• Interparental conflict after divorce escalates the risk of mental health problems in children and adolescents.
• Elevated levels of conflict between parents can also induce fear and worry in children about their future and whether they will be adequately taken care of. In turn, a greater fear of abandonment puts children at greater risk of mental health problems.
• Parents can protect their children’s mental health by adopting strategies that shield them from conflict and that assure them that they will be well cared for no matter what happens.
• Developing programs to help children and adolescents cope effectively with interparental conflicts is a pivotal step toward safeguarding their well-being.

This article on the mental health implications for children caught between highly conflicted divorced parents will cover the following key points:

1. Protecting children in the emotional storm of divorce
2. Linking conflict to children’s mental health problems
3. Exploring the role of children’s fear of abandonment
4. Does high-quality parenting reduce the negative effects of interparental conflict on fear of abandonment?
5. Reducing the harmful effects of interparental conflict on youth’s mental health by supporting both parents and children

1. Protecting children in the emotional storm of divorce

In most divorces, parents make many important decisions: How much time will the children spend with each parent? Will the children change schools? Who will make decisions about medical and educational issues? These and other issues can be very emotional, so it is natural for many separating and divorcing parents to experience conflict.

Shielding youth from parental conflict is undeniably challenging. Children might witness or overhear arguments, or they might sense tension in more subtle ways during one-on-one interactions with a parent. Simple remarks can inadvertently place children in a difficult position and make them feel torn between both sides.

Children exposed to more frequent and intense parental conflict in the first years after divorce were more than two and a half times more likely to develop a mental health disorder six years later than were peers whose parents were also divorced but who had experienced less frequent and less intense conflict.

Phrases like “I can’t believe your mom went out with her friends instead of spending time with you” can foster feelings of being caught in the middle.

Similarly, asking children and teenagers to relay messages (e.g., “Tell your dad I need to change the time I pick you up next week”) or pressing them for information about the other parent (e.g., “Who else was at your mom’s with you today?” “What did you have for dinner at your dad’s last night?”) make children feel they need to take sides.

2. Linking conflict to children’s mental health problems

There is a well-established link between high levels of interparental conflict and the development of mental health problems in children and adolescents, including anxiety, depression, and aggression.

For example, in one of our studies, of 240 nine- to 12-year-olds, we assessed patterns of child-reported conflict over six to eight years following divorce.

The study was conducted in the United States; 88% of mothers were Caucasian, 8% were Hispanic, 2% were African American, and 1% were Asian; median yearly income ranged from $20,001 to $25,000 (equivalent to approximately $45,000 to $56,000 today), and 47% of mothers reported completing some college courses.

More intense parental conflict leads to to worse mental health

Children exposed to more frequent and intense parental conflict in the first years after divorce were more than two and a half times more likely to develop a mental health disorder six years later than were peers whose parents were also divorced but who had experienced less frequent and less intense conflict.

But despite the clear connection between conflict and mental health problems, we do not yet understand how and why this link occurs. To help families navigate the process of separation and divorce and to protect children’s mental health, we must understand this process more thoroughly.

Photo: rubberduck1951. Pixabay.

3. Exploring the role of children’s fear of abandonment

One potential explanation for the link is that witnessing frequent conflicts makes children fear abandonment or worry about whether they will receive adequate care from one or both parents.

In a recent study, of 559 youth ages nine to 18 who had experienced a parental separation or divorce in the previous two years, we addressed a few important questions about conflict and fear of abandonment. Our goal was to help experts create better programs for families going through separation and divorce.

First, we asked whether children and adolescents were more afraid of being left alone or not taken care of properly when there was more conflict between parents.

Next, we explored whether a greater fear of abandonment correlated with increased mental health problems. Finally, we explored whether high-quality parenting protected children from fear of abandonment, even when there was a lot of conflict between parents.

The emergence of the fear of abandonment

Fear of abandonment emerged as a key explanation for the heightened risk of mental health problems. Exposure to elevated levels of conflict made children and adolescents more prone to fearing abandonment three months later. This heightened fear, in turn, was associated with an increase in mental health problems 10 months later.

This finding remained the same even after accounting for previous mental health problems. Fear of abandonment may get in the way of children and adolescents coping effectively with stress, distract them from developmental goals, or push them toward potentially harmful peer groups that encourage antisocial behaviors.

Fear of abandonment emerged as a key explanation for the heightened risk of mental health problems.

4. Does high-quality parenting reduce the negative effects of interparental conflict on fear of abandonment?

Research shows that high-quality parenting is a very strong protective factor for all children, especially those who experience separation or divorce.

High-quality parenting is defined as parenting that is responsive, close, accepting, supportive, and encouraging, and is characterized by a generally positive emotional relationship between parent and child.

Research also indicates that high-quality parenting can lessen the impact of divorce-related stressors on children’s mental health problems. With this in mind, we anticipated that high-quality parenting could counterbalance the adverse effects of high levels of conflict between parents.

Surprisingly, when we examined the protective role of high-quality parenting in our study, this did not happen. Even though high-quality parenting was somewhat protective for the children and adolescents we studied, it may not have been powerful enough to cancel out the harmful effects of high levels of conflict.

5. Reducing the harmful effects of interparental conflict on youth’s mental health by supporting both parents and children

How can the harmful effects of interparental conflict on children’s and adolescents’ mental health be reduced? A focus on both parents and children is important. Here are two suggestions.

Photo: Kindel Media. Pexels.

First, researchers and clinicians need to help separated and divorced parents access programs that give them the tools to reduce their children’s exposure to conflict.

In rigorous evaluations, few in-person or online programs for separated or divorced parents have reduced children’s exposure to interparental conflict. One exception is the eNew Beginnings Program (eNBP), which was developed by one of the authors (Wolchik et al., 2022).

In the eNBP, parents learn practical strategies to protect their children from witnessing interparental conflict; they also learn how to refrain from sharing negative comments about the other parent with the child and asking the child to relay messages to the other parent.

To help reduce the fear of abandonment, parents let their children know that they will always be there for them and that parents never divorce children.

Second, researchers need to develop and test programs that help children cope effectively with the difficult thoughts and feelings that arise when parents fight or say things that make children feel they need to take sides. Research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health is underway to develop a program to help children cope effectively with interparental conflict.

The post Children caught between highly conflicted divorced parents at greater risk of mental health problems appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

• Parents who work outside of the standard Monday-Friday, 9-5 hours must strike a balance between their work schedule and the demands of parenting.
• Fathers’ parenting is often influenced by non-standard work schedules and some types of work, such as night shifts, may increase certain types of parenting, whereas others may decrease the amount of parenting.
• Achieving the right balance between work and parenting should be considered within the context of the family. For example, the mother’s work schedule, the child’s age, and the type of parenting activity may all play a role in the effect of non-standard work schedules.

How do fathers’ non-standard work schedules affect their parenting?

