About the Author

Elizabeth Marquardt is the director of the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan think tank focused on children, families, and civil society. Her essays and op-ed pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two children.

Reviews

There's no such thing as a "good divorce," argues Marquardt, a scholar with the Institute for American Values. Divorce harms children for the rest of their lives, she says; it turns them into "little adults" who anxiously protect their fragile parents, instead of being protected, the way they are in "intact" families. Divorce forces children to guard parental secrets-protecting Mom by not telling Dad, or vice versa. At increased risk from pedophilic attacks (from their mothers' boyfriends or new husbands) and substance abuse, "children of divorce" may also feel alienated from organized religion, although Marquardt's survey finds them more likely to feel their spirituality strengthened by adversity. Marquardt says she's based her book on her own experiences as a child of divorce and on the results of a "nationally representative survey," yet her own bias strongly colors this work. Intact-family envy-the kids with parents sit in the front pews at church, while the children of divorce sit alone in the back, eyeing them; a 20-something Marquardt "sobbing" as she tries to decide which of her divorced parents will walk her down the wedding aisle-permeates this feisty tract. Agent, Carol Mann. (On sale Sept. 27) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Marquardt, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, conducted a survey of 1500 young adults to determine how children grow up in divorced households vs. intact ones. Using the results of that survey (which she conducted in consultation with sociologist Norval Glenn, professor at the University of Texas, Austin), plus her personal experiences as a child of divorce, Marquardt certainly achieves her first goal of contributing to the literature on the effects of divorce-particularly in children's moral and spiritual development. Appendixes reproduce the survey along with the results of each question; interviews with 70 young people supplemented the survey. The book's weakness is Marquardt's obvious personal bias. In her concluding chapter, and in fact throughout the text, she suggests that strong marriages are the answer to young people's needs. While few would disagree with this concept, it represents a largely unattainable ideal for society. Marquardt's viewpoint, however, is valuable to the dialog on the effects of divorce, which recommends this book to most public and academic libraries to supplement the likes of Judith Wallerstein's The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce.-Kay Brodie, Chesapeake Coll., Wye Mills, MD Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.