It is tempting to begin a discussion of personality development by asking simple questions and seeking simple answers. Do people change? Do early-life events determine later-life personality? What percent of personality is due to nature and what percent to nurture? Rather than succumbing to this temptation, we begin with questions of theory, metatheory, and epistemology. This is where one has to start. These conceptual considerations reveal that many simple questions can only be answered by making risky theoretical assumptions. Further, they suggest that some questions are not very good ones in the first place. Consider the question: Does the experience of parental divorce affect children's personality later in life? Though this question seems reasonable enough, no yes or no answer will suffice. Neither will in-between answers such as: divorce versus intact parental marriage accounts for X% of the variance in adult personality. Any such formulations raise two problems. First, answers may vary dramatically from one context to another. The influence of divorce may vary as a function of culture (e.g., do predominant religious beliefs condemn or allow for divorce?) and demographic factors that change from one society and historical period to another (e.g., what percentage of families in the given society experience divorce?). These contexts surely affect children's interpretations of the meaning of the divorce and the degree of support they receive from adults and peers as they cope with its ramifications.