Parents were asked to indicate if a set of 34 important life events happened to his/her child (or his/her family) during the child’s lifetime; items were taken from the Coddington Life Events Questionnaire for the Elementary Age Group (Coddington, 1972). Parents who endorsed a response then indicated the age at which their child experienced the event. This measure was administered twice, one year apart. If an event was endorsed on both surveys, we took the maximum (most recent) of the two reported ages. From these items, we coded responses indicative of parental divorce or separation, including “My child’s parents were divorced” and “My child’s parents experienced a marital separation”. The variable was a binary indicator of either or both items endorsed. If both separation and divorce were endorsed, we used the younger of the two reported ages. We grouped these based on the age at which they were experienced, creating three a priori groupings (ages 0–5, ages 6–9, age 10 or older).