Fathers matter. We know the positive impact of fathers as caregivers in terms of emotional support, interactive caring, and day-to-day raising of their children. But does it matter if they regularly work non-standard hours, such as evenings, nights, or weekends, that may challenge their ability to carry out their parenting activities? Given that more than half of employed U.K. fathers work such non-standard hours during the first decade of their children’s lives, it is imperative to understand how this affects fathers’ parenting and whether the effects vary by context. (Non-standard work schedules are also common among U.S. fathers.)

New quantitative evidence from the United Kingdom offers a nuanced answer. My colleague, Anne McMunn, and I used data from the Millennium Cohort Study – a nationally representative sample of children born in the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2002. We analyzed 11,412 fathers when their children were nine months old and 7,791 fathers when their children were nearly seven years old. We focused on two measures of parenting – basic care (in both age groups) and play and recreation (for seven-year-olds).

Photo: Gustavo Fring. Pexels.

Fathers of nine-month-olds were asked how often they looked after their babies on their own, changed diapers, fed their children, or got up in the night to attend to them. Fathers of seven-year-olds were asked if they helped their children get ready for bed or cared for them alone. They were also asked how often they read with or to their children, told stories, did musical activities, drew, played physically active games, took the children to the park, or played with toys or games indoors.

Different non-standard schedules influenced fathers’ involvement in different ways

We found that fathers who worked in the evenings, between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m., spent less time on basic parenting activities both when their children were infants and when they were seven than did fathers who worked standard hours. For example, they spent less time looking after a child alone, getting a child ready for bed, changing diapers, or getting up in the night to soothe a baby. In contrast, fathers who worked night schedules, such as from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., spent more time on these basic care activities.

Initially, we found that fathers who regularly worked evenings spent more time and those who worked weekends spent less time in play and recreation than did fathers who worked standard hours. However, these differences may stem more from work characteristics, such as long working hours, than from work schedules. Lastly, we found no evidence that the relation between fathers’ work schedules and parenting differed by the intensity of fathers’ work hours, families’ poverty status, or fathers’ educational attainment.

While fathers who work evenings may decrease the amount of parenting they do, fathers who work nights have opportunities to be more actively involved in parenting

These findings support a more nuanced view of the integration of non-standard work schedules with parenting. Not all non-standard work schedules negatively affect fathers’ involvement. While fathers who work evenings may decrease the amount of parenting they do, fathers who work nights have opportunities to be more actively involved in parenting.

Previous research on working specific times of the day helps interpret these results. Night schedules could create openings for dads to be involved in parenting routines during the day, or in the early morning or evening, depending on when work starts and ends. In contrast, evening work may occur during children’s bedtimes, giving fathers who work at this time fewer opportunities to be involved in parenting. In addition to the basic parenting activities we examined, other studies have also found that fathers who work evening schedules miss out on family activities, such as helping with homework and eating meals together.

Mothers’ employment schedules also influence working fathers’ parenting time

The story is incomplete if we fail to consider the role of mothers’ employment. We examined whether parents’ available time in the household also mattered for fathers’ parenting time. We found that fathers’ night work facilitated more basic parenting activities when mothers worked than they did when mothers did not work. However, fathers participated in even more basic parenting activities when both parents worked non-standard schedules than when both worked at standard times.

Photo: Pavel Danilyuk. Pexels.

Perhaps this indicates a preference for parental child care. Some couples engage in tag-team parenting, which involves decreasing the overlap between their work schedules and maximizing time with their children. For example, if one parent works nights or weekends, the other parent stays at home and engages in parenting instead of paying for child care.

Alternatively, our findings may indicate not that parents choose to work non-standard schedules but the financial constraints of finding child care at non-standard times. Despite the greater provision of publicly funded child care in the United Kingdom for three- to five-year-olds, relative to the U.S. context, child care is expensive and harder to find outside regular daytime hours.

Policies and programs can help reduce the challenges of parents’ non-standard work schedules

How can fathers make it work so they can make important contributions in their children’s lives? The challenge for workplace policies and government programs is to reduce the potential difficulties for fathers of working non-standard schedules. Employers need to acknowledge a lesson learned from the COVID-19 pandemic: that many jobs can be worked flexibly.

Working non-standard hours may compromise supportive parenting – but it also has the potential to lead to more time parenting under the right circumstances.

Some parents view non-standard work schedules as an opportunity to fulfil their goals to integrate family time, parenting, and paid work. Employers can advertise job vacancies as flexible and in the United Kingdom, reduce the qualifying period before employees can request flexible work schedules. Such a policy promotes inclusivity as the demand for non-standard employment is met and matched with workers who are available and willing to work such hours.

When parents don’t have control over work schedules

However, not all parents have control over their work schedules. For those parents, government policies can provide incentives for childcare facilities to remain open evenings and weekends, and employers can offer pay premiums for working outside standard hours. Such programs can relieve the constraints on families who need affordable child care.

Parents working nonstandard work schedules may very well want to minimize the potential negative impacts of their work times on their parenting. As parents reflect on the integration of their work schedules with family time, they should consider the context of their home life –for example, the age of their children, whether both parents work and at what times of the day, and the types of parenting activities which they engage in during the course of a day (e.g., play or basic care).

In our research, we were unable to consider whether a parent chooses to work at a non-standard time, but such choice in work schedules is unquestionably a factor in how parents integrate work and family time. Amid the daily challenges of balancing work and parenting time, working non-standard hours may compromise supportive parenting – but it also has the potential to lead to more time parenting under the right circumstances.

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Seventy attachment researchers with long track records in the field collaborated globally to produce a seminal statement concerning the widespread use of attachment theory in family courts.

The start of 2021 sees a major new contribution to family court practice by child development researchers. A 35-page “Consensus position based on the concerted body of attachment research” has been published, under the names of 70 leading attachment researchers. It is the most comprehensive statement ever produced on how attachment theory can be applied in family courts worldwide in the best interests of children. It also shows ways in which attachment theory is frequently misused.

This summary highlights the key points in the statement, but family court professionals who wish to learn more about this important topic should read the document in full. References to page numbers are included in this summary to enable quick access to the more detailed account.

The “best interests of the child” has become the fundamental consideration in family courts. The concept is included in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989): “In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration (#3.1)” (p. 5).

This article addresses four issues:

1. The challenge of using attachment theory in family courts
2. What is attachment theory?
3. Three attachment principles for family court practice
4. Eight pieces of advice for family courts

1. The challenge of using attachment theory in family courts

A fundamental difficulty applying attachment science in family courts is that the science and the courts start from very different places. The measures used in attachment research are accurate enough to produce average scores that predict patterns of future child development across groups, but they are not sensitive enough to be used as diagnostic tools for individual families, which is what courts need (p. 5). Correlations found in attachment science, while statistically significant, may not be substantial, and rarely provide the basis for making a prediction about one individual (p. 21). Even the more fine-grained attachment assessments have been designed and validated for standardized contexts and may not apply in highly charged situations common in family courts.

