D-I-V-O-R-C-E; BREAKING UP COULD GET HARDER TO DO.

Byline: Janet Weeks Daily News Staff Writer

It's the wedlock wimps that social conservative Michael Bowman can't stomach, the matrimonial milquetoasts who lack the staying power to keep a marriage going long after vows to love and cherish fade into memory.

``A family that stays together for the sake of the kids is better than one that breaks up for their own happiness,'' asserts Bowman, president of the Capitol Resource Institute in Sacramento, which helped draft a divorce reform bill.

``We don't invest enough in the idea of marriage. It's notarized dating. Marriage is a lifetime commitment. You don't marry until someone better comes along.''

Sixteen years ago, when the national divorce rate hit an all-time high of 50 percent of all marriages, such assertions that only death should end a marriage were dismissed by parents operating with a different belief: that unhappy adults in unsatisfactory relationships are worse parents than those happily divorced.

But today, as the divorce rate levels off at 40 percent of first marriages and the children of divorce are becoming parents themselves, such square-sounding notions as sacrifice and duty are spawning a nationwide movement to make breaking up even harder to do.

At least 19 states have legislation pending that would change the way Americans dissolve their marriages. In California, a bill sponsored by Bowman's group and carried by Assemblyman George Runner, R-Lancaster, would impose a 90-day ``cooling off'' period for parents considering divorce and require them to agree on a ``parenting plan.''

The bill is at the center of a raging national debate that centers on a simple question: What's better for kids - parents who fall out of love and divorce, or parents who stick together no matter what?

Debatable study

A controversial study that made headlines last week seems to fuel the arguments of people like Bowman that divorce is the uglier alternative.

Psychologist Judith Wallerstein studied 60 divorced families over 25 years and found the children of those broken homes grew up to lives riddled by drug and alcohol abuse. They also experimented with sex early in adolescence. More than half ended up falling below their parents' socioeconomic levels. One-third of the children did not attend college.

Wallerstein has used her research to fight for changes in the legal system. She believes the courts should consider the best interests of children throughout youth and adolescence - not just at the time of divorce - and alter custody arrangements accordingly.

``It is as if we ordered the child age 12 to wear the shoes that fit when she was 6,'' Wallerstein wrote in the report on her research announced last week. ``And when the child complained because the shoes pinched . . . her objections were turned aside because of the zealous upholdings of the rights of parents to select their children's clothes.''

No-fault provision

For Bowman, the bill pending in the state Legislature represents a step toward his goal of eliminating one of those rights - California's no-fault provision, which allows a spouse to file for divorce without justifying the split beyond ``irreconcilable differences.''

The problem with no-fault, he says, is that one person can unilaterally end a marriage. That makes divorce too easy, he says, and provides disincentives for adhering to wedding vows.

Bowman would like to see a return of the fault provision that was in place until 1969, when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan (himself divorced) signed California's no-fault law.

Prior to no-fault, a spouse who wanted a contested divorce had to prove the other spouse was to blame for the marriage's failure. Grounds for divorce included desertion, abuse and adultery. Bowman says the provision prevented divorce. Indeed, only half as many people divorced in 1965 as did at the peak of the trend in 1981.

``Name me one other contract in law where two parties enter and one party can break it with no consequences,'' says Bowman, himself the child of divorced parents. ``It's a sham. It doesn't protect children or women or men. It protects the party who wants out regardless of the wishes of the rest of the family.''

The problem with efforts to make divorce more difficult, critics say, is they are predicated on weak assumptions, such as the work of Wallerstein. Although many applaud the depth of her study, others discount its conclusions because she did not study a control group of children whose parents stayed together.

Her research did not determine whether children whose parents remained married had any greater or lesser incidence of the problems she found among the children of divorce.

Also, by limiting her work to 60 Marin County families - all of whom are of the middle or upper class - her conclusions cannot be generalized for all Americans, they say. Lastly, critics say results based on the behavior of adults who were children a quarter-century ago cannot be used to draw conclusions about kids today.

``Kids 25 years ago are different qualitatively than they are today,'' says developmental psychologist Jane Shatz of West Los Angeles. Shatz prepares child custody evaluations for the Superior Court, a legal step required in about 10 percent of cases in which the acrimony between parents prevents mediation.

She also runs an eight-week program for parents called Keeping Kids First, designed to help families to cope with divorce.

``Divorced women make more money today, which adds to their children's quality of life,'' Shatz says. ``Fathers are more involved. And there are more joint custody cases.''

Kids caught in the middle

Shatz shares Bowman's concern for children caught in hostile breakups. And she doesn't think it's a bad idea to ask a divorcing couple to create a parenting plan.

