Attachment Theory and Parental Alienation

Following an acrimonious divorce or separation, arguments are frequently presented as to why a child should not be with a nonresident parent. The custodial parent, whether a father or a mother, uses the concept of a child being attached to himself or herself and therefore this should prevent the child from having actual or reasonable contact with the absent parent. This view is based on antagonism between the former partners rather than the importance of the attachment theory being relevant. The attachment theory is also used to discredit the intentions of the noncustodial parent. This is especially the case for the younger child. With older children this is not likely to be as relevant. The history of the development of the attachment theory commencing with Bowlby and Ainsworth is presented, and the counterarguments are also presented. Attachment to the mother is obviously important initially but attachment to the father is equally important to the child and such bonding is likely to lead to positive emotional and behavioral development. It is therefore argued that both fathers and mothers have an important role to play and are, or should be, responsible for the rearing of children. The acrimony between the couple should not be considered as relevant as it is, in fact, the real reason why attachment theory is used against a nonresident parent.     

Mother and Child Facial Expression Labeling Skill Relates to Mutual Responsiveness During Emotional Conversations

The capacity to engage with one’s child in a reciprocally responsive way is an important element of successful and rewarding parent–child conversations, which are common contexts for emotion socialization. The degree to which a parent–child dyad shows a mutually responsive orientation presumably depends on both individuals’ socio-emotional skills. For example, one or both members of a dyad needs to be able to accurately interpret and respond to the other’s nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions, to facilitate mutually responsive interactions. Little research, however, has examined whether and how mother and/or child facial expression decoding skill relates to dyads’ emotional mutuality during conversations. We thus examined associations between both mother and child facial expression decoding skill and observed emotional mutuality during parent-preschooler conversations about happy child memories. Results lend support to our hypotheses by suggesting that both mother and child capacities to read others’ emotional cues make distinct contributions to parent–child emotional mutuality in the context of reminiscing conversations. Specifically, mothers’ accurate decoding of child facial expressions predicted maternal displays of positive affect and interest, while children’s accurate decoding of adult facial expressions predicted dyadic displays of mutual enjoyment. Contrary to our hypotheses, however, parent/child facial expression decoding skills did not interact to predict observed mutual responsiveness. These findings underscore the importance of attending to both parent and child contributions to successful dyadic interactions that facilitate effective emotion socialization.     

Work Characteristics and Parent‐Child Relationship Quality: The Mediating Role of Temporal Involvement

This study investigated whether the amount and nature of parent‐child time mediated the association between parental work characteristics and parent‐child relationship quality. We based hypotheses on the conflict and enrichment approaches, and we tested a path model using self‐collected data on 1,008 Dutch fathers and 929 Dutch mothers with school‐aged children. Longer working hours and less work engagement were associated with less parent‐child time and longer working hours, more restrictive organizational norms, stress, flexibility, nonstandard hours (mothers only), and work engagement increased the disturbance of parent‐child activities. Less and more disturbed parent‐child activities were, in turn, associated with a lower parent‐child relationship quality. In addition, work engagement and working hours had direct, beneficial effects on parent‐child relationship quality.     

Child Characteristics,Parenting Stress,and Parental Involvement: Fathers Versus Mothers

This study examined variations in the relationships among child characteristics, parenting stress, and parental involvement. Participants were 100 two‐parent families with preschool‐aged children. Self‐report and interview data were collected to measure parental involvement, as well as perceptions of child temperament and parental stress. Analyses revealed significant, yet somewhat different, associations between child temperament and parental stress for mothers and fathers. More significant associations were found between perceptions of child temperament and involvement for fathers than for mothers. The associations between child temperament and parental stress and involvement differed on the basis of child and parent gender. Results are discussed in terms of future research on father involvement, as well as programs designed to encourage fathers to assume more active parental roles.     

