Books: Co-parenting
Running two households for the same children, including when the other parent will not co-operate. Every entry says who it is not for, which is the useful part and the part nobody else prints.
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Co-parenting: 5 books
Ordered by how well evidenced they are rather than by how good they are, because those are different questions and the second one depends on who you are.
Susan Blyth Boyan · Active Parenting · first published 1999 · 200 pages
Susan Blyth Boyan co-created the Cooperative Parenting Institute program, the co-parenting class many family courts order divorcing parents to complete.
The companion workbook to a widely used, court-referral parent education class. It walks through reducing conflict, communicating about the kids, and separating the couple relationship from the parenting relationship, in short structured chapters.
Read it if A parent who has been ordered into (or is considering) a court-affiliated co-parenting class and wants the material without paying for the class, or wants to review it afterward.
Do not read it if Someone looking for a deep, discursive read — it’s built as a class workbook, so it’s terse and exercise-driven rather than explanatory.
Practitioner experience, not research Court systems use the associated program widely, which speaks to institutional trust in it, but that is not the same as controlled outcome research on the book itself.
No rating we could verify — we leave this blank rather than repeat a number we have not seen at its source.
Julie A. Ross · St. Martin’s Press · first published 1996 · 245 pages
Julie A. Ross is a parent educator and founder of a parenting-skills training organization, not a lawyer or psychologist.
A tactics-and-scripts book for co-parenting with an ex who won’t cooperate: how to communicate in writing, keep exchanges short, and stop trying to win arguments you can’t win. It leans heavily on scripted dialogue and worked examples rather than research.
Read it if Someone who has already accepted the other parent won’t change and wants concrete phrases and boundaries for day-to-day handoffs and messages.
Do not read it if Anyone in a genuinely high-conflict or abusive co-parenting situation — the book’s ‘manage your reactions’ framing is not built for coercive control, and a reader in that situation needs a domestic-violence-informed resource instead.
Practitioner experience, not research Communication-skills advice drawn from the author’s parent-education workshops, not from outcome research on co-parenting interventions.
No rating we could verify — we leave this blank rather than repeat a number we have not seen at its source.
Isolina Ricci · Fireside · first published 2006 · 272 pages
Isolina Ricci is a family therapist and mediator; this is a kids’-facing companion to her long-standing adult classic ‘Mom’s House, Dad’s House.’
A workbook-style guide written for children and pre-teens themselves, with exercises and prompts to help them talk about living in two homes, custody schedules, and the feelings that come with them. It is meant to be worked through with an adult, not read cover to cover alone.
Read it if A parent who wants a structured, sit-down activity to do with a child aged roughly 8 to 12 who is old enough to write and reflect but still struggling to talk about the divorce directly.
Do not read it if A parent hoping for a book the child can just hand back with feelings resolved — it only works if an adult sits through the exercises with the kid, and it does nothing for children too young to write.
Practitioner experience, not research Built from Ricci’s decades of clinical and mediation practice rather than from a study of the workbook’s own effectiveness.
No rating we could verify — we leave this blank rather than repeat a number we have not seen at its source.
Christina McGhee · Penguin Random House · first published 2010 · 407 pages
Christina McGhee is a divorce and co-parenting consultant who has worked directly with separating families and family courts internationally.
A practical, child-focused guide to structuring co-parenting after separation — schedules, introducing new partners, handling holidays, and keeping kids out of the middle. It reads like advice from an experienced consultant rather than an academic text.
Read it if A separating parent who wants clear, level-headed logistics-and-tone advice for the first year or two of co-parenting.
Do not read it if A parent looking for legal or custody-schedule templates specific to their state — this is about parenting behavior, not the legal mechanics.
Practitioner experience, not research Reflects McGhee’s consulting experience with separating families rather than a research base of its own.
No rating we could verify — we leave this blank rather than repeat a number we have not seen at its source.
Isolina Ricci · Collier Books · first published 1980 · 270 pages
Isolina Ricci is a family therapist who directed a family court mediation service and helped pioneer the modern co-parenting-plan concept.
One of the original books to lay out practical ‘two-home’ co-parenting — routines, communication, kids’ adjustment — structured around two functioning households rather than one ‘primary’ and one ‘visiting’ parent.
Read it if Parents who want a calm, foundational framework for structuring life across two households.
Do not read it if Anyone looking for state-specific custody law — that isn’t what this book does, and this listed 1980 edition is the original printing.
Check the edition This is the original 1980 edition. The book has been substantially revised since (through a 2006-plus edition) to reflect updated custody and co-parenting norms; seek the current edition rather than this one.
No rating we could verify — we leave this blank rather than repeat a number we have not seen at its source.
Every title, author, publisher, year, page count and ISBN here was checked against a bibliographic database rather than typed from memory, and the candidates that could not be confirmed were dropped rather than guessed at. Ratings are shown only where we could see them at source, which is why several books have none — a blank is honest and an invented four-point-three is not. The judgments about what a book is worth are ours, they are opinions, and you are entitled to disagree with them. Tell us when we are wrong.
Compiled 31 August 2026. Bibliographic data from Open Library. Prices, editions and availability change constantly; the links go to the current listing.