“Family courts are under pressure to appear to base their decisions on evidence, and attachment theory has become by far the most popular theory among professionals working with children and families.”

Therefore, specific measures of attachment quality should be used with great caution. They may play a part, but only in combination with other assessments. Other measures include the child’s physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development, and very importantly, the capacity of a parent to provide care or be helped to develop caring skills. Above all, it is crucial to assess risk of harm to the child. Every one of these factors is hard to assess, not least because each can change over time, particularly if the assessment is made at a moment of heightened trauma and change (pp. 15-16, 20-21, 30-32).

Family courts are under pressure to appear to base their decisions on evidence, and attachment theory has become by far the most popular theory among professionals working with children and families. This creates an environment in which over-confidence about the application of attachment classifications or concepts to individual cases is common (p. 21). Because of the complexity of cases in family courts, proceedings can be influenced by personal opinions or cultural and social values and norms (pp. 5, 6, 32).

2. What is attachment theory?

2.1 Defining attachment

The 70 attachment researchers who contributed to the statement defined attachment this way:

Attachment refers to an affectional bond in which an individual is motivated to seek and maintain proximity to, and comfort from, particular familiar persons (Bowlby, 1969/1982). Children are born with a predisposition to develop this motivation in relation to significant others (“attachment figures”) who have been sufficiently present and responsive. For children, these persons are usually their caregivers. The motivation is held to be governed by an attachment behavioral system. This system seeks to maintain a certain degree of proximity between child and attachment figures, with the setting for desirable level changing dynamically in response to internal and external cues. The motivation to increase proximity is activated when a person is alarmed by internal cues (e.g. pain, illness) and/or external cues (e.g. fear-evoking stimuli, separation), and manifests in a tendency to seek the availability of an attachment figure. When the attachment system is strongly activated, some kind of physical contact with an attachment figure is generally sought, especially by infants, though this contact can also be achieved by non-physical means later in development … Caregivers who have regularly interacted with and protect the infant when the infant has been alarmed usually come to be represented by the infant as someone he or she can turn to when in need (i.e. as a safe haven). Importantly, even the most sensitive and responsive of caregivers necessarily “tune out” from time to time – to visit the bathroom, make tea, or even temporarily hand over caregiving to another trusted person familiar to the infant, while the caregiver attends to other matters. Thus, that a caregiver provides a safe haven does not necessitate that this person is constantly accessible for the infant physically, or even psychologically, or that the child is securely attached to that caregiver. Conversely, being physically present does not necessarily mean that a caregiver is emotionally available (pp. 7-8).

Photo: Yogendra Singh. Unsplash.

2.2 Attachment quality is measured by secure/insecure, not strong/weak

In attachment research, trained and certified coders measure the quality of attachment through standardized observation of children’s relative ability to use their caregiver as a safe haven to which they can turn for protection, and as a secure base from which they can explore the environment (p. 8).

Secure attachment manifests itself in the child’s expectation that the adult will be available in times of need. Insecure attachment manifests itself in the child’s expectation that the adult will be relatively unavailable (p. 8).

Insecure attachment is not weak and is extremely common and normal. Insecure attachment is an important strategy for children to maximize the potential availability of a caregiver who is unavailable or insensitive. An insecure attachment does not mean that the caregiver is never a safe haven for the child (pp. 10, 17).

Insecure attachment is observed in three forms:

• Insecure-avoidant is when the child does not seek his or her familiar person when mildly alarmed, but remains near (p. 17).
• Insecure-resistant is when the child seeks proximity but is not readily comforted and can show anger toward the caregiver. Both this and insecure-avoidant behavior are termed organized insecure attachment because they are coherent and work to increase the availability of less sensitive carers (p. 17).
• Disorganized attachment is when the child is conflicted, confused, or apprehensive about a family caregiver in a situation of mild to moderate alarm. It is often associated with frightened, frightening, or dissociative behavior on the part of the caregiver, or a caregiver’s hostility, withdrawal, or maltreatment (p. 18).

All these forms of insecure attachment correlate with later compromised child development, but even in the case of disorganized attachment, the associations are not strong enough to infer that observing insecure attachment foretells poor development outcomes for a specific child (p. 19).

Furthermore, researchers observe patterns of attachment in carefully controlled conditions that involve only mild to moderate stress for a child. Family courts commonly deal with children in situations of intense stress. Disorganized behavior on the part of a seriously stressed child does not necessarily imply disorganized attachment (p. 19).

“Specific measures of attachment quality should be used with great caution. They may play a part, but only in combination with other assessments.”

2.3 Attachment disorder differs from insecure attachment

The negative effects of insecure attachments, as presented earlier, are far surpassed by the potential damage of attachment disorder.

Two types of attachment disorder have been defined. Reactive attachment disorder is when a child shows a lack of care-seeking toward any caregiver when alarmed. Disinhibited social engagement disorder is when a child is over-friendly with unfamiliar people.

Reactive attachment disorder is seen in children who have experienced extremely inadequate caregiving in their early years, for example, those who have lived in institutions. The symptoms are reversible if the child is placed in a stable caregiving environment (p. 19).

2.4 Children form attachments with multiple caregivers

There is a widespread belief in the importance of one psychological parent, which emerges from the practice in some cultures of a single parent being the primary caregiver. A related idea has emerged: that an attachment with one person competes with other attachment relationships. Bowlby himself started with the idea of a single attachment in his 1969 book, but had changed his mind by the time he wrote his second book in 1984.

The reality is that children form attachment relationships with multiple caregivers simultaneously if they have sufficient time with the caregivers and if the caregivers provide enough of a safe haven in times of need. For decades, the vast majority of attachment researchers have believed that children benefit from having more than one safe haven (p. 6, 11-12).

The presence of multiple caregivers is the norm in many cultural settings across the world. Multiple caregivers and a network of attachment relationships constitute a protective factor in child development when caregiving is inconsistent (e.g., a caregiver is unwell or unavailable). This does not imply that the number of attachments is limitless, nor that a child may not prefer some caregivers over others. A child’s preferences are often shaped by the current accessibility of one carer over another and do not seem to depend on relative attachment quality with the caregivers. However, in the context of inter-parental conflict and custody disputes, less is known about how children’s preferences play out (p. 11-12).

While all attachments with regular caregivers are important, researchers’ opinions differ about whether a most familiar carer should be afforded priority in the early years. Variations in context – such as cultural and family factors – might influence the organization of continuous contact with different caregivers (p. 12).

“Insecure attachment is not weak and is very common – the average rate of insecure attachment in the general population is nearly half.”

2.5 New attachments can form

When a child and new caregiver spend sufficient time together, attachments usually form. The time together can activate not only the child’s attachment system but also a complementary caregiving system in the caregiver. Both are malleable. This is a relevant consideration in decisions about custody and overnight stays. However, no empirical research shows that overnight stays are a necessary condition for the development of an attachment relationship (p. 14).

