More than half felt that their relationships with their fathers actually improved after the divorce. While their new families of stepparents and half-siblings may look different than other families, the majority of these young adults feel connected to the family members who make up their world.

Divorce is never easy for any family, but it does not have to destroy children’s lives or lead to family breakdown. By listening to the voices of these grown children, divorcing parents will learn what they can do to maintain family bonds. They will find helpful road maps identifying both the benefits and the harms to children postdivorce. Parents need to be comforted by the truth about divorce and not threatened by alarming misinformation and overblown worst-case scenarios. And they need to believe that after all is said and done, their children will look at their post divorce families and say with conviction, “We’re still family.”