Narrator: This is Science Today. Overwhelmed couples with young children about to enter school can avoid unnecessary stress and divorce by investing just two hours every week in a small support group over a six month period. These were the findings of a study led by University of California, Berkeley psychologists Philip and Carolyn Cowan.

Cowan: If we spend some months around this slightly, somewhat anxiety-provoking transitions, when everything is up for grabs and no one knows quite who's going to do what and how is this going to change our lives, if we walked through those issues with couples week after week in this somewhat intimate, safe surrounding, we found that we could help a lot of the couples actually make small shifts in their lives that began to feel more satisfying.

Narrator: And in the long run, Carolyn Cowan says what helps the couples, helps the children.

Cowan: We actually see that their children start school at a better place, they do better academically, they get along better with their peers, other students at school and they have fewer behavior problems.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.