Oct 17, 2005 / 22:00 pm
A new book, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, chronicles a three year study which found, among other things, that many children of divorced parents experience a profound lack of trust in God and faith in the Church.
Elizabeth Marquardt of the Institute for American Values and Professor Norval Glenn of the University of Texas at Austin co-directed the study, which was funded by the Lilly Endowment.
Noting the divorce rate which has skyrocketed in the U.S. over recent decades, Marquardt and Glenn interviewed 70 young adults face-to-face, and compiled telephone surveys of 1,500 young adults--half of whom were raised in divorced families and half from intact families.
The findings were surprising. They report that young people from divorced families “experience a loss of trust that affects their belief in God—making them overall much less religious than their peers from intact families,” although for some, the experience dramatically strengthened their faith.