The Innocent Victim cow is a master manipulator. She pulls on heart-strings and exploits protective parental instincts to get people to do what she wants, which like all the Cows, is for everyone to stay married. This Cow's Achilles heel is her impressive teetering pile of fake data that leaves her vulnerable to being pushed over with a light intellectual tap.
The Cow in this chapter is not that children will find the process of divorce difficult and sad. Children do suffer when their parents divorce. The Innocent Victim Cow represents the idea that children whose parents stay in a bad marriage have measurably happier, more productive and more fulfilled lives than they would have had if their parents had chosen to divorce.
The Innocent Victim Cow uses parental guilt to keep unhappily married ouples together. She points to scientific studies to prove that children of divorced parents have more problems in life than children from intact families. She does not mention that the vast majority of research in this area is rife with bias and errors in interpretation. Nor does she want anyone to know that what data exist about the fate of children of divorced parents are contradictory and inconclusive. She does not want our society to look at divorce from a logical perspective, but rather from the perspective of fear.
