from the divorce -- not just be told that his life is better. If there is going to be all this discombobulation, I think you have to say to the child, "It's going to be pretty messed up here for the next couple of months, and I will try to keep you informed about everything that is going on, and we will try to talk about these things, but we are going to come out of this." And I think it is very useful to use old-fashioned words and say things like "We are all going to be brave. I'm going to make this work." I think there are ways to approach this that can make it not a pleasant experience, but an important growth experience for the child.

What is your take on the fathers movement and its impact on children of divorce?

I think it's both good and bad. What is wonderful about it is the recognition by fathers that they want to be fathers, and that they want to be fathers in the family and outside the family and that they treat this part of their lives with respect and with affection. What is bad about it is that it has increased the sense of dividing up the child, as if the child were an inanimate object. It has led to a great increase in joint custody -- whether or not it is good for the child.

It may be great for Jimmy and awful for Mary Anne. It may be great for Jimmy at age 4 but terrible for him at age 8. A child is a moving object, and a lot of demands of the fathers movement have been strident and not sufficiently attuned to the child. There is this simplistic cry of "I'm a father, look at me!" Well, bully for you. That's not enough.

The fathers have relied a little too much on court orders to maintain their roles. There is no substitute for winning the child's respect and affection on our own, for bending to that relationship, putting into it what it needs.

In defense of fathers, I will say that they remarry faster than women and that to be a father in two families, or even three, requires a hero. And I don't think we can expect people to be heroes. It is hard enough these days to be ordinary people.

I was interested in your statement in the book about how children of divorced parents are less likely to care for those parents later in life. What will be the impact of the abandonment of divorced parents by their children?

I picked this up by surprise. One young man said, "My dad has prostate cancer and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be there for him; he wasn't here for me." It's tit for tat. They want a parent who was faithful, and where they felt a parent had been faithful, that was something they felt they owed back. It is a classic case of "You reap what you sow." I think a lot of people haven't realized that. I just chanced on this, and then a study came out of Johns Hopkins saying that it was a widespread phenomenon that children wouldn't support stepfathers or parents they felt had been unfaithful. It is a very human thing, but it is a rude awakening. All these little pigeons come home to roost.

What is the case for marriage? Could your study be seen as a case against marriage?

I've been married for 53 years [she laughs] -- that is a case for marriage. It's true that the book is about how perilous marriage can be. There is a case for marriage: It is that life is lonely and that adults need love and friendship and companionship. And as one of my friends said, "A dog is faithful but that's not the same."

The case for marriage is that we need to feel that there is at least one person in the whole wide world with whom you have absolute priority. What I have always felt about my husband is that he would find me. If there were an earthquake, I know that he would look for me forever. And that makes a difference in your whole life -- that is what makes it worthwhile. Of course, if you have a really good marriage, there is lots of other stuff too.

Can we duplicate this by living together without benefit of clergy? Of course some people can. I think that's a given. But heartbreak is heartbreak -- if you break up, even if you aren't married, you can't avoid that. Essentially, it is true legally that if you don't marry you don't divorce, but it is not true that you don't break your heart.

This has been such a long haul. Is this work depressing for you? Exhausting?

It isn't, partly because a lot of these kids ended up doing well. But I did get distressed about the kids who had had no parenting, where they didn't have any parenting before or after divorce, so the divorce essentially brought them nothing but financial problems.

I also was very distressed about the number of kids who didn't get help going to college, especially the ones in states where child support ends at age 18. I knew, and they knew, that had their parents stayed married, they would have gone to college with a lot of financial help. It's a terrible finding.

So there are very depressing parts of this. But when it was getting to me, I wrote that book on the good marriage ["The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts"]. I had a ball with that book. It was a book about married couples where he said, "This is a heck of a great marriage," and she said, "This is a heck of a great marriage." That was fun. It was fun for them, fun for me.

To what extent do your personal experience and that of your family have an impact on your work?

It has an enormous impact on me. I've had a cheering squad, I've had my own clique. I'm not married to a man who is jealous. He's tickled: He has put together a scrapbook about me and my work. And the kids are delighted. I have a son who is a professor of political science at Northwestern, and he called up and said, "I couldn't stop reading your book, Mom. It's the best work you've ever done." That's nice.

Does your experience make it hard for you to understand how people can get to the point of divorce? Your experience of life is completely different.

No, it's not hard to understand -- it includes my best friends. I live in the world; I live in the same divorce culture. I know that everybody's got a threshold and that divorce is not occurring necessarily because of high conflict but because of being lonely in a marriage. The central function of marriage is to assuage that loneliness. A lot of times I want to say to somebody: "What took you so long?"

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