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Why is that?

The way that evangelical theology emphasizes the central saving role of the personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God as your Father resonates with some children of divorce. They say, My earthly parents were not there for me-or, My earthly father failed me, but in God I found that loving father figure I never had.

Also, evangelical churches do a somewhat better job of acknowledging divorce as a problem. Our mainline Protestant churches don't want to offend divorced and single parents in their congregations, so they don't reach out to the children as a consequence.

In general, most churches aren't doing a good job at reaching out to children of divorce. Of those grown children of divorce who were active in a church at the time of their parents' divorce, two-thirds said that no one from the clergy or congregation reached out to them at that time. It's really amazing. Only one-quarter said that someone did reach out to them.

How does divorce affect how the children of divorce read the Bible?

Let's take, for instance, the parable of the Prodigal Son. The children of divorce don't focus on the end of the story, when the child comes home and is welcomed by a loving parent. They focus on the beginning of the story, when someone leaves the family home. For them, it's not the child who leaves the home; it's the parent.

Their lives look more like the parable of the Prodigal Parent.

They think about the initial departure of their father or mother, which caused the divorce, or about the many comings and goings that occurred in their families throughout their childhoods because both of their parents worked. They lived separately. They dated. They remarried.

Young adults from divorced families were seven times more likely to strongly agree with the statement, I was alone a lot as a child. They say things like, I was the one who was at home trying to keep the house together, trying to keep a family unit together. One young woman told me, "When I hear the parable about the Prodigal Son, I always think maybe one of these days my dad will decide to come back, too."

How sad.

Then you realize that the parable is supposed to illustrate God's love and compassion and presence-the ever-present, steady, everlasting presence. But children of divorce see themselves in the role of the father waiting for the child to come home; that's the role of God in the story. They have to be their own protector. They have to be the one waiting in the doorway for someone else to come home. It's a scary and anxiety-producing place for a child.

We've all heard people pity some marriages by saying things like, They're just staying together for the kids. But your research suggests that staying together for the sake of the kids can be a noble and Christian thing, not a pitiable concession.

The idea of a "good" divorce is ripe for challenge. The children of so-called good divorces fare worse in many ways than those from unhappy marriages, so long as the parents' marriage was low-conflict. And what most people don't realize is that two-thirds of divorces today end low-conflict marriages.

How do the children of "good" divorces fare worse than those from unhappy, low-conflict marriages?

They're far more likely to get divorced themselves one day compared to those who grow up in unhappy, low-conflict marriages. They are far more likely to say they were alone a lot as children, to say they missed their fathers, to say they had to protect their mothers. They had more responsibility to care for younger siblings than those from intact families.

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March 2006, Vol. 50, No. 3