A timely unsettling of old "settled" questions surrounding divorce

Amid the current nationwide debate over what "marriage" is, this book examines anew the nature and meaning of marriage from the standpoint of what adult children of divorce have actually experienced.

Upholding the inextricable link between our personal identity and our origin in a union of two -- and, more deeply, in the Fatherhood of God -- the contributors to this volume reflect on the damage that divorce does to children, opening up important questions for all of us: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to love and to marry?

After decades of talk about the rights of adults to get a divorce and the benefits for children of an amicable split between parents (a so-called "good divorce"), these authors -- theologians, philosophers, political scientists, lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, and cultural critics -- effectively unsettle conventional opinion.

Margaret Harper McCarthy is assistant professor of theological anthropology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America, Washington DC.