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For Better or Worse: Divorce Reconsidered
By E. Mavis Hetherington
W.W. Norton &Co.
320 pp $26.95

Hearing about a really wonderful divorce is like hearing about a truly terrific train wreck. It just doesn't happen. Divorce is nasty, brutish, and, all too often, prolonged.

Like death, divorce has few proponents. It has been implicated in the scarring of countless children. It has shattered individuals, families, and, some would argue, society. It enriches only the lawyers. Almost 50 percent of American marriages end in tatters. The comic Rita Rudner exaggerates only slightly when she says: "Whenever I date a guy, I think: Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?"

With divorce enjoying that kind of reputation, a scientific study of its consequences might seem like an exercise in quantifying bleakness. How bad is it? How many children of divorce go on to failed marriages themselves? How broke are divorced mothers juggling low-paying jobs and childcare? Beset by huge support payments and separated from the children they love, how many middle-aged men plunge into despair?

All these things happen, of course, as E. Mavis Hetherington is quick to point out in For Better or For Worse. But Hetherington, the psychologist behind one of the most comprehensive studies of divorce ever, is more forceful about the surprise findings in her 30-year investigation. "Much current writing on divorce has exaggerated its negative effects and ignored its sometimes considerable positive effects," she writes. "I have seen divorce provide many women and girls, in particular, with a remarkable opportunity for life-transforming personal growth."

To illustrate, Hetherington tells stories of newly divorced women who start businesses, find more loving mates, and generally grow to relish independence. One sports a bumper sticker on her car: I USED TO LIVE ALONE BUT NOW I'M DIVORCED.

As a research psychologist at the University of Virginia, Hetherington orchestrated what other experts point to as the mother of all divorce studies -- an exhaustive examination of 1,400 families, about half of them fragmented and half intact. Over three decades, she and her associates interviewed the families time and again. They administered questionnaires and standardized tests. Sometimes they sat and observed family dinners; for certain periods they had parents jot down their feelings every half hour, three days a week.

"If a person was having sex, she had to note that in the diary," writes Hetherington, who is now a professor emerita. "The same was true if she were out on a date, having a fight at work, sitting in a singles bar, arguing with her mother, or trying to soothe an upset child."

This orgy of disclosure did not reveal dysfunction to the degree Hetherington expected. In fact, some of the conclusions she and co-writer John Kelly convey in For Better or For Worse might be soothing to someone who has had a divorce or is contemplating one. While Year One after a divorce is almost universally horrible, think of yourself two years out, Hetherington advises, citing the couples in her study.

"By the end of the second year, a substantial number of women were on a road that, one day, would lead them to independence, self-discovery, fulfillment and enhancement," she writes. "Most men were also adjusting reasonably well to their new situation." And, yes, by all means worry about the kids -- but don't obsess. Judging by the 2,500 youngsters she tracked beyond childhood, the chances are they'll wind up just fine or at least okay, Hetherington says.

Such upbeat observations fly in the face of popular wisdom. In the last few years, at least 19 state legislatures have considered laws aimed at stemming divorce. Oklahoma's governor has proposed channeling welfare dollars into programs to keep couples together. In Florida, high school students must take marriage-education classes. In Louisiana, Arkansas and Arizona, couples can sign on for "covenant marriages" with sharp restrictions on the circumstances under which they can split.

Popular books have elaborated on the theme of divorce as disaster. In The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, California psychologist Judith Wallerstein followed the children of broken marriages in affluent Marin County, concluding that many were hobbled by their parents' divorce well into their own adulthood. Her critics contend that Wallerstein isn't entitled to any sweeping conclusions because she studied only 59 families. They also point out that she failed to study intact families for comparison, as Hetherington did.

In For Better or For Worse, the question isn't how deeply kids will be scarred but how soon their wounds will heal. "Most of the young men and women from my divorced families looked a lot like their contemporaries from non-divorced homes," Hetherington writes. "Although they looked back on their parents' breakup as a painful experience, most were successfully going about the chief tasks of young adulthood: establishing careers, creating intimate relationships, building meaningful lives for themselves." Some even wound up stronger, she contends.

At the same time, Hetherington points out that 25 percent of the adult children of divorce in her study suffered from "serious social, emotional, or psychological problems." Meanwhile, just 10 percent of their counterparts from intact families were similarly afflicted. That one group of kids lives with more than twice the risk of long-term problems wouldn't strike many gamblers as encouraging odds.

However, Hetherington prefers a cheerier, glass-half-full view of the situation: "Divorce does not inevitably produce permanent scars," she writes. "Parents can buffer a child against many of the stresses associated with both divorce and life in a single-parent home."

A reminder not to expect "instant love" from stepchildren can only be helpful. But when Hetherington indulges in the self-help writer's penchant to subdivide and label, it can sometimes seem like self-parody. In her book, a divorced person will fall into one of several categories, such as the Enhanced, the Good Enoughs, or, sadly, the Defeated. If you're married, you and your spouse may have one of a variety of relationship types, including the Disengaged Marriage ("What's your name again?") and the Operatic Marriage (lots of yelling, great sex).

Chapters are summed up with "points to remember" that are sometimes eminently forgettable: "Seek out resources and use them. Just remember, opportunity only knocks; someone has to get up and let it in." But those are quibbles.

Hetherington delivers in clear and unflinching terms the key points of the exhaustive study that has been her life's work. Whether readers find her message of hope overstated may just depend on whether they find their married lives half-good -- or half-bad.

-- Steve Chawkins is a reporter and columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has been a reporter and editor at the Rocky Mountain News and has written for numerous other publications.

First published June 10, 2002
Last updated December 4, 2007
Copyright © 2002 Consumer Health Interactive