Dr. Wallerstein is beginning now to publish reports from her twenty-five year follow-up. As always, there is much for parents and professionals alike to learn from her latest study. This latest report was published in the July 1998 issue of Family and Conciliation Courts Review. It focuses on the children who were the youngest at the time her initial study began---2-1/2 to 6 years old. These children are now between the ages of 27 and 32. Wallerstein points out again, as she did in her earlier studies, that these children came from middle-class, northern California homes.

Their parents were well-educated. In other words, these children had more positive influences working for them than a good number of children who experience divorce.

In her first study, these children, at the time of divorce, were terrified of being abandoned by both parents. Their world felt dangerous, unpredictable and frightening to them. (If one of my parents left me, the other one will too.) Wallerstein's findings at the 25-year mark, were that unfortunately, as these children's lives progressed, these fears often came true.