Judith Wallerstein (December 27, 1921 – June 18, 2012) was a psychologist and researcher who created a 25-year study on the effects of divorce on the children involved.
She received a number of prominent awards and honors and wrote four best selling books.
Judith Wallerstein was born on December 27, 1921, as Judith Hannah Saretsky in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
.
Her father died from cancer when she was 8 years old. Wallerstein received her bachelor's degree from
Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admin ...
(1943), her Master's in social work from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
(1946) and her Doctorate in psychology from
Lund University
, motto = Ad utrumque
, mottoeng = Prepared for both
, established =
, type = Public research university
, budget = SEK 9 billion [intestinal obstruction
Bowel obstruction, also known as intestinal obstruction, is a mechanical or functional obstruction of the intestines which prevents the normal movement of the products of digestion. Either the small bowel or large bowel may be affected. Signs a ...]
in
Piedmont, California
Piedmont is a small city located in Alameda County, California, United States, completely surrounded by the city of Oakland. Its residential population was 11,270 at the 2020 census. The name comes from the region of Piedmont in Italy, and it me ...
. She was married for 65 years to the academic
Robert S. Wallerstein Robert S. Wallerstein (January 28, 1921 – December 21, 2014) was a prominent German-born American psychoanalyst. He headed the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation and was president of the International Psychoanalytical Ass ...
.
Career
Judith Wallerstein taught as the senior lecturer from 1966 to 1991 at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
.
She held faculty positions at the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, University of Califor ...
,
The Hebrew University
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public university, public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein ...
, and Pahlavi University Medical School.
In addition, she also lectured at
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
,
Cornell
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
,
Stanford
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. S ...
, and
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
.
Wallerstein was a consultant for the Advisory Commission on Family Law to the California Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Justice, The Commission on Law and Mental Health, State Bar of California, and the California Senate Task Force on Family Equity.
In 1980, she founded the “Judith Wallerstein Center for the Family in Transition” in
Madera, California
Madera (Spanish language, Spanish for "Wood") is a city and county seat of Madera County, California, Madera County, California. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 66,224.
Located in the San Joaquin Valley, Madera i ...
. The center provided counseling and education for divorcing couples and their children.
In addition, the center conducted a variety of research pertaining to divorce and the family.
Judith Wallerstein's three best-selling books about children and divorce were: Second Chances, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, and What About the Kids.
In 1995, she published a book titled The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts, which was about making marriage succeed.
Wallerstein received many awards including: the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, The Koshland Award in Social Welfare from the San Francisco Foundation, Commendation from the State of California Senate Rules Subcommittee, the Rene Spitz Lectureship from the Denver Psychoanalytic society, election to Who's Who in American Science, the Dale Richmond Award of the American Academy of Pediatrics, etc.
Research
Wallerstein's career was centered around a 25-year-long longitudinal study, the "California Children of Divorce Study," investigating the effects that
divorce
Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving th ...
has on families.
She began her study in 1971 with
Joan B. Kelly.
She followed 131 children between the ages of 3 and 18 from 60 divorced families in
Marin County, California, for 25 years, with intensive interviews conducted every 5 years
From her research Wallerstein found that only 40% of children from divorce actually marry.
She discovered that the effects of divorce are more long lasting than most assume.
The age of child at the time of the divorce really matters,
the largest impact occurs during the period where the child of divorce is a young adult wanting a romantic relationship but afraid of failure.
Wallerstein also found that the quality of post-divorce life is crucial for the children.
In addition, she found that rates of financial support for college decrease after a divorce due to the large expense of the divorce itself.
Criticisms
Although Judith Wallerstein had many allies and a number of best-selling books, she also had critics. Some criticized her for the families she studied that were all middle class and the parents were all well-educated, Wallerstein was criticized for not having a wider variety.
Wallerstein's study exclusively examined middle-class Californians whose participants were pre-selected for therapy and psycho-analysis. She influenced a California court on child relocation, and was criticized by
Richard A. Gardner
Richard Alan Gardner (April 28, 1931 – May 25, 2003) was an American child psychiatrist known for his work in psychotherapy with children, parental alienation and child custody evaluations. Based on his clinical work with children and families, ...
.
[The Burgess Decision and the Wallerstein Brief, Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 26(3):425-431, 1998, http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/pas/gard98a.htm] Feminists felt that Wallerstein was trying to encourage women to stay in bad marriage and discouraging divorce.
Partial bibliography
* ''Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce'' (with
Sandra Blakeslee
Sandra Blakeslee (born 1943) is an American science correspondent of over four decades for ''The New York Times'' and science writer, specializing in neuroscience. Together with neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, she authored the 1998 popular s ...
)(Ticknor & Fields, 1989)
[Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce JS Wallerstein, S Blakeslee - Ticknor & Fields; u.s. edition (January 1, 1989) ]
* ''The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts'' (Houghton Mifflin, 1995)
* ''Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce'' (Houghton Mifflin, 1996)
* ''Surviving The Breakup: How Children And Parents Cope With Divorce'' (Harper Collins, 1996)
* ''The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study'' (Hyperion, 2000)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wallerstein, Judith
American women psychologists
20th-century American psychologists
20th-century American Jews
Columbia University School of Social Work alumni
2012 deaths
1921 births
Hunter College alumni
Lund University alumni
21st-century American Jews
20th-century American women
21st-century American women