Children in crisis speak out

This chapter illustrates the way children and young people experience parental separation using verbatim extracts from a multidisciplinary Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) research study that the author took part with colleagues at Cardiff University. The study was just one of a number of other researches around the turn of the century that sought to examine children's experiences of divorce and family reconstruction. These reflected a cultural shift across the Western world that is a reaction against the traditional highly paternalistic view of childhood. The extracts selected broadly follow the children's reactions to key stages in the deterioration of their parents' relationship before, during and after the divorce.