The Overburdened Child: Some Long-Term Consequences of Divorce

The needs of postdivorced families in which the parenting is significantly diminished or disrupted are poorly addressed by interventions based on the dominant paradigm of divorce as a time-limited crisis. In this article, the author shifts this focus to rest squarely on the postdivorce family and on some of its persisting psychosocial problems. She discusses, in particular, three categories of children overburdened by responsibilities growing out of parental disintegration.