The paper reports findings from a research study that explored children's experience of divorce. It shows that children experience parental divorce as a crisis in their lives but that they are able to mobilise internal and external resources to regain a new point of balance. In doing so, children demonstrate the degree to which they are active and competent participants in the process of family dissolution. The implications of the data are then considered in relation to engaging with children involved in divorce and in relation to some of the cultural presumptions that might militate against hearing what they have to say about their experiences.

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This article considers the working of the current procedure intended to ensure the welfare of children when their parents divorce but are not seeking any orders relating to them. It shows that the process is ineffective in safeguarding children's welfare and is not geared to ensuring that their wishes and feelings are taken into account. It argues that the focus of policy should shift away from assuming that the legal system can handle the problems of divorce, towards using the legal process as a point of contact through which families can be offered the full range of services they may need during relationship breakdown.

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child development: discipline 15 child-centred activities see adultcentred/child-centred activities childcare practices 2 see also discipline by grandparents childcare provision and ethnicity 18 and family policy 3-4, 76-7, 134-5, 142-3 grandparent hierarchy 61-3 grandparents as surrogate parents 109-13, 118-19, 132 grandparents as main carers 73, 77, 134 paternal grandparents 61-3 payment for childcare 3, 134-5 reservations of grandparents 109-13, 142 support for 136-9 obligation and affection 104-5, 142-3 resistance to 16, 28, 106, 134 see also reluctant grandparents children see grandchildren