Does Divorce Hurt Kids?

Not so very much, says the latest major study. But it contradicts the one before it, so who's right?

Here's an old bit from a stand-up comic's act: "Some say the glass is half empty. Some say it is half full. I say it's twice as big as it needs to be."

This is a story of glasses, not nearly empty, not quite full. Except that the glasses are the children of divorce--a million new ones each year in the U.S.--and what's being measured is their misery. For decades, since a pioneering study by Judith S. Wallerstein in 1971, sociologists and family-health specialists have posited that the wrenching act of divorce and its aftermath leave scars that can linger--in...

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