Abusers gaining custody in family courts: A case series of over turned decisions

Abstract

This article presents findings and recommendations based on an in-depth examination of records from 27 custody cases from across the United States. The goal of this case series was to determine why family courts may place children with a parent that the child alleges abused them rather than with the nonoffending parent. We focused on “turned around cases” involving allegations of child abuse that were at first viewed as false and later judged to be valid. The average time a child spent in the court ordered custody of an abusive parent was 3.2?years. In all cases we uncovered the father was the abusive parent and the mother sought to protect their child. Results revealed that initially courts were highly suspicious of mothers' motives for being concerned with abuse. These mothers were often treated poorly and two-thirds of the mothers were pathologized by the court for advocating for the safety of their children. Judges who initially ordered children into custody or visitation with abusive parents relied mainly on reports by custody evaluators and guardians ad litem who mistakenly accused mothers of attempting to alienate their children from the father or having coached the child to falsely report abuse. As a result, 59% of perpetrators were given sole custody and the rest were given joint custody or unsupervised visitation. After failing to be protected in the first custody determination, 88% of children reported new incidents of abuse. The abuse often became increasingly severe and the children's mental and physical health frequently deteriorated. The main reason that cases turned around was because protective parents were able to present compelling evidence of the abuse and back the evidence up with reports by mental health professionals who had specific expertise in child abuse rather than merely custody assessment.     

Coresidence and Geographic Proximity of Mothers and Adult Children in Stepfamilies

Children who live with or near a parent provide more care and receive more help from parents than geographically distant children. Stepfamily ties may be weaker than ties between biological kin, but little is known about the geographic proximity of step‐ versus biological kin. The authors used data from the Health and Retirement Study (N = 13,239 mothers and 45,675 biological and stepchildren) to show that stepchildren and stepmothers are less likely to live together, less likely to live nearby, and less likely to move closer than biological children and mothers. When mothers have only stepchildren, they are less likely to have a coresident child or a child nearby than mothers with both step‐ and biological children. Coresidence and geographic proximity are lower in stepfamilies formed after divorce than after widowhood. The findings are consistent with a legacy of conflict and strain and the likely competing needs of biological and stepmothers.     

The economics of child care and public policy

Child care denotes any arrangement used by a working parent for care of a child, including self-care. This article is concerned with the factors that influence the demand for market modes of child care by two parent families with working mothers. A unique aspect of the study is that it is able to assess the impact of a child care subsidy program. An implication of the analysis is that the demand for market care is price elastic and is therefore susceptible to considerable change through programs of increased subsidization.     

AN ECONOMETRIC MODEL OF THE DEMAND FOR CHILD CARE

Child care denotes any arrangement used by a working parent for care of a child, including self-care. This paper is concerned with the factors that influence the demand for market modes of child care by two parent families with working mothers. An econometric model is specified that relates the demand for child care to price, income, and other economic variables. Because of the discrete nature of the child care decision, the multinomial logit probability model is used to analyze the data. The empirical results suggest that the demand for child care is sensitive to both prices and income.     

Effects of autism spectrum disorder on parental employment in the United States: evidence from the National Health Interview Survey

Using results of the US National Health Interview Survey (US-NHIS) for the years 1998–2013 we investigated the impact of having a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) on parents’ work behavior. After controlling for numerous background characteristics, we found that having a child with ASD lowered the number of hours of market work per week and the number of months of market work in the previous year for mothers. For fathers, having a child with ASD also reduced the number of hours of market work per week and the number of months of market work in the previous year. However, the magnitude of the effects were smaller for fathers than for mothers, and more sensitive depending on whether the estimates were derived from a linear regression model or propensity score models. Some evidence was also found that the impact of having a child with ASD on parents’ market work depended on whether or not the child with ASD also had an intellectual disability, the parent’s education level, immigration status, and parent race/ethnicity.     

Interparental Agreement on Family Functioning Within Chinese Families

Although many studies have investigated the concordance of parent and adolescent perspectives on family functioning, little research has been conducted on concordance between parents’ perspectives. In this study the authors investigated this issue in China. Each parent of 729 children attending elementary schools in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, completed a set of questionnaires including a version of the Chinese Family Assessment Instrument (C-FAI). Mother and father concordance was medium to strong for four of the five C-FAI subscales, suggesting that parents were generally in agreement with each other in their perceptions of family functioning. However, mothers reported significantly more family conflict than fathers when their child was a girl, and fathers reported significantly more control problems than mothers when the child was a boy. The findings are discussed in relation to the limitations of the study and the need for future research.     

