We're Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parents' Divorce

by Constance Ahrons

What is the real legacy of divorce? Constance Ahrons, Ph.D., author of the highly praised The Good Divorce, decided to find out by expanding her landmark study to include in-depth interviews with 173 grown children whose divorcing parents she interviewed twenty years earlier. What she has learned is both heartening and significant.

In We're Still Family, Ahrons challenges the myth that children of divorce are troubled, drug abusing, academically challenged, and unable to form adult relationships. Instead she provides new evidence that the legacy of divorce is not as devastating as some researchers have suggested. Major findings show

Most of these young adults emerged stronger and wiser in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- their parents' divorces and remarriages.
The majority were very clear that their parents' divorce had positive outcomes, not only for their parents but for themselves as well.
More than half felt that their relationships with their fathers actually improved after the divorce.
While their new families of stepparents and half-siblings may look different from other families, the majority of these young adults feel connected to the family members who make up their world.Divorce is never easy for any family, but it does not have to destroy children's lives or lead to family breakdown. By listening to the voices of these grown children, divorcing parents will learn what they can do to maintain family bonds. They will find helpful road maps identifying both the benefits and the harms to children postdivorce. Parents need to be comforted by the truth about divorce and not threatened by alarming misinformation and overblown worst-case scenarios. And they need to believe that after all is said and done, their children will look at their post divorce families and say with conviction, "We're still family."

Genres: Divorce, Marriage, Parenting

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2004

Reviews

[Rachel Croce]

Wow! This was such a great book. Ahrons was brilliant in her field - a woman who saw and understood the potential benefits and inevitable hurts of divorce. Through this book she normalizes divorce and attempts to remove the stigma around it. She poses a perspective that divorce can be neither good no bad, but has potential to be either (and that there are so many factors that go into this). However, there are statically evident things that can help families adjust more positively to such a change. She also does a great job outlining kept points when telling kids about divorce, and providing examples of things that are less helpful. Whether you are from a family of divorce or are divorced with kids, this is a great book!

[Esraa]

I recommend this book to anyone who went through divorce ( parent or child)
Most divorce children are isolated with built-up anger and blame themselves and/or their parents about the divorce
this book can help divorce children to getover this trauma and move on

[Jenny]

A common sense look at how not to mess up your kids because your relationship failed right from the kids who have suffered the ill effects of their parents' mishandling of divorce. Great book especially if you come from a family that doesn't divorce and you don't know how to handle the basics of holidays, vacations, parties, new relationships and daily life. A divorce is looked at as a positive solution to a negative situation in this book and that is exactly what it is. Because of this book my daughter has always had the sense of family and love and knows that she is not from a "broken" home. It was broken...now it's fixed!

[Thomas]

Connie Ahrons challenges the notion that divorce has long-term effects on children well into adulthood. Her study reveals a small percentage of vulnerable children. Her results state that most children navigate the difficulties of divorce and go on to lead normal, healthy lives. Although, I think she understates the effects of divorce on the long-term well-being of children who become adult children in a similar way that Wallerstein overstates it. But this is important research and analysis regardless of its philosophical viewpoint.

[Kmkelling]

I have wanted to read this book for several years as I thought it might help me with my custody cases. And it really gave me some valuable information from children whose parents went through a divorce. I wonder if I should make all my parents read this book.