Family
Publicizing divorce's impact on children

The Plain Dealer Cleveland, OH, FINAL / ALL, Page 1F The Plain Dealer 1998

Divorce has profound effects on children, and now the nation's top divorce and matrimonial lawyers are launching a national public awareness campaign to address that.

The 1,500-member American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers has created public service announcements, an instructional video and a free booklet, all aimed at parents in the throes of divorce. The public service announcements provide parents with a phone number to call for more information, such as the booklet, called Stepping Back from Anger: Protecting Your Children During Divorce.

Mike McCurley, the academy's president, said the campaign's goal is to raise parents' awareness of their children's needs and feelings. Often, he said, parents are so caught up with their own emotions they don't have the awareness they should about what their children are going through.

Much of the emotional and psychological damage suffered by children who come from a so-called broken home can be avoided if parents are more sensitive of their children's needs, he said. "Our goal in this national campaign is to make every divorcing or divorced parent think twice before taking actions that could, in the long run, hurt their children."

Callers to the academy's toll-free number, 1-877-4-THE-KIDS, will receive the booklet, which contains a Children's Bill of Rights with provisions that tell children such things as "You're entitled to all the feelings you're having" and "You don't belong in the middle of your parents' breakup."

It also provides tips for divorcing parents, advising them not to disparage their spouse in front of the children, not to use children as messengers between themselves and the spouse and reassuring children that they are loved and that the divorce is not their fault.

For more in-depth information, parents can order a 12-minute video titled "The Voices of Children of Divorce," dealing with the emotional effects of divorce as seen through the eyes of children. The video costs $10 and can be ordered by calling the same toll-free number.