The Monitor on
Psychology, a publication for members of the American Psychological
Association, has an “in brief” section where summaries of interesting research
are presented. I have often had a beef or beeves with “in brief” summaries
involving child care and parenting, which too frequently suggest a cause and
effect relationship where none has been shown to exist. I am really disturbed
by this in cases where people who assume that one thing causes a particular
outcome for children may want to argue in court for particular orders about
child custody or treatment, and may cite research as a support for their
arguments even when the research does not actually provide the evidence they
imply.
A recent case in point: in the “in brief” section, and
under the headline “Shared Custody Matters” , the Monitor (December, 2017, p. 13) reports a Swedish study that
compared psychological problems of preschool children in the joint custody of
divorced parents with the problems of those who spent all or most of their time
with one parent, and with those of preschoolers in intact families. (This study
is summarized at DOI:10.1111/apa.140014. The article is by Bergstrom, Fransson,
Fabian, Hjern, Sarkadi, & Salari – “Preschool children living in joint
physical custody show less psychological symptoms than those living mostly or
only with one parent”, Acta Paediatrica
, 2017). The researchers reported that
children in intact families had the smallest number of psychological problems,
followed by those in joint custody, and those in the care of only one parent had
the most problems.
There are a number of Internet references to this
study that suggest that shared custody has thus been shown to help children
psychologically, and some of them use language like “children of divorce” that
encourages readers to ignore the ages of the preschool children in the study
and to generalize from this study’s results to conclusions about children of
all ages.
So what’s my problem with this? Does the article not
show that shared custody is better for children? No, actually it does not, and
it can only be interpreted as doing so if the reader ignores the multiple
factors that affect child psychological outcomes, as well as the bidirectional
influences of parents on children and vice versa. Such an interpretation also
avoids the fact that the groups of families studied may have had many important
differences that directly affected their custody arrangements.
Given that many divorcing families choose joint
custody (in the U.S. this is the default position of most judges, as well), why
do some not follow this pattern? How are families with joint custody
potentially different from those without it? The list of differences is substantial.
High-conflict parents may avoid shared custody, and
exposure to conflict may cause psychological problems for children. Parents who
have serious physical or mental illnesses may be less likely to be able to share
custody, and children may be affected by the parents’ disorders. Children with
existing physical or mental problems that make them challenging to care for may
be avoided by one parent, who will be unwilling to share custody, whereas the
same parents might be quite ready to care for healthier or “easier” children. Parents
who have the assistance of their own parents or other family members may spend
more time caring for their children than those who do not have such assistance,
and depending on the family circumstances, this may or may not affect the
children’s psychological health. Parents who have committed domestic violence
may be regarded warily by co-parents, who may try to reduce the time the
abusive person spends with the children – either the domestic violence of the
past or the present fears of one parent
can affect the children psychologically.
Being able to name alternative causes is not the same
thing as showing evidence that one or all of them are at work, but this
exercise does underline the fact that a nonrandomized study of
naturally-occurring events cannot be used to conclude that a single factor
caused an outcome. I don’t say the original authors did this, but other
interpreters of the research seem to have done so.
I’d like to touch on another point about the Bergstrom
et al study. The children were preschoolers, ages 3-5 years, but some Internet
references speak of them as “children of divorce” in a general way. There are
real problems about generalizing from preschoolers to older children, or vice
versa, as their developmental strengths and vulnerabilities may influence the
ways they react to experiences. In addition, if all the children in a study are
preschoolers, this means that the divorce took place no more than 5 years ago,
and in many cases is likely to have been much more recent. These families are
still working out new roles and functions in the wake of the divorce and may
take two years or more to manage these tasks and arrive at a calmer period of
their lives. “Children of divorce”, taken across the developmental range, are
in many cases past the early chaos of post-divorce adjustment and have
established relatively successful ways to function. For children in those later
years, who are also more mature cognitively and emotionally than preschoolers
are, psychological responses to care arrangements will not necessarily be the
same as those of younger children.
I would hate to see the Bergstrom et al study dragged
into the courtroom as an argument in child custody cases where there is a real
concern about the children’s contact with one of the parents. Having plenty of
contact with each of two “good” parents is beneficial for children, but plenty
of contact with a “bad” parent is not necessarily desirable and may even be
harmful. The Bergstrom study does not adequately support the claim that joint
custody is superior across the board to single-parent custody, with respect to
children’s psychological development. Let’s hope that lawyers and judges
understand this and don’t jump to conclusions.
I have seen quite a few shared parenting proponents use this study to push their argument of, "50/50 is best, and this study proves it". Of course I attempted to inform them that as usual they are distorting the facts and that they are wrong. As usual they attacked me. I too hope that Judges, attorneys, Gals, Custody Evaluators, PC's educate themselves on the matter.
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