collateral damage -- a book review

John Chirban's Collateral Damage:  Guiding and Protecting Your Child through the Minefield of Divorce addresses one of the most important questions I often hear in pastoral counseling from divorced parents (usually the mother) with children:  What kind of impact will our divorce have on the kids?  They love their children, they do still want a family for their children and they don't want the lives of their children to be more difficult.

The struggle, of course, is in accomplishing those things. 

That's where Collateral Damage comes in.  Chirban, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, conducted The Divorce Study asking children about the impact of divorce on their lives and their relationships and asking parents how they met their children’s needs during and after divorce.  They received over 10,000 responses and it's those responses that Chirban shares in Collateral Damage.

This is an amazing book, easily accessible, that breaks down Chirban's research into two main categories -- Guiding and Protecting Your Children and Navigating Divorce for Parents.  In each chapter, Chirban shares insightful responses from the survey participants.

This will quickly become my go-to resource with families attempting to adjust in the midst of the death of a marriage, in the hope of the resurrection of a family -- even if in a transformed expression.
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