The legal termination of a marriage.

The unprecedented rise in the U.S. divorce rate over the past 30 years has had significant consequences for the nation's children, over a million of whom are affected by divorce every year. The U.S. Bureau of the Census has predicted that 40% of children growing up in America in the 1990s will experience the breakup of parental marriages.

Common childhood and adolescent reactions to parental divorce include a continuing desire for the parents to reunite; fears of desertion; feelings of guilt over having been responsible for the divorce; developmental regression; sleep disorders; and physical complaints. While researchers have found that some children recover from the trauma of divorce within one to three years, recent longterm studies have documented persistent negative effects that can follow a child into adolescence and beyond, especially with regard to the formation of intimate relationships later in life...