Domestic Violence,Children's Agency and Mother–Child Relationships: Towards a More Advanced Model

Although domestic violence research increasingly recognises children's agency, this awareness has not extended to our understanding of children's relationships with their abused mothers. Findings suggesting that some children actively support their mother, and encourage her to leave the perpetrator, have been consistently under‐discussed. This article argues that the model of parent–child relationships used by most domestic violence research sees children as passive and contributes to mother‐blaming discourses. Analysing key quantitative and qualitative research, I suggest that a more sophisticated model of parent–child relationships is needed to understand how children's agency affects them, their mothers and the domestic violence situation.     

Experiences of Mothers Who Are Child Sexual Abuse Survivors: A Qualitative Exploration

Child sexual abuse has been associated with a number of problems affecting women over their lifespan, including difficulties with parenting. However, there is a modest number of qualitative studies examining the impact of child sexual abuse on survivors who are mothers. There is a particular need for qualitative investigations that ask survivors who are mothers general questions about the impact of child sexual abuse on their lives rather than those that specifically ask about the impact of child sexual abuse on parenting. The former approach would allow survivors to describe effects that may impact parenting but that survivors do not consciously link to affecting their parenting. Such information may inform interventions to assist this population of survivors. This secondary data analysis examined themes revealed in interviews with 44 survivors of child sexual abuse who were mothers. Participants were seeking treatment for their child sexual abuse and completed an in-person interview in which they were asked open-ended questions about the sexual abuse they experienced as a child and how their abuse affects them now as adults. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded using thematic analysis. The following six themes emerged from the narratives: (a) being a parent, (b) family of origin dysfunction, (c) the impact of abuse, (d) the abuse history and response to abuse, (e) coping, and (f) hopes and desires for the future. This study highlights several ways in which child sexual abuse impacts survivors who are mothers, areas for further study, and the need for interventions to assist this population in meeting the challenges they face as mothers.     

Making visits better: the perspectives of parents,foster parents,and child welfare workers

Mothers of children recently placed in foster care, foster mothers, and child welfare workers participated in semistructured, clinical interviews focusing on the challenges of parent visitation with young children. Mothers described their feelings of grief, trauma, and rage about the forced separation from their children and stressed the importance of emotional expression and communication during visits. Child welfare workers described the complexities of supporting emotionally close parent-child interactions while monitoring and assessing parental behavior during visits. Foster mothers described the importance of preparing children for visits and the difficulties of supporting the children afterward. Implications of understanding mothers', foster mothers', and child welfare workers' perspectives on enhancing the quality of visits with young children are discussed.     

In Their Own Voice: Mothers in Drug Treatment and Their Views on Parenting,Behavioral Parent Training,and Barriers to Engagement

Behavioral parent training offers mothers in drug treatment a valuable opportunity to improve their parenting skills through real-time, individualized coaching, but these mothers might be reluctant to participate with their child. Participants were 23 mothers or female guardians from 4 drug treatment programs with children 1 to 10 years old. Focus group discussions and questionnaires asked about their perspectives on parenting and their interest in and obstacles to participating in behavioral parent training. Detailed narrative responses and quantitative analyses identified some unique issues in parenting for this population as well as logistical, attitudinal, and emotional barriers to participating in behavioral parent training with their children.     

Child Care Choices in Spain

In this paper we examined the determinants of child care choices among families with young children in Spain, by means of a conceptual framework that encompassed need, costs, and availability. Based on data from the Spanish Time Use Survey and Household Budget Survey, our study indicated that, regardless of model specification, the age of the child, the mother’s labor force decisions, and the prices of child care services available were the most important factors that mothers considered when they chose a type of child care. Day care center services substituted for babysitters when the price of babysitters rose; and relative and parent care substituted for day care centers when these services became more expensive. We found no different sensitivity to price changes for working and non-working mothers. From a public policy perspective, child care price subsidies were found to have much stronger effects on child care decisions than child allowances or public provision of school slots.     

