The Three Wounds Adults Still Carry from Their Parents' Divorces

As a child therapist and divorce professional, I have sat with hundreds of adults and heard them reflect on what it was really like to experience their parents' divorces as children.

Different families. Different ages. Different circumstances. And yet — the same three themes come up again and again.

And it wasn’t the divorce itself that they talk about. It is what happened around the divorce that has stayed with them all of these years.

Being put in the middle.

The adults I have worked with rarely describe the divorce as the wound. What they describe is the position they were put in — often quietly, often over years.

Being asked to choose sides. Being made to carry messages back and forth between two homes. Being told to keep things from a parent. Being told to not mention things around the other. Sitting at a dinner table listening to one parent criticize the other. Being praised for being “mature” or “fine” when they were actually struggling inside.

Kids in the middle learn something no child should ever have to learn — that loving both parents is bad. That expressing that love out loud costs something. That the safest thing you can do is edit yourself, always, depending on which house you are in.

And that lesson does not stay in childhood.

It becomes the adult who compartmentalizes every relationship they are in. The adult who is a people pleaser and works to manage the needs and emotions of everyone around them. The adult who cannot bring their whole self anywhere.

Because they never got to.

Being exposed to adult problems.

The second theme adults name is the sheer amount they were told.

The infidelity. The money. The reasons. The version of who was to blame. The details of the fight the night before. The court dates. The specific things the other parent had done.

Sometimes parents share this information with kids out of care because they do not want to lie. Sometimes they share this information because it is hard to contain. Because their emotions are so overwhelming and the information slips out in a moment of anger, sadness or by accident. And sometimes parents share this information because they want to hurt the other parent and they don’t realize that their child will become collateral damage.  

And we know that kids ask for the information. They think knowing will help them cope or make sense of what is happening. But children can hold curiosity long before they can hold information.

Their capacity to ask a question is not the same as their capacity to carry the answer.

When kids are given adult information, they do not just process it. They carry it. They start feeling responsible for fixing what they were told. They start managing their parents' pain in the same way they manage their own. Or they start to see their relationship erode with one or both parents.

And the adult who was told too much often becomes the adult who has trouble trusting. Who sees the fragility of relationships and isn’t sure that any relationship is safe.

Feeling like no one noticed how hard it was.

The third theme is quieter than the other two. And often the most painful.

Many adults tell me that no one ever asked how they were coping or what they needed. They were expected to adjust. To be resilient. To be “the good kid.” Nobody sat down with them and said, “This is hard. How are you doing? Really — how are you?”

Often the parents were too overwhelmed themselves. Grieving. Financially anxious. Logistically drowning. There simply was not room to notice.

And so they adapted. They performed okay-ness. They stopped bringing their feelings to the adults, because the adults could not hold them.

But adapting is not the same as being okay.

Adaptation is a survival strategy. And survival strategies do come at a cost.

The adult who was never asked, as a child, how they were doing — often becomes the adult who does not know how to say when they are struggling. Who convinces themselves they are fine when they are not. Who cannot bring their inner world to the people who love them.

Because they were never invited to.

Here is what gives us hope.

All three of these wounds are things parents can change.

Not because they were going to have some idealized, conflict-free divorce. Not because they were going to handle every hard conversation flawlessly. But because the wounds these adults are describing are not caused by the divorce itself.

They are caused by specific patterns in how the divorce was handled. Which means those patterns can be interrupted. Which means those wounds can be prevented and repaired.

The goal is not a perfect divorce. It's a child-centered one.

The parents we work with are not trying to be perfect. Perfection is not available in a divorce. Nobody handles it flawlessly — not the therapists, not the family court professionals, not the people who write books about it.

But child-centered is available. Always.

A child-centered divorce is one where kids are not asked to hold the messages between two adults. Where they are given honest, age-appropriate information — not adult information. Where they are asked, regularly, how they are doing. And where their answer is met with real space and support.

Where children can love both parents out loud, in both houses, without ever having to pay a cost for it.

Where children are protected from the conflict — even when the conflict cannot be resolved.

When children are protected from adult tension, given age-appropriate honesty, and supported emotionally through the process — the research is really clear.

They cope.

They thrive.

They grow up with the same access to healthy relationships as any other kid.

That is exactly why we do this work.

Because the adults sitting in therapy offices in their 30s, 40s, and 50s — the ones unpacking their parents' divorces decades later — are not there because their parents got divorced.

They are there because nobody taught their parents how to do it differently.

We built this practice, and this work, so that the next generation of kids does not need to be in therapy for it thirty years from now.

Not because we think divorce is easy. Not because we think it can be made painless.

Because we know — from every study, from every clinical hour, from every adult who has ever told us — that how a divorce is handled matters far more than the fact that it happened.