Photo: Alan Wat. Creative Commons.

3. Three attachment principles for family court practice

In their statement, the researchers present three principles for family court practice based on a full consideration of attachment research.

Principle 1: A child needs to experience safe havens provided by particular, familiar, and non-abusive caregivers.

Two considerations are key:

• Limited contact with a caregiver makes it more difficult for a child to form, enhance, and maintain expectations of that caregiver’s availability in times of need.
• Almost all non-abusive and non-neglecting family-based care is likely to be better than institutional care (p. 25).

Principle 2: Safe, continuous, “good enough” care is in the child’s best interest and caregivers should be helped to provide it.

A safe haven requires particular familiar relationships and sufficiently continuous interaction with these caregivers. Even if another caregiving environment may be better in some way than the child’s current one, continuity of good enough care constitutes part of a child’s best interests. Disrupting existing attachments in favor of an “optimal” solution should be pursued with extreme caution (pp. 25-26).

Safe, continuous, good-enough care can be actively supported. Many studies and meta-analyses demonstrate effective interventions that improve caregiving quality. Many of these interventions are limited in time, typically lasting just 6 to 10 sessions (p. 26).

To this end, it is important to assess a caregiver’s potential to provide good enough care with sufficient support, not just the caregiver’s actual caregiving. The assessment also needs to consider a future time, if a current extreme state of distress diminishes the caregiver’s current ability (e.g., fear of loss of custody). Also, any particular intervention does not suit every caregiver, so alternatives should be made available (p. 32).

In families where roles were different prior to the separation, it is important to give the less experienced caregiver the opportunity to develop the ability to provide a safe haven (p. 12).

Bowlby put it this way in 1951: “Just as children are absolutely dependent on their parents for sustenance, so … are parents … dependent on greater society for economic provision. If a community values its children it must cherish their parents” (p. 28).

“The reality is that children form attachment relationships with multiple caregivers simultaneously.”

Principle 3: Maintain a child’s existing safe havens if they don’t pose a threat.

A decision to maintain a child’s existing safe havens does not provide a blueprint for allocating time in shared care arrangements. Time must be sufficient for attachment relationships to be developed and maintained (p. 28).

This principle can also apply to foster care, where relationships with biological parents can be maintained during fostering. Similarly, relationships with foster carers can maintained after foster care (p. 29).

In addition, grandparents, step-parents, siblings, and extended family members can often provide a safe haven for children (p. 29).

Photo: Frank Mckenna. Unsplash.

4. Eight pieces of advice for family courts

1. Do not equate attachment quality with caregiver sensitivity.

Caregiver sensitivity – the ability to notice a child’s signals, interpret them correctly, and respond to them appropriately and in a timely way – is, of course, important and correlates with attachment. However, gender norms can influence how care is expressed, and measures of safe haven and caregiver sensitivity may be shaped by gendered assumptions about caregiving (pp. 8-9). For example, sensitive caregiving in mothers predicts secure attachment more than it does in fathers, suggesting that other factors play a greater role in father-child attachment.

2. Do not equate attachment quality with relationship quality.

Relationships are made up of more than attachment alone. Other factors, such as basic physical care, play, supervision, teaching/learning, setting standards for conduct, and discipline, are also important (p. 9).

3. Do not interpret one-off behaviors of children as reliably indicating attachment quality.

Children’s behaviors depend on context. Attachment is measured in very controlled contexts. A very frightened child behaves differently than a less frightened child. A child in a highchair may cry in response to a threatening noise, but not cry if he or she is free to move to the caregiver. Children’s behaviors are also a function of their individual temperaments (p. 9).

4. The Tender Years Doctrine is wrong.

The Tender Years Doctrine holds that custody automatically goes to the mother for children under a certain “tender” age. While this concept has been formally replaced in most countries by standards related to the best interests of the child, it remains influential (p. 13). In Israel, it remains the policy: custody automatically goes to the mother for children under the age of six. The researchers state: “We are in full consensus that the ultimate establishment of a network of attachment relationships is generally a protective factor in the long term and thus a desirable outcome in child development. We are also in full agreement that losses of and permanent separations from attachment figure are in themselves risk factors that should be prevented wherever possible in child development.” (p.13)

5. Overnight care with a second parent is not inherently harmful for children.

In the 1990s, researchers concluded that co-parenting arrangements that included overnight visits to the co-parent were associated with insecurity in a child’s attachment with the resident parent (Solomon & George, 1999). However, the data presented in the study actually showed that parental conflict, not overnight stays, was  the problem. The inaccurate conclusion of this study has been quoted frequently to defend a position that is not supported by this or other evidence (p. 13).

The key question regarding decisions about overnight stays is whether the child experiences a safe haven with each caregiver. Of course, having a secure attachment does not preclude a child being unsettled for a time by unfamiliarity with, say, a new home. Also, the application of Principle 2 (safe, continuous, “good enough” care is in the child’s best interest and caregivers should be helped to provide it) requires attention to actively enabling the caregiver to develop a safe haven over time (p. 14).

“It is important to assess a caregiver’s potential to provide good enough care with sufficient support, not just the caregiver’s actual caregiving.”

6. Addressing and reducing conflict is key.

Inter-parental conflict and hostility undermine a parent’s own caring competencies and ability to let the other parent provide care. Interventions to reduce parental conflict are important (pp. 14-15).

If courts are clear about their decisions regarding custody and time allocation, they can increase parents’ capacity to overcome conflict. Similarly, if courts are clear about their commitment to the three principles outlined earlier, caregivers’ anxiety can be reduced and their motivation for cooperation increased (p. 33).

7. Ensure that family court professionals are adequately trained in attachment assessment.

While attachment theory is typically a mandatory part of professionals’ training, specialist training in assessing attachment quality is not. This can lead to attachment theory being either under-estimated or used with over-confidence. If assessments of attachment are used, they must be performed by formally trained observers (pp. 23, 31).

8. Take evidence directly from experts, not via representing parties.

Appeals to attachment in family courts would be less partial, more balanced, and more aligned with convergent evidence if courts called in experts, rather than the representing parties (p. 23).

The post How to apply attachment theory in family courts: The world’s leading experts weigh in appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Nurturing fatherhood was embedded in male biology long ago and likely laid evolutionary foundations for other fathering roles.

How central is hands-on, caring fatherhood to men’s roles in families? We know that many fathers are very capable caregivers. Data show that fathers in many parts of the world are doing more hands-on care than their own fathers did. Many dads warm to the role. And research demonstrates that involved fathering benefits children. But how much is interactive caring at the core of who men are as fathers? Is it a passing development, an aberration from men’s foundational, evolved roles over the history of our species: to be a hunter/breadwinner?