Parenting Supports for Early Vocabulary Development: Specific Effects of Sensitivity and Stimulation through Infancy

Growing recognition of disparities in early childhood language environments prompts examination of parent–child interactions, which support vocabulary. Research links parental sensitivity and cognitive stimulation to child language, but has not explicitly contrasted their effects, nor examined how effects may change over time. We examined maternal sensitivity and stimulation throughout infancy using two observational methods—ratings of parents’ interaction qualities and coding of discrete parenting behaviors—to assess the relative importance of these qualities to child vocabulary over time and determine whether mothers make related changes in response to children's development. Participants were 146 infants and mothers, assessed when infants were 14, 24, and 36 months. At 14 months, sensitivity had a stronger effect on vocabulary than did stimulation, but the effect of stimulation grew throughout toddlerhood. Mothers’ cognitive stimulation grew over time, whereas sensitivity remained stable. While discrete parenting behaviors changed with child age, there was no evidence of trade‐offs between sensitive and stimulating behaviors, and no evidence that sensitivity moderated the effect of stimulation on child vocabulary. Findings demonstrate specificity of timing in the link between parenting qualities and child vocabulary, which could inform early parent interventions, and support a reconceptualization of the nature and measurement of parental sensitivity.     

The Effect of Joint-Child-Custody Legislation on the Child-Support Receipt of Single Mothers

Due to the preponderance of single mothers on public assistance, delinquent child support has been a contentious political issue in the U.S. We examine whether joint-child-custody reform affects the child-support receipt of single mothers. We use variation in the timing of joint-custody reforms across states to identify the effect of joint custody on the child-support receipt of single mothers. Joint-custody enactment raises the probability of receiving child support for all single mothers by 8%. The effect on all single mothers is driven by the effect on divorced mothers, as separated and never-married mothers are unaffected by joint-custody reform. We conclude joint-custody reform confers the most benefit on divorced mothers and their children, particularly those who do not receive public assistance.     

Does mother know best? Parental discrepancies in assessing child behavioral and educational outcomes

We investigate the degree of correspondence between parents’ reports on child behavioral and educational outcomes using wave four of a rich Danish longitudinal survey of children (the DALSC). All outcomes are measured at age 11 when the children are expected to be in fifth grade. Once discrepancies are detected, we analyze whether they are driven by noisy evaluations or by systematic bias, focusing on the role of parental characteristics and response heterogeneity. We then explicitly assess the relative importance of the mother’s versus the father’s assessments in explaining child academic performance and diagnosed mental health to investigate whether one parent is systematically a better informant of their child’s outcomes than the other. Our results show that parental psychopathology, measured as maternal distress, is a source of systematic misreporting of child functioning, that the parent–child relationship matters, and that mothers are not necessarily a better informant of child functioning than fathers. This last finding should not only be valid for Denmark but also for many other countries, where the father’s role in childcare has been growing.     

A Comparison of the Self-Esteem between Boys Living with Single-Parent Mothers and Single-Parent Fathers

This study investigated the self-esteem of boys between the ages of 9 and 14 as related to the sex and adjustment of the custodial parent, the frequency of visitation of the noncustodial parent, the length of time the child lived in a single-parent home, and the quality of the relationship between the parents. Results revealed no significant difference in self-esteem between boys living with single-parent mothers and boys living with single-parent fathers. No significant correlations were found between self-esteem of boys, the length of time they lived in a single-parent home, and the quality of the parental relationship. The self-esteem of those boys who saw their absent-from-the-home parent once a month or more was significantly higher than the self-esteem of those boys who saw their absent-from-the-home parent less than once a month.     

Child protection fathers' experiences of childhood,intimate partner violence and parenting

Research on mothers in child protection families has revealed that they often have a history of childhood abuse. Research has also shown that a considerable proportion of child maltreatment co-occurs with intimate partner violence (IPV) towards the mother. However, there is a dearth of research on the childhood histories and IPV victimization experiences of fathers in child protection families. To address these gaps in the literature this exploratory mixed method study of 35 men associated with a parenting program in Australia investigated fathers' childhood experiences, exposure to IPV and concern for their children's safety. Although this study was conducted with a specific group of fathers screened for serious personal problems, the findings suggest that, similar to mothers in child protection families, there are some fathers within typical child protection populations who have histories of childhood abuse and IPV victimization. In addition, many of the fathers in this study tried to protect their children from maltreatment related to the other parent. The main implication of the findings is that child protection fathers who have histories of abuse and IPV victimization should be afforded the same support and assistance as mothers in similar situations.