FOCUS ON FAMILY POSITION PAPER ON JOINT CUSTODY

Below is a position paper from Focus on Family concerning Shared Parenting
and Joint Custody.  It is very critical. This is a scanned document that was
sent to me, so I don't have the original.  I spell check most of it, but
there were some words I could not fix.  However, the document will work fine
to get the drift of the argument.

 Mainly, whoever wrote this misses a vital point: when there is high
conflict in divorce, the reason is almost always that one party unilaterally
initiates an attack on the other, and the other, usually the ncp father, is
forced to defend himself.  The stakes are high, both emotionally and
financially, and the one who initiates the attack is almost always the one
with primary custody.  The problem is that the system itself encourages this
behavior, simply because it rewards it.  Basically, it is a case of a
different twist to the old saying, "You get what you pay for."  In other
words, when you pay people to behave a certain way, you get lots of people
behaving that way.

I encourage all of you to write, call or contact Mr. Dobson on this issue.
Bad behavior should not be rewarded. Focus on Family doesn't publish an
email address, but there is a form you can use to contact them on their
website, the link is below.  The rest of the contact information is from
their website.
Lowell Jaks, ANCPR  http://ancpr.org


Focus On Family
James Dobson
8605 Explorer Drive
Colorado Springs, CO  80995
Phone: (719) 531-3400
FAX:   (719) 531-3424
http://www.family.org/

POSITION PAPER

SHARED PARENTING / JOINT PHYSICAL CUSTODY



Too many children  and adults today are

experiencing the death of their families through

divorce. As families seek to recover from this very

difficult situation, a number of policies have been

proposed to help divorced mothers and fathers do

best by their children. Shared parenting or joint

physical custody is just one of these proposals.



On its face. shared parenting or joint residential

custody seems like a good idea in that it involves

both the mother and father In the life of the child.

>But it also means the child shuttles back and forth

between two homes. Given this fact, Focus on the

Family has serious concerns about this proposal

because of the way it works itself out in the real life

of children.



Focus on the Family strongly believes and is

established on the ideal that children do best when

both mother and father are actively and lovingly

Involved in the life of their child. This is generally

true for post-divorce families as well and children of

divorce should have ample access to both mother

and father. Given this, it is important to explain that

our concern with shared parenting policies is

centered in two important family qualities critical to

healthy child development: the significance of the

parents' marriage in the life of the child and the

child's need for routine and stability. And the loss of

these two things is what makes the divorce process

far more harmful to children than most child

psychologists ever imagined. And shared parenting

/ joint custody situations do little to help the child

overcome these problems and can even exacerbate

them,



Let's took at these two issues more carefully and

see how these proposals Impact post-divorce child-

adjustment.



1) Dr. Judith Wallerstein has studied the effects of

divorce upon children for three decades and is one

of the world's foremost authorities on divorce's



impact upon children. She says one of the most

striking things she found in all her study was that

"children Identify not only with their mother and

father as separate individuals, but with the

relationship between them."1 Children see mother

and father as permanently attached beings that

belong together. This is why young children often

assume mom and dad grow up together like brother

and sister. Divorce confuses all this. Wallerstein

explains, "mothers and fathers who share beds with

different people under different roofs are not the

same as mothers and fathers living under the same

roof."2 When parents divorce, it shatters the child's

fundamental understanding of their parents and

marks the end of their family, as they understand it

This is at the root of why so many children tell

Wallerstein it was if their childhood ended the day^

their parents divorced. The rest of life is spent in

recovery-

Kids identify with the relationship between the

parents and not the custody arrangements. This is

why shared parenting arrangements do little to aid

children's divorce experience. Shared parenting

living arrangements are created more for the sake

of the parents



2) Divorce destroys the child's sense of routine,

order and  normalcy,  and shared parenting

situations seldom help calm the storm. Shuttling

between two homes In a shared parenting situation

is usually not conducive to their order and stability.

And life only becomes increasingly complicated as

children grow, and they crave a secure and stable

situation at home that will serve as a safe haven

during their formative years.



Glenn T. Stanton, "The Social Experiment That Failed,'



Christianity Today, February 5, 2001, p. 74,

Stanton. 2001 n. 74.



>



These are the two points mat regularly come up in

the research on shared parenting and joint

residential custody.