New anthropological research offers an intriguing answer. It suggests that caring fatherhood is not only core to men’s parenting, but that it may have come first in human evolution, before fathers provided food for their offspring. Indeed, if humans had not first developed early forms of caring fatherhood, then the provider father might never have arrived: Thus, “caring dad” may have laid the evolutionary foundations for “provider dad.”

This explanation springs from our attempts to understand a very distinctive and unusual feature about humans: We are virtually the only primates who routinely share large quantities of food with one another. Adult males, females, and children benefit from such sharing. Indeed, the pooling of high-energy food resources (such as meat and root vegetables) helps explain how humans evolved large, energetically costly brains that make up only a small percentage (~4%) of our body weight but require nearly 20% of the calories we burn each day. It also helps explain our unique family strategy of raising many very needy, slow-growing children at the same time, which sets us apart from other mammals, including other primates.

“These findings highlight direct caring for children as an important feature of men’s lives from early in human evolution.”

The advantages of food sharing can be seen in some contemporary societies that practice foraging (or hunting and gathering) to meet their food needs. Hunting can generate large, nutrient-dense food resources, but successful hunts of large animals are also unpredictable. Men’s specialization as hunters is generally possible only with the nutritional assurance provided by women’s more consistent foraging of plants, insects, and other small animals.

Photo: Humphrey Muleba. Unsplash.

Thus, it is clear why humans continued to share food after sharing had become established. The more difficult question is: How and why did it begin in the first place? Food sharing and role specialization can be costly to the sharers; you need reliable partners for it to pay off. Hunting is risky and was probably inconsistent in the deep past, with simple technology and rudimentary communication. So humans would not have hunted routinely – and would likely not have shared the proceeds widely – if there was no assured payback.

The evolution of sharing would have required a history of cooperation, trust, and reliability within communities, including between males and females. What conditions might have enabled such strong, prosocial relationships to have already emerged among early humans and our extinct ancestors? Through observation of non-human primate behaviors, my research team suggests an answer: Low-cost, basic forms of adult male care of infants, aiding mothers, helped pave the way for greater cooperation, including food sharing.

Non-human primate males offer rudimentary care

For example, in some baboon species, individual adult males in larger multi-male, multi-female social groups form close social bonds with females when they have an infant. These adult males are very tolerant of the infant. They provide protection against infanticide and from aggressors in the group. These baboon friendships between adult males and females emerge during pregnancy and often continue beyond weaning, but they dissolve if the infant dies. Thus, the male-female relationship is supported by a loose form of joint parental care, which can give the male a better chance of mating, though the female generally does not mate exclusively with that male.

Male mountain gorillas are also very tolerant of infants and juveniles, and interact with them, even though they do not seem to differentiate their own young from those of other males. This caring behavior may enhance the males’ attractiveness to females: Males who provide more direct care have more reproductive success, according to a recent study by my colleague, Stacy Rosenbaum. Likewise, macaque females in some species prefer males who interact with infants, according to recent data. So it seems that basic paternal care can emerge in primates even in non-monogamous situations when the males are unclear about paternity, which was long thought to be a major evolutionary barrier to committed fatherhood. This care for infants, and the relationship bonds that it builds with females, is low cost and thus possibly part of males’ mating effort.

We argue that similar low-cost behaviors could have evolved in early humans and then been ratcheted up through evolutionary time. Caring would have laid the social and trust foundations for the later emergence of more proactive, riskier, more costly food sharing. Such food sharing eventually led to subsistence specialization and resource pooling that became common in human families and communities. Thus, we argue that the caring father predated the provisioning father rather than vice versa.

Testosterone and caring capacities

Another indicator tells us about the ancientness and centrality of child care to men’s parenting: their biology. Nurturing caring is supported in men and regulated by variations in hormones such as testosterone and oxytocin. There is evidence that men with lower testosterone often engage in more prosocial, generous, and empathetic behavior than men with higher testosterone. Our team of researchers was the first to identify, in the Philippines and subsequently in other contexts, a relationship between lower testosterone in men and the amount of child care they do. In a large project that tracked men in their 20s over five years, testosterone levels dropped significantly when men became partnered fathers.

“This perspective questions how paternal roles have been viewed through 20^th-century industrial societies, which shaped narrow perceptions of men’s capabilities.”

Therefore, fathers appear to be biologically primed to provide direct care for their children. Indeed, in many other animals, fathers’ hormones change in similar ways when dads cooperate with moms to raise young. As anthropologists, we know that cultural contexts have large effects on shaping human parents’ roles in families. So it might be most accurate to say that men are biologically evolved to be culturally primed as caregivers.

Photo: César Abner Martínez Aguilar. Unsplash.

These insights suggest that caring fatherhood is not an aberration of changing current social conditions. Rather, it is rooted in our evolutionary past and can be supported by changes in testosterone, other hormones, and the brain, which help men shift from one specialized role to another and back again. A biological and cultural requirement for these shifts toward caring is men’s proximity and availability to their children. In some societies that practice foraging, men are with their children for much of the day, and those fathers are more involved in hands-on child care than fathers in virtually any other human societies. We are still learning about the biology of fatherhood in these societies, but these caring behaviors and fathers’ availability to their children often correspond with lower testosterone in men in the Philippines, the United States, European countries, Israel, and other settings.

Is caring fatherhood linked to being community minded?

In our most recent research, we explored whether testosterone levels are linked to fathers’ social roles not only in the family but also in the broader community. In the Republic of Congo, we studied fathers in BaYaka families, which rely on forest resources for a major part of their income. They are generally hands-on dads, holding their babies, taking their older children with them to work in the forest, and sleeping with them as a family. BaYaka communities are also egalitarian and very cooperative.

As part of their roles as fathers, BaYaka men are valued for generously sharing resources across the group, so caring fatherhood in this context is not limited to the nuclear family but extends to the broader community. In our study, we tested for links between fathers’ testosterone and rankings from their fellow dads on these locally valued roles. We found that those men considered to be better community sharers had lower testosterone than their peers. Also, BaYaka fathers who were seen as being better providers had lower testosterone than fathers who were ranked as less effective in acquiring resources. So in many contexts around the world, lower testosterone in fathers is linked to expressions of parenting that fathers, their partners and co-parents, and their broader community value as critical contributions for children.

Caring fatherhood is no longer peripheral

These findings challenge how we might think about contemporary fatherhood and its potential. They highlight direct caring for children as an important feature of men’s lives from early in human evolution. This perspective questions more historically and culturally limited ways in which paternal roles have been regarded, viewed through the particularities of 20^th-century industrial societies, which shaped quite narrow perceptions of men’s capabilities. Our growing understanding of the biology of fatherhood underscores the flexibility of fathers to adapt to meet the many different challenges that face parents, whether it is providing direct care to children or food and resources for them.

