The Good Divorce by Constance Ahrons — book cover

The Good Divorce

Constance Ahrons · 1994

The Good Divorce (1994) is a book by Constance Ahrons on Divorce & Co-Parenting. Sociologist Constance Ahrons draws on her five-year study of divorced parents to argue that families don't end at divorce, they reorganize. A field guide to divorcing without destroying the family.

11 min read · 9 chapters · Relationships

Why it’s on the shelf

The book that replaced "broken home" with "binuclear family", proof that what wrecks kids is not divorce itself but the war their parents wage afterward.

Two of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of The Good Divorce pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.

  1. A divorced family is not a failed family but a **binuclear family**, one family system spread across two households. The nuclear unit splits; the family itself continues, and children keep belonging to all of it.
  2. Ahrons' study sorted ex-spouse relationships into five types: **Perfect Pals**, **Cooperative Colleagues**, **Angry Associates**, **Fiery Foes**, and **Dissolved Duos**. Roughly half of her sample landed in the two cooperative types, a fact the culture of the 'bad divorce' had rendered invisible.

The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 9 chapters

The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.

  1. The Family That Doesn't End
  2. The Binuclear Family
  3. Five Ways to Be an Ex
  4. The Five Transitions
  5. Leavers, Leavees, and the Grief Nobody Schedules
  6. Telling the Children, and Keeping Them Out of It
  7. Building a Limited Partnership
  8. When the Family Gets Bigger
  9. Redefining the Family

Finish The Good Divorce tonight.

Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.

Start free — 2 minutes See pricing

All 40 Relationships summaries →