from II - Turning points: changes in life trajectories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2009
The divorce of one's parents can be a crucial and formative experience with powerful impact on the rest of one's life. Time and time again, retrospective reports focus on divorce as a “turning point” in the life of a family and its individual members (Clausen 1990). The experience of parental divorce is part of the fabric of life for significant numbers of U.S. children, with estimates suggesting that 30% to 50% will see their parents’ marriages end. The divorce rate for remarried couples (49%) is slightly higher than the divorce rate for first marriages (47%); thus, many children experience divorce repeatedly (Crosbie-Burnett 1994). In addition, there is mixed evidence concerning the beneficial or ameliorative effects of parental remarriage for children (Zill, Morrison, & Coiro 1993) and ample evidence that – whether in a single-parent home or a remarried/stepparent home – children whose parents have divorced exhibit more behavior problems and lower levels of social competency than children from “intact” homes (Hetherington & Clingempeel 1992).
“Demographers who try to portray the family experiences of children are scratching their heads, wondering how to capture the complex life courses that many children born in the 1980s and 1990s will follow” (Furstenberg & Cherlin 1991, p. 12). Although there is some suggestion of a stabilization or even a decline in the rate of divorce in the 1990s, the influences of divorce experiences pervade contemporary life and figure centrally in most analyses of child and adult health and well-being.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.