The digital economy – and more immediately, the COVID-19 pandemic – are bringing fathers’ work back into the home. This means that many men are spending more time in closer proximity with their children. Will this greater availability of dads to children be correlated with a surge in caring fatherhood and further narrowing of the gender care gap?  Our research with BaYaka fathers also raises questions of whether more caring fatherhood can be harnessed to encourage greater community engagement by men in an age when many serious challenges demand communitywide action.

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Positive coparenting leads to more father involvement and more father involvement leads to positive coparenting. It is chicken-and-egg.

We know from both research and real–life experience that there is a link between the father-mother relationship and how involved the father is in caring for his child. When couples coparent well – working as a team with good communication and valuing and respecting each other’s role – fathers tend to be more involved in caring for their children. Though it’s challenging, positive coparenting can continue even after a romantic relationship has ended or if the parents live apart.

Parenting is part of a family system. Every relationship influences every other relationship. For example, the quality of a couple’s relationship influences fathering over time.

Because these things tend to go together, researchers have asked the chicken-and-egg question: what comes first? Does positive coparenting lead to more father involvement or does more father involvement lead to positive coparenting?

In recent research from the USA, mothers and fathers in 3,464 couples were asked at three different times to assess the quality of coparenting and the extent of father involvement – when the child was one, three, and five. The researchers then applied a sophisticated statistical analysis to find links.

They found that both coparenting and father involvement at one point in a child’s life predict more of each other at a later time point, with some interesting details.

Better coparenting predicts more father involvement later

If either the mother or father reported better coparenting at one time point, then both parents reported more father involvement at the next time point. However, the link between a mother’s report of coparenting and a father’s later report of involvement, and vice versa, was only found for resident couples. The researchers speculate that perhaps non-residence is a barrier between effective coparenting and later father involvement in care.

More father involvement predicts better coparenting later

If either the mother or father reported more father involvement at one point, then both parents reported more positive coparenting at the next point. There was one exception: When fathers reported they were more involved when the child was one year old, mothers were on average less likely to report positive coparenting two years later. One possible explanation for this is that fathers are overestimating the level of their involvement, and this lack of agreement between the parents may later lead to a less favourable assessment of coparenting on the mother’s part.

This research builds on earlier evidence of influences in both directions. Studies have shown that when mothers do not support coparenting, fathers engage less with their infants. Positive coparenting is also a robust predictor of nonresident fathers’ future involvement. Similarly, there is evidence that when fathers are more involved in caring, their relationship with the child’s mother is better.

The new research from the USA involved, 3,464 couples; 42% of the fathers were black, 28% were white and 25% were Hispanic. The study focused primarily on unmarried couples in large American cities. Between the first measurement (child one year old) and third measurement (age five), the quality of couple relationships declined overall. The proportion of coresident couples dropped from 65% to 50%, and the proportion of parents in a romantic relationship dropped from 40% to 18%. Also over this period, the level of father involvement dropped off, according to both mothers and fathers.

Coparenting was measured by asking each parent questions like “does the mother/father support the way you want to raise your child?”, “does the mother/father talk with you about problems with raising your child?” and “does the mother/father respect your rules for the child?”. Father involvement was measured by asking about activities like reading/telling stories, playing inside the house and singing with the child.

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Research shows that the quality of the parenting of both parents the child lives with influences joint custody outcomes – higher quality parenting is associated with fewer child problems.

Two recent studies from Arizona State University recommend that when considering joint custody, family courts should carefully consider the quality of parenting of both the mother and the father, including in high-conflict situations.

The research shows that the quality of the care provided by each parent influences child development; specifically higher-quality parenting is associated with fewer behavioral and mood problems on the part of the child. Moreover, parenting quality is not fixed: more parenting time may be linked to higher parenting quality. These findings were consistent in both high-conflict and lower-conflict situations.

The findings contradict the idea that in high-conflict situations, joint custody automatically leads to worse outcomes by exposing the child to more conflict.

Earlier research on joint custody has confirmed repeatedly that children do better when post-divorce parenting is of better quality, whether on the part of the mother or the father. Comparing the experiences of children in different families, the new studies found that the combination of more parenting time and lower-quality parenting produced poorer results, and that less time with such parents—whether they were mothers or fathers—was associated with better outcomes.

This issue is significant. In the first study, involving 472 mothers and 353 fathers (all from different families), 34% of the mothers and 18% of the fathers were in the more-time, lower-quality-parenting category, the category associated with the lowest child outcomes.

The second study producing more findings of direct interest to family courts determining joint custody arrangements. For example, in high-conflict cases, the quality of the father’s parenting is generally higher if he spends more time with the child—but only until he reaches around 12 days per month with the child, after which this relation no longer holds true. Meanwhile, if the child spends more than about 10 days per month with the father, the quality of the mother’s parenting starts to fall. That means there is an optimum point: around 33%-40% of the time with one parent and the rest with the other.

This study also produced a warning for joint custody parents who draw their children into the middle of covert conflicts (for example, making disparaging comments about the other parent, or making the child carry messages). If either parent does this, the child rates that parent’s parenting quality lower and the other’s parenting quality higher.

The first research project took place in 2015-16 in Arizona, with a sample of parents diverse in ethnicity and education who were not involved with child protective services. Four things were measured:

• Parenting time: parents were asked how often in the past 30 days they had spent two or more hours with the child when both were awake, and how many overnight stays the child had in their home.
• Parental conflict
• Parenting quality: this was assessed through four measures – acceptance/rejection of the child, consistency of discipline, quality of communication with the child, and maintenance of family routines.
• Child outcomes: parents were asked about behavioral problems (externalising) and the mood problems (internalising).

The second research project involved 141 9- to 18-year-old children who were experiencing high-conflict divorce, accessed through a family court program for high-conflict separating parents. Similar things were measured:

• Parenting time: number of overnight stays with father in last 30 days.
• Parental conflict: this was measured in two ways: the frequency and intensity of overt conflict and the extent to which the child felt caught in the middle of more covert conflict.
• Parenting quality: the child was asked to assess discipline, acceptance and how much they felt they mattered to their mother/father.
• Child outcomes: for this measure of behaviour and mood problems (externalising/internalising), parental reports were also sought.

These studies provide valuable new evidence that family courts can use when dealing with high-conflict divorce and separation and determining joint custody arrangements.

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Research into the neuroscience and biology of fatherhood has concluded that the idea that women are “primary caregivers”, solely responsible for nurture and care, limits our understanding of human caregiving and child development.

Examining the biology and neurobiology of fatherhood, neuroscience researchers Eyal Abraham and Ruth Feldman have concluded that the idea of women as “primary caregivers”, solely responsible for nurture and care—a “matricentric” view that’s deeply rooted in cultures globally—limits our understanding of human caregiving and child development.

Scientific enquiry shows that caring fatherhood, and cooperative care between mothers and others, has played a key role in the survival of the human race, enabling the long and substantial investment required to raise newborns to adulthood, and also enabling shorter birth intervals. Humans would not have emerged as a dominant species if active fatherhood had not emerged.

