Making Divorce Easier On Kids

One Approach Uses Custody Arrangements That Include Both Parents

(CBS)  The 50-50 arrangement is a well-planned, deliberate effort. Each house has the boy essentials: television, computer, basketball hoop. Mom's house has a dog and a cat and there are fish at dad's.

The arrangement is flexible and the exes get along. for Drew and Lynne, it is a good divorce.

"My divorce is better than plenty of marriages I've seen, including my own," Lynne says.

Asked why they got divorced, Drew says laughing: "Oh don't ask. Yeah. It was not a match made in heaven, and it just didn't work. We had different views on the world."

But those differing views create more havoc for kids in a divorce. Elizabeth Marquardt's new study with nearly a thousand adult children of divorce looks at the long term effects of split families.

"It's the child of divorce who spends the rest of their childhood traveling between two often increasingly different worlds, trying alone to make sense of their parent's very different values, and beliefs, and ways of living," Marquardt says.

Children who travel back and forth frequently face considerable stress.

"It's very hard. And to not know which place to really call home base," says Lynne.

For the boys, there is one overwhelming issue.

"It's hard to keep track of my stuff," Jack says.

The twins seem to take it in stride. One of the boys tells Smith, "I'd rather lose things than not see my parents."

The 50-50 custody is clearly not for every divorce. For Drew and Lynne, it works because they work hard at it every day, one week at a time.

"You know, they need both of us, they really do, and we need them. I mean, I need them," says Lynne. "I just hope that they feel like they have two real homes, and they have double what other people have."

Not everybody can do this. Drew and Lynne live close by, they're flexible and communicate well, and they can afford two nice houses and a nanny.

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On Thursday, Smith takes a serious look at an all-too-common divorce dynamic that is really tough on kids: when one parent turns the child against the other parent. Some family lawyers call it "parental alienation."