What About the Kids?: Raising Your Children Before, During, and After Divorce

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From the New York Times bestselling author of The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce — a groundbreaking guide that tells parents what they need to know to protect their children at the time of the breakup and in the many years that follow within the post-divorce and remarried family.The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce gave us new and important insight into the long-term effects of divorce on children who have grown into adulthood. What About the Kids? is a new book that tells parents in unprecedented detail how to help their children over the long haul — what to say, what to do, what to expect — every step of the way. Tapping into the latest findings on how children develop, this clearly written guidebook helps parents understand why children at different ages react the way they do to divorce and how to head off trouble before it begins. The book follows divorce chronologically so parents can find advice for whatever stage of the experience they are in, including how to help older children many years after the breakup. —Part One: The Immediate Breakup What you need to know to get your own life back on track, what to tell the children, how children react, the reasons for their reactions, and thoughts on when is the best time to divorce. —Part Two: The First Few Years Setting routines, getting legal help, choosing the right custody to fit your child, finding support, and how to realistically follow the advice "don't fight." —Part Three: Assessing the Post-Divorce Family Five and Ten Years Down the Road. Take another close look at yourself and your kids. Divorce requires a new kind of father, mother, and teenager. —Part Four: When Outsiders Join the Family. Dating, sex, remarriage, blended families, holidays, and what step-parents need to know. —Part Five: Conversations for a Lifetime. How to talk with your children as they enter young adulthood so they feel safe and free to seek relationships based on love, trust, and mutual commitment. What About the Kids? is the ultimate resource for any person wishing to ease the effects of divorce on children, and for all divorced parents who want to ensure their children's future happiness. Judith S. Wallerstein is the founder and executive director of the Center for the Family in Transition. She is senior lecturer emerita at the School of Social Welfare at the University of California at Berkeley, where she has taught for 26 years. She is the author, with Sandra Blakeslee, of the national bestsellers The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts and Second Chances: Men, Women, and Children a Decade After Divorce, and with Dr. Joan Berlin Kelly, of Surviving the Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope with Divorce. She lives in Belvedere, California. Sandra Blakeslee is an award-winning science writer who contributes regularly to the New York Times. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.