According to her research, divorce is harmful to children's ability to deal with the challenges of the teenage and early-adult years and affects their efforts to form their own romantic relationships well into their 20s and 30s.

Miss Wallerstein began her research in the 1970s just as the American divorce rate began to soar upward. At the time, she noted, divorce was commonly viewed as a "transient, minor upheaval in the life of a child." Her research followed 131 middle-class children for 25 years, beginning just as their parents' marriages broke up. "Unlike the adult experience," she concluded, "the child's suffering does not reach its peak at the breakup and then level off. The effect of the parents' divorce is played and replayed throughout the first three decades of the children's lives."

We should not find it surprising that God, who desires a family relationship with humanity, says, "I hate divorce" (Sources: The Washington Post; Malachi 2:16, New International Version.)