Highlights
- "Many children feel responsible for the divorce, even when parents do not intend this. They grieve the loss of family stability and the daily presence of one parent." Post This
- "Currently, too many children are casualties of a legal system that was not designed with their psychological needs in mind. That needs to change." Post This
Over the past three decades, psychoanalyst and parent guidance expert Erica Komisar has spent countless hours helping families work through difficult mental and emotional health issues—including the trauma of parental divorce. In her new book, she offers advice to divorcing parents, encouraging them to put their children’s well-being first. While she acknowledges that “substantial research provides evidence that marriage between two parents who love each other is the ideal way to raise kids,” she also notes that some marriages do end, and there are steps parents can take to help protect their children's mental and emotional well-being through the painful divorce process. I recently spoke to Erica about her book and how she hopes it will help broken families.
Alysse ElHage: You’re a married mother of three in a stable, long-term marriage, and your own parents were married for life. But, as you write in the introduction, you often treat children and teens who have been deeply wounded by parental divorce. Tell us about the issues you’ve seen children struggle with as a result of divorce, and how that inspired your book?
Erica Komisar: In over 30 years of clinical practice, I have treated hundreds of children whose parents have divorced. The most common issues I see are anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, academic difficulties, and trouble forming healthy relationships. Many children feel responsible for the divorce, even when parents do not intend this. They grieve the loss of family stability and the daily presence of one parent. Adolescents are especially vulnerable—they often become parentified, acting as emotional support for one or both parents, at a cost to their own development.
What motivated me to write this book was how preventable much of this damage is. I wrote it because parents who understand the emotional impact on their children make better decisions. Knowledge changes behavior.
ElHage: You raise a really interesting point in the book about divorce timing and how specific periods of a child’s life are worse than others when it comes to a family splitting up. For example, you caution against divorce before the age of 3 (when possible), as well as during the early years of adolescence. What is it about these two critical periods of a child’s life that makes parental divorce harder on kids?
Komisar: The first three years of life are the most sensitive period for attachment. The relationship between a young child and their primary caregiver is directly shaping the architecture of the developing brain. Elevated stress hormones during this period can affect emotional regulation, the capacity for trust, and long-term mental health. When divorce disrupts caregiver availability and consistency during these years, the impact is significant. I am not saying parents in harmful marriages should stay together for three years regardless of circumstances. I am saying that if there is any flexibility in timing, this window demands particular care and thoughtfulness.
Early adolescence, roughly ages 11 to 14, is a different but equally sensitive period. These children are already navigating a major developmental transition. They are forming their identities, separating from parents in healthy ways, and doing so in a brain that is acutely sensitive to threat and instability. They still need their parents to be stable anchors. Divorce during this window frequently contributes to depression, anxiety, and risk-taking behavior. The timing compounds an already difficult developmental passage.
ElHage: I want to get your thoughts about what happens after a divorce that, for me, is one of the major issues kids struggle with: the re-coupling of each parent. My own parents got along after their divorce and still do, and had they been the only two people involved in the dynamic, things might have gone better for me. However, there were other adults involved who made things difficult. My parents remarried, my dad once, and my mom several times. Almost immediately, I was dealing with jealousy and gatekeeping, and this really harmed my parents’ ability to get along and to parent me well. As you are giving advice to divorcing parents, how do you factor in the remarriage dynamic—the stepparents, or the boyfriends/girlfriends who come and go?
Komisar: This is one of the most under addressed areas in divorce guidance, and the harm it causes is substantial. When a parent introduces a new partner, the child faces another attachment. When that partner eventually leaves—and many do—the child experiences another loss. Parents often do not account for this when making decisions about new relationships.
My guidance is consistent: do not introduce a new partner to your children until the relationship is stable and committed. Children who have already had their family structure disrupted once should not be repeatedly exposed to new adults forming attachments and then disappearing.
The dynamic you describe—new partners creating interference, jealousy, and gatekeeping—is something I address directly in the book. A new partner who cannot support your co-parenting relationship is not compatible with your life at this stage. Your children's need for consistent access to both parents comes first. That is not a negotiable point, and I tell parents plainly that choosing otherwise has measurable consequences for their children.
The most healing thing a parent can offer, at any stage, is acknowledgment that the divorce was hard and that the child's pain is real and legitimate.
ElHage: Your book is obviously aimed at parents who are divorcing but also at those in the legal system, as well as mental health counselors and others who work with these families. What would you like to see changed in how the legal system treats divorce?
Komisar: The adversarial structure of family law is itself a problem. It rewards conflict and treats custody as a negotiation rather than a child welfare issue. I have seen it cause tremendous harm.
What I advocate for is a shift toward a child-centered model. This means mandatory parenting education before any divorce is finalized—not optional, mandatory. It means custody evaluators who are trained in child development, not only in legal procedure. It means courts that actively support mediation and collaborative processes wherever conflict allows for it. And it means judges who are willing to hold parents accountable when they engage in parental alienation or use children as instruments in a custody dispute. Currently, too many children are casualties of a legal system that was not designed with their psychological needs in mind. That needs to change.
ElHage: You have an important chapter in the book on what to expect from a child during a divorce, where you discuss the stages of grief a child experiences when a family ends. In my own life, this grief has been something that comes and goes when I least expect it, including in my teens, my mid-20s when I was dating (even though my parents split when I was 2), and then again when I had my first child. Too often, divorce is presented as something kids will “just get over eventually” or at least something that they should be able to get over, but it just doesn’t happen that way for many of us. Could you talk a little bit about the grief children experience after divorce—that maybe most parents don’t expect to last? How should parents deal with that grief, including with their adult kids?
Komisar: The grief that children experience after divorce does not have a fixed endpoint. It resurfaces at developmental milestones—adolescence, leaving home, getting married, having children of their own. This is not pathology. It is a normal response to a formative loss. The waves you describe are clinically well-documented and widely reported by adult children of divorce.
Parents often assume that once a child has adjusted functionally (doing well in school, appearing happy) the grief is resolved. It is not. It has gone underground. It will resurface.
What parents can do, including with their adult children, is simple: acknowledge it. Do not become defensive when grief reappears. Do not minimize it. The most healing thing a parent can offer, at any stage, is acknowledgment that the divorce was hard and that the child's pain is real and legitimate. That matters more than most parents realize, and it is never too late to offer it.
Editor's Note: The views and opinions expressed in this interview do not necessarily represent the views or official policy of the Institute for Family Studies.
*Photo credit: Shutterstock
