For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered

"A reader-friendly guide to how people can build success out of the stress and adversity of divorce." Michael Rutter, Institute of Psychiatry, London

Mavis Hetherington, "without doubt the world's preeminent researcher on the family processes that surround divorce,...has distilled the wisdom growing out of her many studies of the short-term and long-term impact of divorce on family members" (Eleanor Maccoby, Stanford University). Offering "a welcome corrective to misleading and simplistic accounts," Hetherington "not only provides scientifically sound and wonderfully sensible guidance but dispels the myth that divorce is always negative" (Ross D. Parke, University of California, Riverside). This "widely-heralded study" (Time) is a "reader-friendly guide to how people can build success out of the stress and adversity of divorce" (Michael Rutter, Institute of Psychiatry, London), presenting a more nuanced picture of marital breakup not as a momentary event but as a life process. Hetherington identifies the kinds of marriages that predispose a couple to divorce or not and also pinpoints "windows of change" that allow some to fashion the challenges of divorce into an opportunity for themselves and for their children. "Gold standard [research] aimed at clearing up confusion among moms and dads worried about divorce." USA Today "Sure to become a classic in the field!" Constance R. Ahrons, author of The Good Divorce "Without doubt the world's preeminent researcher on the family processes that surround divorce." Eleanor Maccoby, Stanford University "A welcome corrective to misleading and simplistic accounts...dispels the myth that divorce is always negative." Ross D. Parke, University of California, Riverside