Adult Children of Divorce -- Breaking the Cycle and Achieving Success in Love, Marriage and Family. By Edward W. Beal, M.D. and Gloria Hochman, Delacorte Press, 1991.

Probably all of us as divorce lawyers would say that this book focuses on an area where much insight is needed. The authors are a Washington, D.C. psychiatrist and his co-therapist. Dr. Beale is the psychiatrist whose testimony proved so persuasive to the Court of Appeals in MED v. JPM, 3 Va. App. 391, 350 S.E. 2d 215 (1986).

And the insights are here: just about all of them. After spending a large section of the book describing divorce itself and its impact on families and children, the authors address such topics as "growing up faster, when children and parents switch roles, the anxieties of courtship, "Are you behaviorally mature?", and "Safeguarding your marriage." Of course one section of the book is entitled "Breaking the Cycle."

Beal and Hochman's main concentration is on describing the problem, but that description is accomplished in very alarming, if familiar, terms. The authors point to studies that indicate one child in every ten will see his or her parents divorce, experience one remarriage, and go through the parent's second divorce all before age 16. They note that for 1989, there was still approximately one divorce for every two marriages -- indicating that a vast proportion of today's children will grow up living with only one parent.

Intended for the maximum popular consumption, the book makes its points mostly in the anecdotal form of pseudonymous case histories. At times the authors' valid insights are distractingly dressed in the cliches of the "co-dependency/recovery" movement. This should nevertheless be only a minor irritant to active divorce lawyers, whose experience independently corroborates how valid the authors' observations are.

Treated here with great sensitivity are the adult victim's fear in approaching adult intimate relationships, the inability to trust, the lack of a usable "model" in the past for a lasting or a satisfying marriage, etc. Some less predictable long-lasting effects of divorce are very usefully treated here as well. "When Children and Parents Switch Roles" is a discussion of a rather frightening pattern of dependency.

The authors observe that the female children of divorce are even more likely than the males to make unwise marriage choices, have unsatisfactory marriages, and be less reluctant to end them. They note how some of the children of divorce are able to rationalize cutting off relations with their parents completely so that for decades they share nothing with the aged parent but an almost insufferable burden of guilt. Other adults do obviously irrational things with their own lives only to demonstrate how much the divorce of their own parents hurt them years before.

This book's writing style is evidentally designed to engage and hold the attention of young readers. However, there is something for the lawyer here as well. It should be quite useful to attorneys who see discouraging behavior in their own clients and wish to know what is going on psychologically. The book should also be of great value to the lawyer who wants to have a few useful things to say to the divorcing client who is concerned with minimizing the harmful impact of divorce on the family's children over the long run.

Perhaps inevitably, this book, like so many of its kind, concludes its case-history vignettes with assurances that the sufferer got help and is now better. Is useful to an attorney to know that a given feeling or behavior traceable to a long-ago divorce is recognized by professionals as a pathology amenable to treatment. This can make referral to mental-health professionals easier.

Many divorce lawyers who look over this book will want to see their clients read it. One by-product of the bibliotherapy may be that some couples with children are scared into permanent reconciliation.