Developmental Differences in Children's Understanding of Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage

One hundred and nineteen children in kindergarten, second, and fourth grades, living with never divorced biological parents or with divorced mothers, were inter-viewed with both open-and close-ended questions about their understanding of, and evaluative altitudes toward, marriage, divorce, remarriage, and stepfamilies. Results indicate clear developmental differences in children's understanding of these issues and in their opinions about marriage, divorce, and stepfamilies. No differences were found, however, between the understanding of children with divorced and non-divorced parents, or between boys and girls. Although children with divorced par-ents were more likely than children with nondivorced parents to expect hemselves to divorce in the future, no other differences were found in their attitudes. Results are discussed within a constructivistic perspective of children's acquisition of social knowledge. Several studies in the past decade have investigated how children and adolescents reason about their parents ' divorce and how this understanding changes develop