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Intensive case studies of four families in which divorced parents have maintained joint custody of their children suggest that this arrangement works well under certain conditions. Components of a successful joint custody arrangement are considered, limitations are discussed, and support is urged for divorcing parents interested in establishing joint custody.
Emotional reactions to divorce are described, with particular reference to the loss of social definition faced by members of the separating family. It is suggested that, for children in particular, disruption of the family matrix constitutes a crisis of meaning and belonging that may be central to the impact of divorce.
Results from research on divorce are synthesized, and practical implications for the development of conceptual, perceptual, and executive skills for educators, lawyers, mental health clinicians, health care professionals, social policy planners, and the media are presented. An interdisciplinary approach to intervention is proposed, and recommendations for future research on divorce are made.
Findings from a ten-year longitudinal study of 60 divorcing families from a middle-class California population show significant differences between former spouses in the quality of their current lives, differences in psychological change between men and women, and age-related differences in recovery among women. Persistence of anger and widespread loneliness were prevalent among these divorced women.
Developmental differences in reactions to parental divorce have not been examined beyond adolescence, and the impact of divorce on older offspring has thus been minimized. Central themes that emerged from an exploratory study of 18-to-23-year-olds suggest that the break-up of their parents' marriage represents a critical event deserving of further attention from researchers and clinicians.
This two-part review documents inconsistencies in the empirical basis for the hypothesis that boys are more negatively affected than are girls by parental divorce. An attempt is made to move beyond a global hypothesis to one specifying circumstances for the pattern. Part 1 asks whether methodological adequacy or postdivorce family forms in the studies help explain the discrepancy across studies that examine sex differences in children's response to parental divorce. Part 2, reviewing other possible sources for the discrepancy, will appear in a forthcoming issue of this Journal.
Findings from a study of family functioning following divorce suggest ways in which the parents' ongoing relationship-both as former spouse and as coparent-may moderate the effects of divorce on their children. Level of conflict in the "spouse" role was found to be less predictive of children's adjustment than were degree of cooperation and style of conflict resolution in the "coparent" role. Implications for intervention are considered.
The author discusses the father-child relationship as it is influenced by divorce. Psychiatrists are often consulted by individuals considering dovorce who are concerned about its probable impact on their children. Data gathered from the treatment of fathers during divorce indicate that there can be positive changes in their parental bonds as a result of increased opportunities to relate to children in a conflict-free atmosphere. In such a setting, the father's nurturing experience provides him with a new perspective on parenting. Psychotherapeutic help can lead to a strengthening of parental bonds, with subsequent benefits to both father and child. The author encourages professionals to support men in improving their fathering during the postdivorce period.
Findings from a 5-year longitudinal study of 131 children from 60 divorcing families, drawn from a predominantly white, middle-class California population, revealed unexpected changes in the relationship between the visiting parent and the child after the marital separation. The changes that showed improvement and that showed deterioration in 50% of the father-child relationships were substantially related to the difficulties and psychological conflicts engendered by visitation and divorce, the father's capacity to accommodate to the constraints of the visiting relationship, and the age and sex of the child.
The resolution of divorce conflict, especially the determination of child custody, is a major social policy concern of both the legal and mental health professions. The differences between the adversarial and mediation legal approaches parallel the phenomenological/psychoanalytic and the family therapy models of the mental health field. A philosophical and practical relationship exists uniting the adversarial and phenomenological/psychoanalytic traditions, while mediation is strongly aligned with family systems theory and therapy. Each paradigm offers American families alternative methods of resolving disputes. A greater synthesis of paradigms is required to give effective help to divorcing couples and their children.
This paper provides an overview of the rapidly growing area of divorce therapy and describes three models that are currently used by clinicians: psychotherapy only, divorce mediation, and conciliation court intervention. Some tentative conclusions are drawn regarding the efficacy of each of these different models. Potential applications and training recommendations related to this area are also provided.
Analysis of Euripides' play, Medea, and a divorcing family suggests that divorce between a narcissistically scarred, embittered, dependent woman and a pathologically narcissistic, devaluing man may lead to the mother's attempt to sever father-child contact as a means of revenging the injury inflicted on her by the loss of a selfobject, her hero-husband.
"In this paper a model to predict the cumulative divorce trajectory of marriage cohorts has been developed on the assumption that the distribution of the lengths of exposure to marriage of a marriage cohort is lognormal. It is found that on the basis of recently published data [for the United States for the period 1949-1958] the model provides a good fit to cohort divorce trajectories and compares favorably with previously published models on the same subject."
Forty-five, French-Canadian female heads of families with adequate incomes and high educational levels were identified through newspaper ads. At time of interview, the subjects had been separated or divorced for from one to three years. Interviews showed that, unlike previous reports of divorced women and female heads of families, this group enjoyed relatively good health and normal stress levels, and were generally positive about being head of the family. Among the positive changes, the majority emphasized their greater autonomy, freedom, and sense of selfhood. Some mentioned improved relations with their children. On the negative side, loneliness, absence of the father (particularly for their sons), and limited social lives were most often mentioned. It was concluded that the role of head of family is perfectly acceptable for many economically viable women, though not necessarily ideal.
Divorce is frequent in our society. It is a "marker" of high stress periods that precede and follow it. The events surrounding it have clear negative effects on the physical and mental health of all those involved. The issues and the reactions, different for fathers and mothers and for children, are determined by the sex and developmental stage. The effects are interactive and events subsequent to the divorce influence the restoration of competent functioning. This paper examines these differential effects, methods of helping in the resolution process and opportunities of preventive work with this high risk population.
A rapidly growing social scientific literature shows that many women are at great risk of being killed, beaten, or psychologically abused when they exit or try to leave their marital and/or cohabiting partners. However, less than a handful of studies have examined male-to-female sexual assaults during and after separation or divorce. Furthermore, the bulk of the limited empirical work on this problem was done in urban areas. Thus, the main objective of this article is to help fill two major research gaps by presenting the preliminary results of an ongoing exploratory study of separation and/or divorce sexual assault in rural Ohio.
Scores on the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale for Children (N-SLOCSC) were compared for third and fifth grade boys and girls from intact versus maritally disrupted family backgrounds. Significant main effects for each independent variable revealed that fifth graders more than third, boys more than girls, and the marital disruption more than the intact group, exhibited higher internality in their locus of control scores. These findings strongly suggest that experiencing a parental divorce in childhood has a significant influence on generalized perceptions of personal control and effectance, perceptions which may ultimately mediate both short- and long-term outcomes in children's post-divorce adjustment.
Investigated the interaction between parenting and temperament in predicting adjustment problems in children of divorce. The study utilized a sample of 231 mothers and children, 9 to 12 years old, who had experienced divorce within the previous 2 years. Both mothers' and children's reports on parenting, temperament, and adjustment variables were obtained and combined to create cross-reporter measures of the variables. Parenting and temperament were directly and independently related to outcomes consistent with an additive model of their effects. Significant interactions indicated that parental rejection was more strongly related to adjustment problems for children low in positive emotionality, and inconsistent discipline was more strongly related to adjustment problems for children high in impulsivity. These findings suggest that children who are high in impulsivity may be at greater risk for developing problems, whereas positive emotionality may operate as a protective factor, decreasing the risk of adjustment problems in response to negative parenting.