Steven Specht wrote:
> You should really check out Cherlin et al. (1991)* which suggests that
> the behavioral problems seen in children from "divorced homes" precede
> the divorce of the parents (the ole causation/correlation
> problem). It's required reading for my methods class.
Since I'm already in OVID, here's that abstract...
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Science. Vol 252(5011), Jun 1991, 1386-1389.
Abstract
Longitudinal surveys in Britain and the US investigated the effects of
divorce on children who were in 2-parent families during the initial
interviews at age 7 in the British data and at ages 7-21 in the US data.
British and US Ss were reinterviewed at age 11 and ages 11-26, respectively.
Children whose parents divorced or separated between the 2 time points were
compared to children whose families remained intact. For boys, the apparent
effect of separation or divorce on behavior problems and achievement at the
later time point was reduced by considering behavior problems, achievement
levels, and family difficulties present at the earlier time point. For
girls, the reduction in the apparent effect of divorce occurred to a lesser
extent once preexisting conditions were considered. ((c) 1997 APA/PsycINFO,
all rights reserved)
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Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
