There are many reasons that children lose out. What children lose when their parents split is their family. It is a fallacy to think of divorce as something that happens between a husband and wife. Couples don't divorce, families divorce. What was once the basis of security and protection for the children no longer exists. A child of divorce has his very foundation pulled from beneath him with no say in the matter. Parents move away, sometimes siblings get split up, intensely loyal family members take sides. The family structure disappears into thin air when a marriage dissolves. The unspoken rule — mom and dad will be together forever — has been broken.

WHAT happened to my children has occurred countless times before and since. Children of broken homes are often made pawns in a game that is over. When a marriage is dead it must be buried with dignity, and while the parents go their separate ways the children must be allowed to thrive in the love of each parent and be free to return that love without conflict.

This didn't happen at all in the divorce and subsequent lives of me and my estranged wife. Surely the fault lay in both of us. Who was most at fault matters little. For the seeds of conflicting loyalties were planted very early, and those seeds bore bitter fruit that our children have tasted for the rest of their lives.

There is no optimum time to divorce when children are involved. People once comforted themselves by thinking only young children get hurt when parents split. Now we know better. We have learned that, regardless of children's ages at the time their parents divorce, children lose a great deal. I recently heard a story, which vividly illustrates this point from a man I sat next to on a plane.

The man was in his late sixties and said he had been married for twenty-four years. "One day, my wife announced she needed to find herself and filed for divorce," he said. He went on to tell me, "My youngest son was thirteen at the time and was the only child of three still living at home. I must admit that although I was devastated by the divorce my career blossomed afterward. Although always financially comfortable, I had never been quite as successful professionally during my marriage as I was after my divorce.

"My wife also benefited from our divorce. She went to school and received two degrees and developed her own career. I am convinced she has made more of her life than would have been possible had she remained my wife. Still," he added, "the real losers in divorce are the children." He then told me about an incident involving his thirteen-year-old son in the period leading up to the divorce.

"I have had a lifelong habit of changing my clothes each night after work and placing the coins emptied from my pants pockets on my dresser. After several weeks, I noticed I was missing money. By the time I became aware of it, about eighty or ninety dollars had been taken. I confronted my son about the missing money and he admitted to taking it.

"Hurt, disappointed and puzzled, I asked him why he took the money. He lowered his head and replied, 'When you and Mom divorce, I will have to live with Mom and since she doesn't have a lot of money, we will need the money for food.'" These words were like daggers to his heart. Finishing his story he reiterated, "Children are the real losers in divorce," and quickly averted his eyes for fear I would see his tears.

The most striking impression one comes away with is that for children, the divorce of the parents never goes away. It may be welcomed. It may be understood. But even when it is a positive solution to a destructive family situation, divorce is a critical experience for its children. Although there may be relief that a painful situation has been ended, there is also regret that a healthy family could not have been created.

Some say that death is easier for children to accept than divorce because death is a single event, which passes, and for which there is usually a clear-cut cause. People mourn, grieve and have memories, but death is final. Divorce, on the other hand, lasts forever.

We are now beginning to see that it doesn't necessarily follow that what's best for parents is best for children. Frank Pittman, author of Private Lies: Infidelity and the Betrayal of Intimacy, believes:

Our experiment with abolishing marriage has not worked very well for either the adults or the children, but it's the adults who don't seem to realize it. I don't know anyone with divorced parents who don't see the divorce as the most central experience of their lives. Children who grow up seeing their parents run away from home have a different relationship with marriage than those who saw parents hang in there. Brutal marriages may be bad for children, but I'm not sure boring marriages are.

This raises the popular question: "Should couples stay together for the sake of the kids?" Implicit in this question is the assumption that people stay together for any single reason. Even successful long-term marriages are rarely held together by one bond, including love. Couples stay together for a multitude of reasons: financial and emotional security, sex, dislike of the singles scene, stability, companionship, status, fear of loneliness, feelings of love and commitment, religious mores, the children. There is nothing unusual or unhealthy about kids being one of the many ties inextricably connecting couples.

Another assumption implicit in the question "Should couples stay together for the sake of the kids?" is that these couples will always be miserable, that they must live in conflict for the rest of their lives. Couples should not remain in unhappy or lifeless marriages for the rest of their lives just for the sake of the kids. Research shows that whether their parents are married or divorced children suffer when there is conflict. Couples should do everything within their power to make their marriages work again so that their children's lives will not be adversely affected by conflict or divorce. In other words, couples should stay happy for the sake of the kids.