‘90s FAMILY : The Parent Trap : Divorce doesn’t carry the stigma it once did. And that’s what allows kids to play Mom Against Dad to get what they want--or need.

Erin giggles about her parents’ divorce.

Of course, the 14-year-old from Redondo Beach said, she’d rather have her parents together. But they’re not. Never will be. So she’s “making the best of it by getting things I want”--things such as sympathy, money and “total freedom to do whatever.”

* For sympathy, she’ll whine to one about how horrible it was visiting the other--even when she had a fine time.

* For money, she’ll beg each parent for $20 because she has to have a pink, cut-off T-shirt lest her friends think she’s a dweeb.

* For freedom, she tells one parent she’s spending a weekend night at the other’s when in reality she is staying at the house of a friend whose dad doesn’t care if they’re out until 3 a.m.

Erin isn’t a teen deviant.

Experts--psychologists, parents and educators--point to her as one of a growing number of teens and preteens “making the best” of their parents’ divorces. In adult-talk, they’re playing one parent against the other to fulfill their emotional needs or material wants.

Mostly, experts say, these are kids who have grown up knowing that divorces are as normal as lifelong marriages. These are also kids who spend less time feeling like outcasts, unlike children of divorce in the ‘70s and ‘80s who believed their families crashed while the families of neighbors, friends and folks on TV all lived happily ever after.

In the early ‘90s, experts say, such myths faded. The earlier generation of kids of divorce matured into adults weary of feeling inadequate and needing to acknowledge their less-than-perfect families.

Doing so has made it easier for today’s kids to master parent-play, said sociologist Constance R. Ahrons, author of “The Good Divorce” (HarperCollins, 1994). It is one of the many recent nonfiction and fiction books--such as “Healthy Divorce” (Jossey-Bass, 1994), “The Great Divorce” (Doubleday, 1994)--that is attempting to squash the divorce stigma.

“It’s not a big issue anymore for kids to tell their friends that their parents are divorced,” said Ahrons, associate director of USC’s Marriage and Family Therapy Program. This openness, she said, offers kids more opportunities to plan a game of “power parent play.”

Lori Gilman, 17, is pumped for a round of parent-hopping. She explains it to friends as they roam South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa: “On the weekends, my mom lets [my boyfriend] come over and hang out. She doesn’t care how long he stays,” she said in playful conspiracy. But on school nights, her boyfriend cannot come over “because I got to do my homework and watch my sister and do the dishes.”

Weeknights at Dad’s house require little action. So Lori often persuades Mom to let her spend some “quality time” with him. “That’s what I say, ‘quality time.’ But really, I get to sit around and talk on the phone and watch TV. It’s great.”

“Lucky,” another teen-age girl responded. “You should make it so that you always live with your mom on the weekends and your dad during other nights. . . . I wish I could get my parents to ease up.”

They swap advice like make-up.

It’s natural for kids to try duping their parents, explained Ahrons. “Kids will seize such opportunities if they sense a parent’s weakness,” she said, acknowledging that kids have an intuitive talent for sniffing out parental soft spots. When you add to the mix the fact that today’s kids--such as Lori and her friend--are into networking and exchanging tips, parents become especially vulnerable to being taken in.

Which is why divorced parents must make every effort to be civil to one another, Quinn said, adding that research confirms this. “It might be annoying, but it’s so important. [Parents] have to be bigger than their hate so kids will know they’re not at fault. That they’re loved.”

The nastier the divorce, the more angry the children are. And anger makes children more likely to find and exploit opportunities to deceive parents. “Parents need to communicate so they catch any games,” Quinn said, “. . . because you can bet kids are talking among themselves.”

Divorced parents, sometimes unintentionally, play psychological games with kids, said psychologist Jay Lebow, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Chicago. Parents who can’t suppress their hostility--and this is particularly true when divorce ends up in court--feed kids’ need to manipulate.

He cited a common example in which a child complains to Mom: “You know what happened at Dad’s house? He had a girl over, and I was all by myself.”

The parent who gesticulates while screaming, “Oh my god!” is encouraging the child to dish more dirt on the other parent, even if the dirt is untrue or exaggerated, Lebow said. “To children, this [exaggerated storytelling] is a way to put a confusing divorce in focus. It gives them [distorted] explanations.” But it also makes kids feel bad and, consequently, angrier.

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This is what happened to Amy Hall’s friends. Family chaos “made [the children] mad,” said the 24-year-old weight trainer, a former Riverside resident who now lives in Boulder, Colo. “It made them want to get away with stuff.”

But when Hall’s parents divorced they remained friends, Hall said. “They would send cards to each other and talk all the time. My sister and I couldn’t get away with anything. There was no guilt to play on.”

And it is guilt that fuels parent-play, said Nancy Ronne, a licensed clinical social worker in Brentwood. “Parents often know they’re being taken in,” she said. They let it happen because they fear rejection.

“After the divorce, I felt guilt. . . . I felt like a failure,” said Benno Klank, a 54-year-old father of two and a physicist from Glendale. “They learned pretty fast how to receive a favor or attention by being friendlier to one parent. . . . We’ve since communicated and our relationships are closer. But I used to go along with their games because I wanted them to like me.”

Daughter Kerstin, now a 21-year-old liberal arts major at Claremont McKenna College, confesses that she played this game well. “I was able to get extra money for school supplies,” she said. “It’s common for kids to do this because we can tell when a parent feels guilty.

“We can tell when it works.”