Anthropologists have observed that human babies, beginning at birth, are typically surrounded with and carried by group members other than the biological mother. Another key observation from anthropology is that human parenting varies across cultures. Sometimes fatherhood is more about active caring, and sometimes it is less so. For example, when there are large family groups with many women present, the contribution that men make to caring tends to be more limited.

With a view to evolutionary history, Feldman and Abraham argue: “If males have played an essential, albeit flexible and variable role in human parenting across human evolution by reducing Homo females’ reproductive costs, their physiological systems have evolved by selective pressures to respond to committed fathering and to provide adequate and sensitive care to their infants.” They argue that neural circuits and hormonal biology have developed in all humans such that—with practice, attunement and social experiences—all humans can provide nurturing care, irrespective of gender. At the same time, these attributes have transformed humans into a uniquely collaborative hyper-social species.

Parent-child behavioural synchrony

Mother-infant and father-infant pairs show similar levels of “synchrony”, that is adaptation of the parent’s behaviour to the infant’s state and social signals. Abraham and Feldman call this a “dance” between parent and infant. Mother-infant synchrony tends to display slow oscillations between states of low and medium arousal. Father-infant synchrony tends to be faster, with quicker and more sudden peaks associated with play. Fathers who are more involved in household and childcare responsibilities are likely to be more sensitive to their infants.

Both mother-infant and father-infant synchrony predict greater parent-child interaction through childhood and adolescence. Mother-infant synchrony tends to predict children’s greater social competence in preschool. Father-infant synchrony tends to predict reduced aggression and better conflict negotiation in adolescence.

The hormones of fatherhood

Levels of oxytocin, prolactin, vasopressin and testosterone have been measured in fathers.

Oxytocin and fatherhood

Oxytocin increases in fathers as much as in mothers in the transition to fatherhood and during the first six months of fatherhood. Increased oxytocin is associated with greater engagement with the child; this was also observed when fathers were administered a nasal oxytocin spray. Oxytocin levels tend to synchronise between mothers and fathers who are coparenting. They also synchronise between father and child – when oxytocin is higher in the father, it increases in the child.

Prolactin and fatherhood

Prolactin increases in fathers during pregnancy. It is associated with greater engagement in play activities and greater responsiveness to a baby crying.

Vasopressin and fatherhood

Vasopressin levels go up in the transition to fatherhood. When vasopressin levels are higher, fathers are more likely to stimulate their child to activity. When a vasopressin spray is administered to expectant fathers, they become more interested in baby-related avatars. After the birth, administration of the spray is related to greater empathy with the child.

Testosterone and fatherhood

Lower testosterone levels in fathers are associated with more father-infant touch, gaze, interaction and vocalisation. When a baby cries, a father’s testosterone level tends to decrease if the father is able to provide care in response. If not, the baby’s cries do the opposite, tending to increase testosterone in fathers, probably linked to the father’s fears for the child’s safety.

Photo: p2-r2. Creative Commons.

The neuroscience of fatherhood

The adult brain becomes more plastic after the birth of a baby, triggered by hormonal changes. This happens in both mothers and fathers—and to a much greater extent than in other mammals. Because of this increased plasticity, humans have a much stronger capacity to change through the practice of direct care for the child. Interestingly, both biological and adoptive fathers who care for their infants have similar brain responses.

Abraham and Feldman identify three neural circuits relevant to motherhood and fatherhood:

Core limbic

The neural patterns observed in this ancient part of the brain during parenting are similar to those found in other mammals. This neural activity is related to vigilance for the child’s safety and well-being.

Empathy sub-network

This helps parents to resonate with the experience of the infant in the moment.

Mentalising sub-network

This helps parents recognise the infant’s cues, make predictions and plan responses.

Using fMRI, Abraham and Feldman studied different fathers – full-time working fathers, fathers who were coparenting 50/50 with mothers, and gay fathers parenting without women. Caring fatherhood was associated with more activation of the empathy network, to the point that, if fathers are caring for the child wholly by themselves (without a mother present), the patterns were similar to those observed in mothers’ brains.

Fatherhood brain changes and later child development: brain-to-brain synchrony

When mothers and fathers interact with their infants, the activity appears to tune the infant’s brain, probably resulting in epigenetic changes in the baby’s brain that alter the way the brain responds to hormonal stimuli later in life, affecting social behaviour. Abraham and Feldman call this parent-infant “brain-to-brain” synchrony.

Changes in parents’ brains through the experience of motherhood and fatherhood are associated with a child seeking safety with a parent and self-soothing when exposed to high emotions.

Changes in empathy networks during fatherhood or motherhood, and greater parent-infant synchrony early on, are associated with children using more advanced methods to control their emotions in pre-school and more expression of positive emotions. At the age of six, correlations were found between parents’ earlier neural activity, on the one hand, and children’s level of oxytocin and better physical health, on the other. When parents’ oxytocin levels are high during early interactions, children’s oxytocin levels tend to be higher in later years.

Changes in mentalising networks through fatherhood and motherhood are associated with improved socialisation in the child in later years.

When greater connectivity is observed in parents’ brains between the empathy and mentalising networks, the child is likely to have lower cortisol levels (associated with anxiety) in pre-school and lower anxiety-related problems at the age of six.

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Reduced parenting time with fathers after divorce damages emotional security in children. Increased time mitigates negative impacts of conflict.

Reduced parenting time with fathers after divorce undermines children’s emotional security, because they don’t have enough daily interactions to reassure them that they matter to their fathers, finds Professor William Fabricius of Arizona State University, USA, in a paper to be published next year. Conversely, more parenting time with fathers is linked to a better father-child relationship.

Most studies of shared time with parents after divorce use 65%/35% as the cutoff for considering the arrangement to be joint physical custody. But when researchers have looked at what happens when there is more sharing, ranging, for example, from 60%/40% and all the way to 50%/50%, they’ve found that higher levels of sharing are associated with fewer behavioural problems and better social skills in the child’s later life.

High conflict between parents further reduces emotional security for children, introducing a fear of abandonment. Recent evidence from larger samples shows this fear is worst when children spend 25%-35% of their time with their fathers. Fear of abandonment is not as bad when they spend less than 25% of their time with their fathers, and is considerably better when they spend more than 35% and closer to 50%. This finding challenges the idea that reducing time with a parent is a cure for high-conflict situations; more sharing will benefit most children.

Research on father-child relationships among college students

Fabricius examined the father-child relationship in college students from divorced families. The average quality of the child-father relationship increases with the proportion of time spent with the father during childhood, incrementally from 0% to 50%. The same relationship has been found for overnight stays with the father during the first two years of life: the more overnight stays, the stronger the relationship in young adulthood. These findings have been confirmed in other studies of families recruited from the community by Fabricius and other researchers, especially in Europe.

