Very few of these highly educated and successful men figured out how to be effective fathers outside of marriage. Twenty years later, about two-thirds of boys and three-quarters of girls had poor relationships with their fathers compared to 30 percent of children from intact marriages.
Children of divorce had double the divorce rate of children from low-conflict, intact families, thanks in part to a lower commitment to marital permanence and fewer relationship skills. Their best chance of marital success was to marry a child from an intact family.
In exchange for these grave risks, only 20 percent of adults had their lives enhanced by divorce -- another 10 percent reverted to being what Hetherington calls Competent Loners. What made people better off in the long-run? Good relationships with children, but especially a good-enough marriage. Like others, Hetherington found: "People in long-lasting, gratifying first and second marriages were better off economically, and had the lowest rates of depression, substance abuse, conduct disorders, health complaints, and visits to the doctor" along with a more satisfying sex life.
Yet something about contemporary mores is seriously undermining the road to a good marriage. Only one-third of the children Hetherington studied who were in the first seven years of marriage were very happily married, compared to more than half of their parents at that stage; 38 percent report facing a serious marital problem, compared to 20 percent of their parents at the same marital stage.
How much pain are we parents entitled to inflict on our children merely because the human spirit is resilient and can overcome much? How much are our ideas about the harmlessness of divorce undermining our ability to build lasting love?
On questions like these, Hetherington's new research provides no easy new answers.