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Children's Experience Of Parental Divorce Disclosure: A Look At Intrafamiliar Differences, Heather Westberg

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study explores one aspect of the divorce process, divorce disclosure, to learn more about adult children's perceptions of that experience. Research questions examined participants' perceptions of how they were informed of their parents' divorce, their reactions to the news, and also how they would have preferred to have been told. Within this framework, the study additionally looks at similarities and differences between the experiences of siblings. Twenty siblings from eight different families were interviewed.

The most significant findings were that divorce disclosure occurred most often with only one parent present with most participants being informed in a manner different …