Children of divorce: preliminary report of a ten-year follow-up of young children.

Early findings from a ten-year follow-up of youngsters, now in their teens, whose parents had divorced when they were between two-and-one-half and six years old, suggest that those who were youngest at the time of the marital breakup fared better in the ensuing years than their older siblings, who experienced more difficulty in dealing with troubled memories of family strife. Issues of adjustment in this group of youngsters are examined, based on semistructured clinical interviews with 30 children and 40 parents.