Suchergebnisse

This Comment on Smyth and Moloney's article discusses the historical context and earlier work on the role of interparental hate in high‐conflict divorce. A seminal line of clinical research on the core psychological dynamics of entrenched postdivorce disputes over children is identified and traced through three main research programs in California, Israel, and Australia. The importance of assessing hate as a risk factor in working with separated and divorced families is discussed, along with cautions about its misuse.

This article provides an editorial introduction to the following three related articles on the growing use and influence of social science research in family law. It first considers why this has become problematic and identifies some common strategies used by advocates, sometimes under the guise of scholarship, to destroy the standing of research findings contrary to their ideological or political position. Then it discusses briefly the remedies proposed to mitigate these kinds of problems within the following three articles.

In this report, overall findings from the most recent custody studies of children ages 3 to 16 years, made publicly available within the past 6 years, are briefly reviewed to establish a framework of general principles for decision making around custody and access issues. Most of the comparisons drawn are between joint and sole custody, with some attention being given to differences between mother and father sole custody. All of these studies are of children's adjustment to the physical custody, or residential arrangements, rather than to legal custody, which refers to parents' decision‐making authority.

The concept of parental alienation (PA) has expanded in popular usage at the same time that it remains mired in controversy about its scientific integrity and its use as a legal strategy in response to an increasing range of issues in family court. In this paper we describe how competing advocacy movements (for mothers, fathers and children) in the family justice field have, over time, helped shape the shifting definitions and widening focal concerns of PA‐ from children who make false allegations of abuse, to those who resist or refuse contact with a parent, to parent relocation, and to the emotional abuse wrecked upon children who are victims of a manipulative parent. In search of common ground for a sound approach to using PA concepts, we argue that the Single Factor model of PA (asserting that an alienating preferred parent is primarily the source of the problem) is inadequate, overly simplistic and misleading. A Single Factor model rests on the fallacy that abuse or poor parenting on the part of either parent have been, or are able to be, ruled out as sufficient reason for the child's rejecting stance. By contrast, multi‐factor models of PA make more useful, valid, differentiated clinical predictions of children's rejection of a parent, informed by basic and applied research on children and families. However, multi‐factor models are complex and difficult to argue in court and to use in assessment and interventions. Suggestions are made for developing intervention‐focused prediction models that reduce the number of factors involved and are applicable across different types of interventions.

Preliminary findings on the outcomes of family‐focused counseling interventions for alienated and estranged children are presented based upon data from a longitudinal study of children in chronic custody disputes who were interviewed as young adults and from the clinical records of long‐term therapy with these children who were resisting visitation.

Although in substantial agreement with Tippins and Wittmann's analysis, their call for a moratorium on the practice of custody evaluators making recommendations to the court does not solve the many problems that they have raised, and may have unintended consequences which place families at even greater risk. This commentary reflects our agreement with some of the authors' major points of contention, focuses on several points of disagreement, and suggests alternative remedies for the shortcomings and ethical problems described in child custody evaluations.