A survey of these findings follows:



Based on her 30 plus years of research and

experience with children of divorce. Dr. Wallerstein

explains:



Joint custody arrangements that involve

a child going back and forth at frequent

intervals are particularly harmful to

children in a high-conflict family, ...The

research findings on how seriously

troubled these children are and how

quickly their adjustment deteriorates are

very powerful. ..However, the same

arrangement might be very beneficial for

a child of the same age in similar

circumstances whose parents get along

well. The bottom line that our studies

show is that the legal form of custody is

not what matters for the child's welfare



She continues.



Comparing children In joint physical

custody with those raised in sole

custody homes shows that the amount

of [we- a child spends with each parent

is unrelated to how well that child copes

with life in the family, at school, or any

other   measure   of   social   and

psychological adjustment.



She concludes that what is important is "parents

giving priority to the child's changing capacity and

need for uniform routines,"3 This is because

children relate largely to the relationship between

the parents because they fundamentally understand

their parents as a unit that go together. Once the

relationship has been broken, exterior efforts to

create a normal, shared home life typically fail to

help the child. What matters is the relationship the

child has with both parents and the parents have

with each other.



Additionally, in her latest book What About the

Kids?, Wallerstein explains how important the

parent/child and parent/parent relationships are,

and  how they are  independent  of  living

arrangement:









There is no scientific evidence that the

general psychological adjustment of

children is related to any particular form

of custody. ..Rather the psychological

health of the child and of both of the

parents, the quality of the child's

relationship with each parent, and the

relationship between the parents are the

key factors in the child's emotional and

social adjustment after divorce,



Wallerstein finds that children who thrive in joint

custody are those who have some very specific

criteria:



.  Both parents get along very we!l and cooperate

nicely.



.  The two households are in the same

neighborhood where the child can keep the

same school, the same routines, friends and

they can ride their bikes back and forth between

homes, not needing to rely on parents for the

residential transfer,



On the negative, she finds joint custody is

burdensome for other children.  They feel

disorganized and scattered with their toys, clothes

and things spread between two households.



Wallerstein speaks of some young children, who



after returning from dad's house, go around mom's

house touching all the familiar objects - their bed.

the dresser, their toys - just to make sure they are

real. They feared their home would have

disappeared while they were gone. She says

teachers can often !ell when older children have

made the residential shift because they have a hard

time settling down, requiring a day or two to settle

into a new routine and be able to concentrate. This

results in the dangers of lost homework and falling/

behind the other students.



Wallerstein reports that "very young children often



feel they're being sent from one home to another

because they've been naughty."5 She adds, "I was

surprised to find that some children Internalized the

constant back and forth Into their personalities and

literally have a hard time dealing with a stable

environment."6



3 Judith S. Wallerstein, et al.. The Unexpected Legacy of

Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study, (New York: Hyperlon,



2000), p. 215-216.



.'Judith S Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, What About the

Kids?. Raising Your Children Before, During and After Divorce,

(New York: Hyperion, 2003), p. 192.

5 Wallerstein, 2003, p. 198.

^Wallerstein, 2003, p. 198,



2



So Wallerstein concludes that joint custody can

work out well for children, but only with a very strict

criteria. Most times, it has very little benefit for

children because the fundamental problem is

rooted, not in issiipe-nf ri-'giflRncp but in the fact

that the relationship with mom and dad has forever

changed.



Other studies support Wallerstein's conclusion that

.custody arrangements don't make a significant

' difference in child outcomes. The Journal of

.carriage and the Family reported in 2000 that

studies "suggest that it is not the amount of time

that nonresident fathers spend with their children

but how they interact with their children that is

important." What is more, they report, "Frequent

contact [between divorced parents] also provides

opportunities for parents to quarrel. Because

conflict is harmful to children, conflict between

parents may cancel, even reverse, any benefits

associated with frequent visitation."7



In another study, published in the Journal

Developmental Psychology:



Despite having more access to both

parents, joint custody children show

neither less disturbance or better social

and emotional adjustment after divorce

than sole custody children. The finding

that custody type is no! predictive of

child outcome is consistent with recent

reports of no difference found in

behavioral adjustment between children

living in joint physical custody or Joint

legal custody and children living in sole

custody arrangements.8



One major study praised by shared-parenting

proponents as supporting the proposal is Robert

Bauserman's review of the published literature on



There are a number of problems



shared parenting.

with this study.



In this study. Bauserman analyzed 33 studies that

compare joint physical custody or joint legal custody

with sole custody settings. However, 22 of these

studies were unpublished, non-peer reviewed,



' William Marsiglio, Paul Amato, Randal Day, and Michael Lamb,



"Scholarship on Fatherhood in The 1990s and Beyond'' Journal



of Marriage and the Family, 62 (2000) 1373-1191.



