When you cannot talk to your ex.
Friendly co-parenting is not the only arrangement that works, and for a lot of people it is not the one to aim at. What the research says about parallel parenting, shared care, and the question nobody has settled.
Everything else on this site is traced to a statute. This page cannot be, because it is not about law — it is about children. So instead of a statute, every section carries a label saying how good the evidence behind it actually is. Of the four below, one is a question researchers are still openly arguing about in print, and the rest sit in between. We would rather tell you which is which than write them all in the same confident voice.
Before anything else: this page is not about abuse
Everything below comes from research on ordinary conflict between separated parents — the arguing, the resentment, the years of low-grade friction. It is not about intimate partner violence, and where there has been violence, coercive control or fear, some of the advice here is actively unsafe. “Communicate more,” “tell them together,” and “keep both parents involved” are all wrong answers in that situation. If that is your situation, the people to talk to are a family lawyer and a domestic violence advocate, and both can usually be reached for free.
If every conversation with your ex turns into a fight, the answer is not to try harder at friendly co-parenting — it is to communicate less, and more formally. Children do fine in that arrangement when the parenting inside each home is good.
Parallel parenting means each parent runs their own household with minimal coordination: fixed schedules instead of negotiated ones, written communication only, no joint attendance where it causes trouble, and no attempt to align rules across homes. It is not a failure state — it is the most common arrangement. Drawing on Maccoby and Mnookin's Stanford Custody Study, Kelly (2005) reports that only about 25-30% of separated parents manage genuinely cooperative co-parenting — 'joint planning, flexibility of schedule, provision of some parenting support to each other, and coordination of children's activities' — while more than half fall into parallel parenting, characterised by 'emotional disengagement, low conflict, and minimal communication about their children.' Kelly's assessment of the outcome evidence is direct: parallel parenting 'is less optimal for children than cooperative co-parenting,' but 'children do thrive in these arrangements, particularly when the quality of parenting in each home is nurturing and adequate.' A more recent study puts a sharper point on it. Rejaän, van der Valk and Branje (2022) used latent class analysis on 251 Dutch adolescents' reports and found four post-divorce co-parenting patterns: cooperative, negatively engaged, negatively disengaged, and average. Adolescents whose parents were cooperative reported the fewest problems — but those whose parents were *negatively engaged* (still in frequent contact, still hostile) reported the *most* internalizing problems. Staying engaged while hostile looked worse for the child than disengaging. That ordering is the empirical case for parallel parenting as a deliberate choice rather than a defeat.
That good parents co-parent as friends, and that parallel parenting is what you settle for when you have failed. The largest study of the typology found cooperative co-parenting is the minority arrangement, and a recent study found adolescents whose parents stayed in hostile contact were worse off than those whose parents disengaged. Choosing distance on purpose is a parenting decision, not a personal defeat.
What to do about it
- Stop trying to agree on rules across the two homes. Bedtimes, screens, food, homework — let each house run itself. Children handle two sets of rules easily; they handle two parents fighting about rules very badly.
- Move everything you can from negotiation to schedule. A fixed calendar published a year ahead — holidays, birthdays, school breaks, pickup times and locations — removes hundreds of small opportunities to fight.
- Communicate only in writing, only about the children, and only about things that require a decision. No commentary, no history, no responses to provocation.
- Split the logistics rather than sharing them. One parent owns dentist appointments, the other owns sports registration. Shared responsibility for a task is a standing invitation to conflict.
- Use neutral handovers where you can — school drop-off on the changeover day means the two of you never have to meet — and attend games and school events separately, or at opposite ends of the field.
- If even written communication keeps escalating, ask about a parenting coordinator. It is a recognized professional role with published AFCC guidelines, and the available (if limited) evidence points to a large drop in court filings.
Parallel parenting is aimed at conflict, not at safety. Where there is family violence, coercive control, or a risk to the child, this is not the framework — those cases need specialist and legal advice, and the AFCC's 2019 guidelines specifically flag intimate partner violence as requiring different handling. Also note the limits of the evidence: there is no randomised trial of parallel parenting, the parenting-coordination outcome data are case studies rather than controlled evaluations, and the proportions cited from the Stanford study describe US families studied in the late 1980s, which may not match today.
The 7 sources behind this
- Kelly, J. B. (2005). Developing beneficial parenting plan models for children following separation and divorce. Journal of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, 19, 237-254.The clearest scholarly statement of what parallel parenting is, how common it is, and what the outcome evidence says. Draws its proportions from Maccoby and Mnookin's Stanford Custody Study.
- Maccoby, E. E., & Mnookin, R. H. (1992). Dividing the Child: Social and Legal Dilemmas of Custody. Harvard University Press.The Stanford Custody Study, the source of the cooperative/parallel/conflicted typology and its proportions.
- Rejaän, Z., van der Valk, I. E., & Branje, S. (2022). Postdivorce coparenting patterns and relations with adolescent adjustment. Journal of Family Issues, 43(7), 1739-1759.251 Dutch adolescents. Identifies 'negatively engaged' and 'negatively disengaged' as distinct patterns and finds the engaged-but-hostile group had the most internalizing problems.
- Anderson, K., & Upthegrove, S. (2025). Parallel parenting with purpose: A practical alternative to coparenting in high conflict family systems. Journal of Family Trauma, Child Custody & Child Development, 22(3), 354-371.Recent peer-reviewed practice article devoted entirely to parallel parenting as a deliberate intervention in high-conflict systems.
- AFCC Task Force on Parenting Coordination (2020). New AFCC guidelines for parenting coordination (2019). Family Court Review, 58(3), 644-657.The governing professional guidance for parenting coordination — the role most often used to make parallel parenting workable when even written communication breaks down. The 2019 revision explicitly addresses technology use and cases involving intimate partner violence.
