The Love They Lost: Living with the Legacy of Our Parents' Divorce

Stephanie Staal’s parents divorced when she was thirteen. But it wasn’t until years later that she realized the devastating impact of her parents’ divorce on her own search for love.

She sought help. There was none. So she wrote the book she was looking for: a personal history of, by, and for the first generation of divorce.

Drawing on extensive interviews with one hundred and twenty adult children of divorce, The Love They Lost gives voice to their struggle to reconcile the emotional blueprints their parents left them with the lives they want to build as adults.

Here we meet men and women from all walks of life who share painful common ground: They are all living with the legacy of their parents’ divorce. What emerges, as they tell their compelling stories, are profound new insights that will resonate with anyone dealing with the wide-ranging consequences of divorce ... how abandonment and betrayal, both real and perceived, impact adult relationships and careers ... what happens when money becomes a substitute for love ... healing ways to move forward while living with the past.

Weaving reporting and memoir, storytelling and social observation, The Love They Lost is essential reading for every adult child of divorce who longs to make peace with the past and build a rewarding life — and for everyone who cares about the future of the American family.

The traditional family is no more: half of all marriages today end in divorce, and approximately one-third of children under the age of 18 live with only one parent. Yet while a multitude of books have been written about children of divorce, few show a split's effects on these children as they grow into adults and attempt to forge their own romantic and familial relationships.

Stephanie Staal, a newspaper reporter whose parents divorced when she was 13, tackles this issue not by presenting studies and recommending solutions or policies, but by sharing the stories of 120 "Generation Ex-" adults whose parents divorced when they were children. These are the kids who grew up in the '70s and '80s, when divorce was becoming increasingly common. These are the kids who are now adults longing for intimacy and connection, but fearing commitment and expecting failure, abandonment, and hurt.

"For my generation, divorce has taken on the social proportions of a Great Depression, a World War II, or a Vietnam in influencing our lives," writes Staal. "Divorce struck in the privacy of our own homes, shaking our beliefs about family to the core." The path to healing for these Generation Exes, she believes, lies in recognizing the far-reaching effects of divorce, and in learning--often through the experience of others--how to overcome the trauma of divorce to fashion satisfying lives and relationships.

Like Hope Edelman's Motherless Daughters, Staal's eloquent words shine the light on a massive social issue that has been explored from almost every angle possible, except for the one that perhaps counts most of all: from the mouths of the babes who experienced it. --Nancy Monson