B Marsha Kline, Jeanne Tschann, Janet Johnston, anO Judith



Wallerstein. ''Children's Adjustment in Joint and Sole Physical



Custody Families," Developmental Psychology, 25(1989)430-



438.



B Robert Bauserman, "Child Adjustment in Joint-Custody Versus



Sole-Custody Arrangements: A Meta-Analytic Review," Journal



of Family Psychology, 16(2002)91-102.



closely

arrangements.'



academic aisserianons rrom graauaie or pusii-

graduate students. Also, Bauserman commits a

major flaw by lumping two custody categories

together as one. He makes no distinction between

children In Joint legal custody (where both parents

hold legal, but not necessarily residential or

physical custody) and children in joint physical

custody (where children share equal time in two

homes). He then compares that merged group with

children in sole legal and physical custody-



This lack of distinction means that children

spending as little as 25% of their time living with

one parent were counted as joint-physical custody

when in reality this time split more

approximates     sole-custody     arrange

Therefore, he confuses any benefits of sole custody

with apparent benefits of joint physical custody.



The second problem is with Bauserman himself as

a researcher. He is one of the co-authors of a very

disturbing, pro-pedophilia study published in 1998

in the journal Psychological Bulletin. His article

advocated that the term "child sexual abuse" should

be changed to the value neutral "adult-child sex" or

"age-discrepant sexual relationships" because,

according to the study, some boys can actually

benefit from having sex with men. Another study.

published by Bauserman in 2001, defends

pedophilia by stating that boys between ages 12-17

who had been molested by men had as much self-

esteem and positive sexual Identity as boys who

were not molested. Bauserman has also been

published in Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia.

Mark Chaffin,  editor of the journal  Child

Maltreatment warns that Bauserman and his co-

authors in these pro-pedophilia articles "used

scientific data to stake an advocacy position... that

went well beyond the data and could lead to it being

misused by people for their own purposes."''



Can Bauserman be seen as a champion of what's

good for children?



Another source cited by shared  parenting

proponents Is Eleanor Maccoby and Robert

Mnookin's book Dividing the Child: Social and Legal

Dilemmas of Custody (Harvard University Press,

1992). Maccoby and Mnookin are supportive of

shared parenting in the Ideal, but they do point out

some significant issues with the way the proposal is

worked out.



10 Bauserman, 2002, p 93-



11 Karia Dial, "Molesters, Inc." Citizen Magazine, March 2002,

26-28.









Due to the emotional and relational volatility in post-

divorce family life, they observe:



" ..the coparental relationship between

divorced parents is something that

needs to be constructed, not something

that can simply be carried over from pre-

separation patterns. It takes time and

effort on the part of both parents to

arrange their lives in such a way that the

children can spend time in both parerslal

households,"'



"Children  derive   real   benefits  -

psychological, social and economic-

when  divorced parents _can^ have

cooperative coparenting relationships.

With conflicted coparental relationships,

on the other hand, children are more

likely to be caught in the middle with real

adverse effects on the child."13



This mixed news Is put Into a different perspective

given that Maccoby and Mnookin found:



"Only a minority of our families - about

30 percent - were able to establish

cooperative coparenting relationships-

Spousal     disengagement,     which

essentially involved parallel parenting

with little communication, had become

the most common pattern, while about a

quarter of our families remained

conflicted at the end of three and half

years,"14



Shared parenting  or joint pnysical cusroay

proposals can tend to turn parents into time

accountants, more concerned about what is fair for

them, rather than what is best for the child. Focus

on the Family resists legisiation or proposals

favoring shared parenting or joint physical custody

because the requirements for them to work well for

children - peaceful, cooperative parents who live

near one another - are a very rare thing IVlosI

divorces are created over the fact that parents

cannot cooperate and work peaceably together.



What is more, if parents can be so cooperative tc

make shared parenting work, It doesn't seem these

parents would need the courts or legislation tc

direct them in this way. They coutd simply work II

out themselves If it was their desire to do so. If it is

not their desire, It is not likely to work well for the

child. As a result, legislation favoring sharec

parenting would most likely force children in!c

tumultuous situations with uncooperative, conflictec

parents. We know this can be deeply harmful tc

children.



Eleanor Maccoby and Robert Mnookin, Dividing the Child:



Social and Lega/ Dilemmas of Custody (Cambridge: Harvard



University Press, 1992), p. 276,



13 Maccoby and Mnookin, 1992, p 277.



" Maccoby and Mnookin, 1992, p, 277.