Data diminish divorce's aftermath on kids.

The emotional trauma inflicted on children by parental divorce has long drawn the attention of researchers, who note an excess of academic and behavior problems in these youngsters compared with children in two-parent families.

But those observations may tell only half the story, according to the first large-scale, longitudinal analyses of children during the years preceding and following a parental divorce. In boys at least, family conflict before a divorce contributes to later problems as much as the divorce itself, report sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and his colleagues. Pre-divorce family conflict seems to have less influence on girls, but Cherlin adds that measures of girls' psychological functioning need improvement. Whereas many boys in troubled families engage in blatant misbehavior, girls may often experience elusive symptoms of anxiety or depression, he contends.

"In general, kids are hurt by family conflict whether parents are married or not," Cherlin asserts. "In the most troubled families, some children may [even] benefit from a divorce, but this only applies to the most extreme cases."

In the June 7 SCIENCE, his team presents a new look at data from national surveys conducted in England and the United States. The English project collected parents' and teachers' ratings of behavior problems, as well as achievement scores in reading and mathematics, for more than 11,600 unrelated children at ages 7 and 11. All of the children, born in March 1958, lived in two-parent families at age 7; over the next four years, 239 divorces or separations occurred.

For boys, behavior problems rose and achievement scores dipped significantly after a divorce, but these changes decreased by half when the scientists statistically controlled for behavior problems, achievement scores and measures of family difficulties before the marital split. For girls, the same pre-divorce factors accounted for about one-quarter of the achievement decrease but none of the increase in behavior problems.

The U.S. survey began in 1976 with 822 children, aged 7 to 11, who lived in two-parent families. In 1981, the youngsters and their parents again participated in interviews. During the interim, 65 divorces or separations occurred. Again, boys' behavior problems after a marital split fell by about half when the researchers took into account pre-divorce behavior problems and marital conflict. The same controls indicated that girls from divorced families displayed fewer problem behaviors than girls from intact families -- a finding the scientists cannot yet explain.

Some researchers who have intensively studied small groups of children after divorce argue that many of these youngsters -- especially girls -- suffer emotional difficulties that emerge only in young adulthood. Cherlin's team plans to test this assertion by analyzing the latest data from the English and U.S. surveys, in which the same children have reached 16 to 23 years of age.

For now, Cherlin says, investigators should concentrate equally on how children react to troubled two-parent families and to divorce.