In neither case does mother-child relationship security decrease as childhood time with the father increases. Indeed, in the case of overnight stays, more overnight stays with the father during infancy were associated with a slight improvement in the relationship between the young adult and the mother.

The public health cost of low emotional security

Fabricius draws attention to the public health implications of these findings. An estimated 35% of children of divorce have poorer relationships with their fathers in adulthood than do children from intact families. These poorer relationships are associated with worse behavioral and emotional adjustment and lower school achievement. A poor relationship with parents is also implicated in mental health disorders, major chronic diseases and early mortality. A weakened relationship with a divorced father also means that the father invests less time and money on behalf of the child.

Fabricius’s own most recent research, with a non-college sample, shows that as a predictor of mental health years later, adolescents’ perceptions of how much they mattered to their fathers were more important than their perceptions of how much they mattered to their mothers.

Emotional Security Theory

Fabricius explains these findings through emotional security theory. The central tenet of this theory is that conflict between parents (whether separated or not) can threaten children’s sense that their parents will be able and willing to continue to take care of them, producing fear of abandonment.

Anxiety about abandonment can manifest itself in three ways: distress in response to episodes of conflict; attempts by children to control exposure  to the conflict through things intervening to try to stop the conflict or ingratiating themselves; and negative expectations that the conflict will cause their parents to walk away. A “Fear of Abandonment” scale assesses children responses in these situations, using measures like “I worry that my parents will want to live without me”, “it’s possible that my parents will never want to see me again”, “I worry that I will be left all alone” and “I think that one day I might have to live with a friend or relative”.

Very similar fears are still present in young adults as they look back on parental conflict during their childhood: memories of distress when experiencing parental conflict, feelings of self-blame, and negative expectations that conflict will undermine the parental support they receive during young adulthood.

Father time in high-conflict situations

Research on college students by Fabricius and his team found that more time spent with fathers during childhood mitigated the extent to which the conflict damaged emotional security and exacerbated mental health problems. There was no indication that more parenting time for fathers in high-conflict families resulted in poorer father-child relationships.

In other research with young adults, Fabricius and his team found that the strength of the father-child relationship increased in high-conflict situations as more time was spent with the father, but only up to 25% of the total parental time. After that, more time did not produce more improvement.

On the other hand, fear of abandonment is worst in high-conflict families when children spend between 25% and 35% of their time with their fathers. The same was found to be true for somatic symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, chest pains and nausea. If the child sees the father less than 25% of the time, the fear decreases; and if the child spends more than 35% of the time with the father, up to near 50%, the fear of abandonment decreases even more—all the way down to the level experienced in low-conflict situations.

Emotional security theory helps explains these findings. When time with the father is low, the child loses little if he withdraws completely. Between 25% and 35%, the extent of the potential loss is greater and the perceived risk that it will happen is higher. But with equal parenting, the perceived risk of abandonment is lower.

Another area of research that sheds light on this issue is the impact on child wellbeing of parental relocation after divorce. Relocation to a place more than an hour’s drive from the original family home is associated with long-term harm to children’s emotional security with the parents and a worse reaction to conflict between the parents. Relocation is also linked to more anxiety, depression, aggression, delinquency, involvement in the juvenile justice system, associations with delinquent peers and drug use. This findings hold true whether the child remains in the original family home or moves away from it, offering further evidence that separation from a parent is damaging to the child.

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The 2006 family law reforms in Australia heralded a shift towards more sharing of care after divorce.

Family law reforms that occurred in Australia in 2006 changed the way some families organise themselves after divorce, according to Professor Patrick Parkinson in Australia. Yet Parkinson cautions about exaggerating the impact of such reforms compared to the effects of other influences.

The Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 in Australia requires judges to consider two primary factors: (1) the “benefit to the child of having a meaningful relationship with both of the child’s parents” and (2) the “need to protect the child from physical or psychological harm from being subjected to, or exposed to, abuse, neglect or family violence”.

The 2006 family law reform provides not for a presumption of shared custody, but for a presumption of equal sharing of parental “responsibility”, though only in cases that do not involve violence or abuse. (In those cases, the law says, the presumption should be against shared arrangements.)

Under the 2006 reform, courts ordering equally shared parental responsibility are required to consider whether “equal” parenting time or “substantial and significant” time with both parents is in the best interests of the child. “Substantial and significant” time is defined as not limited to weekends and holidays, thus allowing both parents to be involved in the child’s daily routines. It also allows parents to participate in occasions and events that are of particular significance to the child or the parent. This somewhat convoluted definition could be translated into a simple message: parents should consider how the non-resident parent can be involved in the activities of the children during the school week.

The 2006 reforms heralded a shift away from the assumption that the most a non-resident parent could expect was to have time with the children on weekends and school holidays. Following the reforms, research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies found increased awareness and acceptance of shared care arrangements as a viable and “normal” option for parenting after separation. The same research found that lawyers were giving more advice about shared care norms to families than before the family law reforms.

Meanwhile, more parents have adopted equal-time arrangements since 2006, perhaps encouraged by statements from government ministers and media reports that this is a viable option.

Conflict over family law reform

The 2006 family law reform followed a parliamentary enquiry starting in 2003. There was an enormous battle over the reform between women’s and fathers’ advocates. Despite appearing at the start of the process to be inclined towards a presumption of equal parenting time, members of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs decided against it. Instead they recommended the equally shared “responsibility” formula, which is now law.

Following the 2006 family law reform, women’s groups continued a spirited campaign, claiming an increased risk of violence against women and children. The Australian Institute of Family Studies found no reliable evidence that this was the case. It found no evidence that courts were ordering shared time after a full trial in circumstances where there was a history of significant domestic violence.

The report also found that a history of family violence did not necessarily impede friendly or cooperative relationships between parents. Only 18.5% of a large sample of 10,000 mothers who reported domestic violence at the time of separation continued to be fearful at the time of the interview by researchers.

Despite the lack of evidence, the political pressure for amendments relating to family violence was strong, and the Government made further amendments in 2011 to give greater weight to protecting children from harm than to a meaningful relationship with both parents. But the empirical evidence does not indicate any substantial change in outcomes as a result of the 2011 family law reforms.

The influence of family law reform has limits: other things are important too

Parkinson makes the point that judges have a lot of discretion under current family law and can act only on the evidence provided. Violence, child abuse, drug or alcohol addiction and mental illness are, for the judge, the “four horsemen of the Apocalypse” in the lives of the children in the middle. Ultimately, the direct influence of policy that defines what courts must consider has an influence, but only to a limited extent.

He concludes with two non-legal recommendations that he argues would make a difference. The first is that family law professionals need education on the latest advances in understanding of child development. The second is that families need adequate financial resources so that, if there are real concerns about violence and abuse, the parent can afford to go to court and, therefore, credibly demonstrate to an abuser that access to the child is at stake.

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