At Slate, it's Back to the 70s

It’s like something from a time capsule buried in the 1970s and recently unsealed. Out of nowhere, Slate published this strange and at-odds-with-the-science article extolling divorce. Back in the 70s, when no-fault divorce was coming into its own backed by a second-wave feminism that told women they’re in constant peril from their husbands, the non-stop narrative held that concern about divorce was just an artifact of patriarchal times, that no adult should be shackled to a less than ideal marriage and that, with adult unhappiness out of the way, the kids would be fine. That message was long on feminist ideology and short on empirical fact. Over the next four decades, we learned its many errors that demolish the “divorce is harmless” narrative.

That Slate should, at this very late date, cough up a screed peddling those same long-debunked claims is simply bizarre. If the article is any indication, progressivism is scraping bottom. This informed takedown by sociologist Nicholas Wolfinger covers a few of the high points of the actual science on divorce and child well-being. …

In other words, once they’ve grown up, adults can heal from the trauma of family breakup. But that’s a long way from saying they didn’t suffer as kids, sometimes terribly, during and after the divorce.