But she feels it isn't bad law so much as bad behavior that wreaks the most emotional havoc on children experiencing divorce.

Shatz believes parents blinded by anger at their spouses create the nasty situations that emotionally devastate their children, and that changing the no-fault provision likely won't stop that destructive behavior.

And she doesn't believe a 90-day waiting period or a parenting plan will significantly disarm parents waging war against their spouses.

``Conflict is the biggest thing that affects children,'' she says, ``so keeping children out of conflict is the No. 1 priority. Children need both a mother and a father who act with maturity and get along.''

Christine Clancy, a Los Angeles mother in the process of divorcing, says divorce should be made easier for parents, not more difficult. She and her husband have three kids ages 12, 8 and 7.

Clancy's voice chokes with emotion when discussing the idea that couples should stick it out for the kids.

``I don't think that perspective helps anything,'' she says. ``There are problems in relationships. And I don't see the divorce process as easy. It's not easy at all.''

Yet others say any attempt to bring divorcing parents together on the issue of their children is well worth it. David Levy, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Children's Rights Council, says cooling-off periods and parenting plans serve as ``breaking mechanisms'' in the war between parents.

``Right now, two people who love each other are often required to fight if they want their children,'' says Levy, a lawyer who divorced 15 years ago, when his son was 5. He is now remarried and has an 11-year-old daughter.

He favors changing the legal system to make custody hearings less contentious.

``We tell people the problem is not the lawyer or the ex-spouse or a judge, but a system that doesn't recognize that even after a divorce these people have to get along and raise their children.

``(Divorce) is rooted in the old criminal system where parents are seen as gladiators, combatants fighting over their children. We're in favor of demilitarizing divorce.''

Family law attorney Linda Gross of Santa Monica agrees that the pitch of divorce battles could stand serious toning-down. But she thinks eliminating the no-fault provision would only raise the hostility level.

``As it is now, the custody area is still too laden of fault, and it's not productive,'' Gross says. ``What happens is the wronged spouse gets stuck in victimhood: He done me wrong. He's going to pay. Or how could she do this with my best friend? There's so much emotion that happens. We need to get rid of that.''

Staying together

Yet Runner says he thinks couples drowning in sinking marriages will work harder to keep them afloat if they are forced to find real causes for divorce beyond some vague dissatisfaction. And that, he believes, will save children from a lifetime of trauma.

``When I talk to people about what's going on in society and we talk about kids and crime and teen pregnancy, it all comes back to the breakdown of the family,'' says Runner, whose wife is the child of divorced parents.

``Finally, we're catching on and saying maybe we need to rethink what we've put into law. I think no-fault is a terrible issue.''

Runner's bill has triggered a hearing on divorce reform before the Assembly Judiciary Committee set for the fall. The bill itself could be considered by the full Assembly as early as next year.

Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl, D-Encino, a member of the Judiciary Committee, feels that government has no business trying to force married people to stay together.

As far as the 90-day cooling-off period, Kuehl believes Runner is operating on the false assumption that divorce is entered into lightly.

``I don't have a friend who filed for divorce without thinking about it,'' she says. ``The second problem is that I don't know that having to wait that extra three months does anything but chill (a couple's) ability to do what you have a legal right to do. I don't think that's a legitimate concern of the state.''

VOICES

``For thousands of years, people stayed married. But in the 1960s, starting with the women's movement for fairness and equality, divorce skyrocketed - and we suddenly had millions of children of divorce. Now that we've had a generation of kids raised this way, the evidence that divorce is devastating is inescapable. It's so obvious a cow couldn't miss it.

- David Levy

president of Washington, D.C.-based Children's Rights Council

``Parents love their children. They fight like crazy over their children - and destroy them in the process.

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- Jane Shatz

Los Angeles developmental psychologist

``In this culture, we don't learn how to be in a relationship and we don't learn how to be married and we don't learn how to be divorced. And that's something that requires a maturity most people just don't possess.''

- Ellen Butterfield

Studio City psychologist

``My wife's parents made a conscious decision to keep the family intact until my wife left home. They made a decision they thought was best for the child. I think there's a virtue in that, in putting your child's needs above your own issues.''

- California Assemblyman George Runner

R-Lancaster

``The first concern that I have is that people are making an assumption that couples file for divorce without thinking about it. In all of my 56 years of living, I don't have a friend who filed for divorce without thinking about it.''

- California Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl

D-Santa Monica

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Box: VOICES (See text)

Photo: (Color) L.A. LIFE: THE FALLOUT 

Children of divorce, both adults and teen-agers, look back on the impact their parents' bad marriages had on their own lives.