In 1970, preschool teachers Marin County psychologist Judith Wallerstein asked, how to deal with a flood of children who could not sleep, cried constantly, or were too aggressive with their playmates. The common denominator, the teachers said, was that parents were divorced.
Wallerstein tried to investigate the issue and, not finding anything useful, it was decided to undertake.
She has launched what would become 25 years of research, producing alarming results that have been long married grandmother of five, a polarizing figure in a contentious national debate.
Once described by Time magazine as the "godmother of the reaction against divorce," died on June 18 in Wallerstein Piedmont, California, after surgery for an intestinal obstruction, said his daughter Amy Friedman Wallerstein. He was 90 years.
When Wallerstein began to see the impact of divorce, the children would be difficult fleeting thought. Instead, he discovered that half of the 131 children studied, the time has not healed the wounds, but was allowed to become worse, creating "question, underperforming men, young self-ironic and angry sometimes, and women "who, of course, is very strained relations with romance.
In light of this delayed effect, Wallerstein came to a controversial conclusion: if parents could swallow their misery, they must remain together for their children.
"What in many cases may be the best because parents can not be the best for children," he told Newsday in 1994. "It's a real moral problem".
She wrote about the consequences of divorce in several books, including "Second Chances: Men, women and children ten years after divorce" (1989) and "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce" (2000). Co-author Sandra Blakeslee, books on news, talk shows and Wallerstein put on the covers of magazines, and became a bestseller.
The values ??of family supporters embraced the research of Wallerstein, but critics found much to criticize. Many critics said that his sample was too small, had no control group for comparison and that was to favor families with psychological problems that preceded the divorce.
The larger studies and scientific experts from other family members have supported some of the results refute Wallerstein and others.
Andrew J. Cherla, Johns Hopkins University sociologist, who wrote the 2009 book "The Marriage-Go-Round," he said last week that the contribution of Wallerstein, "was to show that the effects of divorce may appear sometimes delay in young adults - something she calls an effect of "inactive".
Despite the warning that their findings apply mainly to families in distress through a divorce, Cherla said that his work remains influential.
"People still cite and argue for or against it," said Cherla.
Wallerstein began his studies at a good time. In 1970, California became the first state to implement no-fault divorce, and other states quickly followed suit. Divorce rates began to rise.
With a case study, Wallerstein recruit families who had sought marriage counseling to his therapy center in Corte Madera. Concludes with a group of 131 children from 60 middle-class families who were going through divorce in Marin County in 1971.
Children were interviewed every five years for 25 years and found that half of young adults had problems such as anger, depression, alcohol abuse, physical abuse and school failure. The development of intimacy and trust was particularly hard.
"What he had told his parents for years was that divorce is difficult for children, but eventually, had to adapt," he told The Times in 2000. "We did not know that its effects would be so powerful for so long, that would be a factor in young adults in search of love."
In 1990, he realized that two decades of life on the effects of marital failure and had not been depressed, so he decided to study the problem and Blakeslee, wrote "The Good Marriage: How and why love lasts , "published in 1995.
Judith Wallerstein Saretsky was born in New York and a child has lived for 10 years in what was then the territory of British Mandate of Palestine.
He studied at Columbia University and the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Topeka Kansas, and received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Lund in Sweden.
From UC Berkeley, Dr. Wallerstein has received the Distinguished Teaching Award, and has received many awards for his research, writing and clinical work.
He is survived by her husband of 65 years, Dr. Robert Wallerstein, president of the department of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, two daughters, Amy Friedman of Piedmont and Nina Wallerstein of Albuquerque, and five grandchildren. A son, Michael, a scientist at Yale University known politician, died in 2006.
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