If you ask 9 year old Annie what the worst thing about last year was, she won't tell you it was her parents' divorce. Instead she will tel you it was the fights which led up to the divorce. When Annie found out about the divorce, it wasn't that big of a deal, because she already knew that weren't getting along. She heard them fighting every night after she went to bed, and that made her very unhappy.

Annie's experience is more common than most people might think, and there is a great deal of evidence that suggests staying together for the benefit of the kids is probably not a good idea. In fact, it may be more damaging to children. Psychologists often argue that it is more stressful for children to listen to parents arguing than separation or divorce. The home life of children of parents in an unhappy marriage is far from ideal, and in worst case scenarios, the parents may take it out on the children.

A recent study found that the children of parents who had gotten divorced were not worse off than those whose parents stayed together, and in some cases actually fared better.

I. Word List

separation: not living together anymore

scenarios: situations

II. Answer the following questions.

1. Why may divorce not be such a bad thing?

___________________________________________________________.

2. What is a worse situation for children than divorce?

___________________________________________________________.

3. Why do you think parents often stay together for the kids?

___________________________________________________________.

4. Why was the divorce of Annie's parents not that big a deal?

___________________________________________________________.

5. What are some possible good results of divorce?

___________________________________________________________.

III. What's the word? Using the clues, write the correct words from the reading.

1. a kind of scientist - p _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

2. the perfect situation - i _ _ _ _

3. quite usual - c _ _ _ _ _

4. a marriage that has ended - d _ _ _ _ _ _

5. to claim that something is true - c _ _ _ _

IV. Opposites—Find words in the reading that are opposite to these ones.

1. best - w _ _ _ _

2. rare - c _ _ _ _ _

3. detriment - b _ _ _ _ _ _

4. fiction - f _ _ _

5. ignore - l _ _ _ _ _ t _