I'm adult child of divorce and we're not talked about enough

The day my parents officially announced they were divorcing, I was newly 30. It was, if I'm completely honest, a relief.

- Kate Ng, The Independent

They had already been separated for about two years by this point, a long, acrimonious process that grew even more caustic after my mother moved out of our family home. Before the ink dried on their divorce papers, I cried. Things were different for Ellie Coverdale, whose parents’ divorce shook her world when she turned 23. Now 36, Coverdale can still recall the precise moment she was told. “It was over a video call,” she says. “I was in my flat, I was working late. It felt surreal, like the ground shifted under me. I remember I was completely quiet, I didn’t know what to say. It took some time to accept it as a fact.” Our experiences may differ, but the thing we have in common is that we were both fully fledged adults when our parents split up. It's an aspect of divorce that is often overlooked — after all, adult children will have already flown the nest, may be settling down into their own relationships and careers, and may even have children of their own. But there is a growing number of us due to the increase in “silver splitters”, a term coined to describe couples divorcing in later life.