Divorce and Kids
　　 Divorce is transforming the lives of American children.In the past World War 2 generation, more than 80 percent of children grew up with both biological parents. Today only half will do so. Each year more than a million children experience family breakup: about as many are born out of wedlock.
　 At the same time, the problems associated with family disruption have grown. Overall child well-being has declined,despite historically high public spending. The teen suicide rate has almost tripled. Juvenile crime has increased and become more violent. School performance has been poor.
　 In 1971 Judith Wallerstein, a clinical psychologist, and her staff began interviewing middle-class children in the San Francisco area at the time their parents broke up. She discovered the children seemed to be doing worse. Five years after breakup, her research shows, more than a third of the children were experiencing moderate or severe depression. At ten years a significant number to be troubled, drifting, underachieving. At 15 years many, now adults, were struggling to establish strong love relationships of their own.
　 Research shows that girls in single-parent families are at greater risk for teenage marriage, nonmarital birth, and divorce than girls in two-parent families and that this is true regardless of race or income. Also, children in disrupted families are nearly twice as likely to drop out of high school. Boys are at greater risk of dropping out than girls and are more prone to aggressive behavior.
　 Over the past 25 years Americans have been conducting a vast natural experiment in family life. The results are becoming clear. Adults have benefited from the changes, but not children. Indeed, this may be the first generation to do worse psychologically and socially than their parents. The novelist Pat Conroy has observed that"each divorce is the death of a small civilization. "No one feels this more acutely than children.