Children lacked the experience and emotional vocabulary to express how they felt; this was a particular problem among boys. To compensate children often used ‘time’ as a metaphor to describe the nature and quality of their relationship with parents. They were concerned about how much time they would spend with each parent – i.e. amount and quality of contact. Some children competed with siblings for their parents’ time – i.e. attention - while others said they resented parents giving time – i.e. affection - to new partners, step-siblings or half-siblings.

Parent-child relationships that had been regarded positively by children before their parents separated most easily survived the divorce. Children’s descriptions of less satisfactory relationships were usually dominated by expressions of anger directed at the ‘blameworthy’ or absent parent, or simply at the whole world. Such children commonly referred to a failure of trust or to the experience of rejection.