Judy went to the Berkeley library to see what had been written about how children react to divorce. And found nothing.
The remedy was the “California Children of Divorce Study” which Judy and her colleague Joan Berlin Kelly launched in 1971. They recruited 60 families with 131 children between the ages of 3 and 18 at the point the marriage dissolved, when life as everyone knew it began to unravel. The parents were middle class and well educated. The children had been well cared for.
Judy personally interviewed every man, woman, and child at the time of separation (followed by divorce) and, for the vast majority, every five years afterward for the next quarter of a century. The study turned into an unprecedented longitudinal examination of the effects of divorce on the American family.
Judy’s methodology was based on intimate case studies. She talked with each person over many hours, probing for feelings and insights. For years, she held each child “in her head,” remembering every dream they reported, every fantasy, every frustration. Huge files containing these case studies are still stored downstairs at her home on Belvedere Island in Marin.
Judith Wallerstein and divorce: how one woman changed the way we think about breakups.