l, and indicate more modest relationships in adolescence and adulthood(see review by Klein & Mannuzza, 1991). Thomas and Chess (1980) found that the continuity of childhood behavioral adjustment difficulties may be altered by the family's response to thedeveloping child, and suggested that earlier problems per se are not sufficient to predict later maladjustments. Such observations reflect an interactionalist model of human development wherebyindividual characteristics interact with psychosocial features of the environment, and as a result are modified (Plomin, 1993; Thomas & Chess, 1980). From a developmental trajectory framework,it is the moderating role played by divorce on the risk of disturbance among already vulnerable children that is at issue.There is some evidence that children whose parents eventually divorce exhibit higher levels of problematic behavior prior to divorce than children whose families remain intact(Block, Block, & Gjerde, 1986). The implication is that, in marriages which eventually dissolve, adverse family processes such as parental conflict or disrupted childrearing (most likely due topreoccupation with marital problems) are in evidence before marital dissolution and precipitate predivorce adjustment problems in children. In order to rule out the possible contaminatingeffects of divorce-related family processes on children's adjustment prior to divorce (as demonstrated by Block and colleagues), predivorce differences in child temperament-adjustment betweenchildren of families who remained intact versus children of families who divorced were examined.Almost one-third of divorced custodial mothers remarries, and because the transition into a stepfamily is a major life change with its own complex set of stressors to whichchildren of divorce are often exposed, the outcomes as a function of the independent and moderating effects of both single custodial mother family status and stepfamily status are examined. ...
