"All the happy talk about divorce is designed to reassure parents," "But it's not the truth for children. Even a good divorce restructures children's childhoods and leaves them traveling between two distinct worlds. It becomes their job, not their parents', to make sense of those two worlds."
For example, those who grew up in divorced families were far more likely than those with married parents to say that they felt like a different person with each parent, that they sometimes felt like outsiders in their own home and that they had been alone a lot as a child.
Those with married parents, however, were far more likely to say that children were at the center of their family and that they generally felt emotionally safe.
In the study, all those from divorced families had experienced their parents' divorce before age 14 and had maintained contact with both parents. Most of the time, Ms. Marquardt maintains, children with married parents need not concern themselves with their parents' thoughts and feelings while those with divorced parents must be more vigilant, more attuned to their parents' moods and expectations, more careful to adjust to the habits of the parent they are with - and more concerned about looking or acting like the other parent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/05/national/05divorce.html?th&emc=th
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