Stephanie Coontz Quotes

I have long believed that what most affects a child is not the divorce, per se, but how it is handled

Like all kids with divorced parents, I have an abundance of holidays.

For a couple with young children, divorce seldom comes as a "solution" to stress, only as a way to end one form of pain and accept another.

I get sick of that old rationalization, "We're staying together because of the children." Kids couldn't be more miserable living with parents who can't stand each other. They're far better off if there's an honest, clean divorce.

Divorce is very difficult, especially on the kids. Of course, I'm the result of my parents having stayed together, so you never know.

I know what "custody" [of the children] means. "Get even." That's all custody means. Get even with your old lady.

I was so tiny when my parents split up that I can't remember them ever being together. That was never an issue, as I guess I never went through the trauma of them splitting up.

I think the key for a child to do well in a divorce is, very simply, you have to be honest with them.

Speaking as the child of divorce, I have to say that one of the most disconcerting findings in 'The Longevity Project' focused on divorce: On average, grown children of divorced parents died almost five years earlier than children from intact families.

Of the many horrors of divorce, the most egregious is that it robs a kid of the best of both worlds. Dads can do many things that even the best moms can't, and vice versa.

That thing, 'You must stay together for the kids', is out of fashion but is right. It's not arguing parents that children don't like, it is having one parent.

My mom and dad got divorced, so it was one of those things where Sundays I'd go to Dad's apartment, and this was, say, 1970-whatever, and it had a pool table on the top floor in a very traditional kind of divorced-dad apartment building.

I came from a divorced mother and father, obviously mixed race.

My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious - like, I don't remember them ever being together.

We'll sort of get over the marriage first and then maybe look at the kids. But obviously we want a family so we'll have to start thinking about that.

Divorce in and of itself, and with children, is devastating.

Kids are important.

Divorce is not the end of the world. It's worse to stay in an unhealthy marriage. That's a worse example for the children.

My parents split up when I was young, and they are still good friends. I think it's often projected that these things have to be so acrimonious. It's so often not the case.

The word 'divorce' wasn't foreign to me. As a child of the 1970s, I grew up as part of a generation of kids whose parents got divorced, and it wasn't seen as this terrible thing. Maybe that's why I believed what my father told me and Reina that day: that everything would be okay. But it wasn't.

I can distinctly remember being the only boy in my class whose parents had separated.

Our kids come first, and we really put them at the top of our priority list.

My kids get to see me every day.

Nick spent his first years on walks in his stroller and Snugli, playing in Berkeley parks and baby gyms and visiting zoos and aquariums. His mother and I divorced when he was 4. No child benefits from the bitterness and savagery of a divorce like ours.

I'm already a stepdad but, of course, I'd like to have kids.