The Wallerstein study

Hi amadalia,

You correctly eliminated answers A and B. Verbs that end in -ing are sometimes referred to as "timeless" verbs, meaning that they're not exclusive to one point in time.

For example: Scientists discovered an asteroid hurtling through space.

Even those the Scientists made their discovery in the past, the asteroid was hurtling through space even further in the past, at the moment that it was discovered and will likely continue hurtling through space in the future (thus, the proper verb is an -ing verb, one that is "timeless").

In this prompt, the "intent" of the sentence is to refer to an event that happened in the past, so eliminating A and B makes sense.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

The primary problem with A and B is one of meaning, not of tense.

"Occurring" is a present participle modifying "divorce." The relative pronoun "when" is thus modifying "occurring." Thus, "when a child" or "when children" implies that "divorce" was either a child or children, rather than the men and women. This doesn't make sense. We need to introduce "they" to refer back to men and women.