In the Old Testament passage for this Sunday God tells Abraham that he does not need to sacrifice his son Isaac in order to prove his faithfulness (Genesis 22:12). A modern context where children are sometimes sacrificed unnecessarily is a badly managed divorce. The real damage to a child comes not from the fact of the separation but from being forced to become a 'little adult' who anxiously has to guard parental secrets-protecting Mum by not telling Dad, or vice versa. Children are damaged when one parent consistently talks the other partner down, or else when the child is used as an emotional go-between for the two parents. Just as Abraham did not need to sacrifice Isaac to prove a point so also parents do not have to sacrifice their children because a relationship has ended prematurely. Neale, Flowerdew, Sanders (2004) followed sixty young people aged eight to eighteen over four years after their parents had divorced, interviewing them at the start and end of the study. The research suggested that young people today are far less likely than previous generations to see their parents' divorce as a 'tragedy' that will blight their lives forever. Children of divorced parents are less willing to be labelled, than adults might be ready to label them, as trauma survivors.

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