A study of children of divorced parents found that ten years

To answer your question about B and C, let’s take a look at the whole question.

Frustratingly, in some of these choices the only clear problem is the idiom. We usually don’t encourage people to focus on idiom issues (for more on that, check out our No-BS Guide to GMAT Idioms). But let’s go through the answer choices and see what we come up with:


The first issue with (A) is idiomatic: we have "not...nor" instead of "neither...nor." But it's best to be conservative when it comes to idioms, so let's chalk this up as a strike against (A) and move on.

Next, we have two descriptors for the children, so let’s see if the sentence works for each one individually:

1) children {...} were not preoccupied ABOUT the reasons {...}

2) [children] {...} were not even very curious ABOUT the reasons {...}

You can be curious ABOUT something, so the second bit works here. But you can only be preoccupied WITH something, not preoccupied ABOUT something. So we have another idiomatic issue and our second strike against (A).

The final issue (which does not involve idioms) is that the second part of the sentence is a bit redundant—we don’t need to say that they were reasons "that led to" their divorce because that’s what reasons do... something like “reasons for their divorce” would suffice. That gives us our third strike against (A).

If you aren't sure about the idioms, you'll have a tough time eliminating (A) right away. But with three votes against it, (A) isn't looking good.


While we don’t have the “neither/nor” construction, the “or” functions just fine for joining the clauses.

Let’s now check the idioms:

1) “preoccupied with…the reasons” and

2) “curious about the reasons.”

Both work, so let’s keep (B) for now.


Here the neither/nor works.

Let’s now break up the sentence as we did in (A) and (B):

1) “preoccupied WITH the reasons.” - This works.
2) “curious WITH the reasons.” - Nope, we don’t have the right idiom here. The idiom is “curious ABOUT.”

In addition, there seems to be an issue with commas in this option:

• The commas after "preoccupied" and after "curious" seem to act as parentheses--they are there to indicate extra, nonessential information.
• But watch what happens if we get rid of the comma-separated part in (C): "children were neither preoccupied with the reasons that led to their parents divorce." This sentence now doesn't make sense on it's own.
• In (B), however, if we get rid of the comma-separated part, we have: "...children were not preoccupied with the reasons...", which is totally fine. This is another vote in favor of (B) over (C).

Also (and this might just be a typo), there should be an apostrophe after parents to indicate possession: “parents’ divorce.”

(B) is still the best option, so let's get rid of (C).


We can have “neither/nor” or “not/or,” but we can’t have “neither/or.”

In addition, the plural is off here: “parents’ divorces.” "Divorces" sounds like the parents had multiple divorces. While it might be the case that their parents had multiple divorces, it is unlikely, especially since the statement discusses a single divorce earlier on in the sentence: “ten years after the parents' divorce.”

(D) is out.


To explain this answer choice, I'll shamelessly steal from an earlier post:


(B) is our winner!