Broken Homes, and Hearts

Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, by Elizabeth Marquardt (Crown, 191 pp., $24.95)

The story told by first-time author Elizabeth Marquardt could easily have descended to the maudlin: just one more Gen-Xer relating the sad but not especially tragic course of her life. What saves her book, and turns it instead into a fresh, cogent, and compelling testimony, is the bonding of the author’s personal story to solid, new social research. Marquardt shows “just how radical divorce really is,” how it “powerfully changes the structure of childhood itself,” and how growing up in a divorced family “is like growing up in a different culture.” Indeed, in the wake of the no-fault-divorce revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s, one-quarter of all American young adults are now the children of divorce. She gives these hitherto silent millions a needed public voice.

AC

About the Author

Allan C. Carlson

Allan C. Carlson is the John A. Howard Distinguished Fellow for Family and Religious Studies International Organization for the Family.

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Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, by Elizabeth Marquardt (Crown, 191 pp., $24.95)

The story told by first-time author Elizabeth Marquardt could easily have descended to the maudlin: just one more Gen-Xer relating the sad but not especially tragic course of her life. What saves her book, and turns it instead into a fresh, cogent, and compelling testimony, is the bonding of the author’s personal story to solid, new social research. Marquardt shows “just how radical divorce really is,” how it “powerfully changes the structure of childhood itself,” and how growing up in a divorced family “is like growing up in a different culture.” Indeed, in the wake of the no-fault-divorce revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s, one-quarter of all American young adults are now the children of divorce. She gives these hitherto silent millions a needed public voice.