- Henry, W. J., Fieldstone, L., & Bohac, K. (2009). Parenting coordination and court relitigation: A case study. Family Court Review, 47(4), 682-697.Found roughly a 75% reduction in child-related court filings and about a 50% reduction in all motions in the year after parenting coordination began. A case study, not a controlled trial.
- van Dijk, R., van der Valk, I. E., Deković, M., & Branje, S. (2020). A meta-analysis on interparental conflict, parenting, and child adjustment in divorced families. Clinical Psychology Review, 79, 101861.Relevant here because it identifies the mechanism parallel parenting is designed to interrupt: conflict damaging children by degrading parenting inside each home.
Write to your co-parent the way you would write to a difficult colleague — short, factual, about the children only — and do not expect an app to fix a conflict that people are driving.
The advice to keep communication brief, business-like and child-focused comes from clinical and family-court practice, not from trials. Its best-known packaging is the BIFF method — Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm — developed by Bill Eddy, an attorney and licensed clinical social worker who founded the High Conflict Institute; it was published as BIFF (High Conflict Institute Press, 2011, second edition 2014) and later adapted for separated parents as BIFF for Co-Parents (Eddy, Burns & Chafin, 2020). It is widely taught in family courts and mediation, and it has no published randomised evaluation. Court-ordered communication apps are better researched, and the research is not flattering. Smyth, Payne, Irving and Heard (2023) had mediators role-play high-conflict ex-couples across nine popular parenting apps; every one of the nine was rated between 'Poor' and 'Fair,' and the mediators' enthusiasm dropped once they actually used them. Irving and colleagues (2023) put 30 Australian family dispute resolution practitioners through 10 apps: language-moderation features — the thing practitioners most expected — appeared in only 3 of the 10 and were easily circumvented, and by the end several practitioners had stopped recommending apps to high-conflict clients altogether. Where family violence is involved the picture is genuinely two-sided: Irving (2024) surveyed 33 mothers who reported family violence and had used a parenting app, and found 24 reported net benefit — the record-keeping deterred and captured abusive conduct and helped them set boundaries — while 9 reported net detriment, with the app used to build false narratives; the net-detriment group had been separated longer. What no study yet shows is that ordering an app reduces conflict or improves children's outcomes.
That a court-ordered co-parenting app will calm things down. Courts order them frequently and the marketing implies as much, but no published study shows they reduce conflict or improve children's outcomes, and the two largest hands-on evaluations found practitioners lost confidence in them after actually using them. Their real value is that they create a clean, timestamped record.
What to do about it
- Adopt one rule and it will do most of the work: every message is about a decision that needs making about a child, and nothing else. No history, no feelings, no defending yourself.
- Use the BIFF shape — brief, informative, friendly, firm. Two or three sentences. State the fact, state what you propose, propose a deadline, stop. 'Sam has a dentist appointment Thursday at 4. I can take him. Let me know by Tuesday if you'd rather.'
- Do not answer the provocation. If a message contains six accusations and one real question, answer the question and ignore the rest. Responding to the accusations is how a thread becomes a fight.
- Wait 24 hours before sending anything you wrote while angry. Then cut it in half. Then cut the half that explains why you are right. It also helps to assume a judge will read it — not as a threat, as an editing standard.
- If a court orders you onto an app, use it and keep your expectations low. The research says these tools are mediocre, that tone filters barely exist and are easy to get around, and that the record-keeping is the genuinely useful feature. Treat it as a filing cabinet, not a referee.
- If you have experienced family violence, get advice before agreeing to app-based communication. The research shows it helps some survivors substantially and is turned against others, and you cannot tell which from the app store listing.
The strongest app research is Australian, testing apps available in that market; findings should transfer reasonably to the US products since several are the same, but this has not been directly tested. There is no evaluation at all of BIFF as a method, so its inclusion here reflects how widely it is taught in family courts, not evidence that it works. And 'business-like communication' is advice for conflict, not for danger: if messages from a co-parent are frightening rather than merely hostile, that is a safety question, not a communication-style question.
The 8 sources behind this
- Smyth, B. M., Payne, J. L., Irving, M., & Heard, G. (2023). Popular post-separation parenting smartphone apps: An evaluation. Family Court Review, 61(3), 563-585.Structured evaluation of nine popular co-parenting apps using human-computer interaction methods, with mediators role-playing high-conflict couples. All nine rated 'Poor' to 'Fair'.
- Irving, M. A., Heard, G., Smyth, B. M., Payne, J. L., & Althor, G. (2023). Post-separation parenting apps in the hands of family law practitioners: Expectations versus experience. International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, 37(1), ebad027.30 family dispute resolution practitioners tested 10 apps hands-on. Documents the gap between what practitioners expect apps to do and what they actually do, and the critique of 'techno-solutionism'.
- Irving, M. (2024). Post-separation parenting apps in the context of family violence: Harm minimisation versus harm facilitation. Law, Technology and Humans, 6(1), 59-74.Survey of 33 mothers reporting family violence via parenting apps, comparing the 24 who experienced net benefit with the 9 who experienced net detriment. The most careful account of when these tools help and when they are turned into weapons.
- Irving, M., & Boxall, H. (2026). Post-separation parenting apps as tools for control and resistance. Violence Against Women.Interviews with 18 separated mothers on how app record-keeping functions serve both coercive control and resistance to it.
- Russell, L. T., Ferraro, A. J., Beckmeyer, J. J., Markham, M. S., Wilkins-Clark, R. E., & Zimmermann, M. L. (2021). Communication technology use in post-divorce coparenting relationships: A typology and associations with post-divorce adjustment. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 38(1Latent class analysis identifying four patterns of divorced co-parents' technology use, from multi-method communicators to limited-communication texters.
- Smyth, B. M., Ainscough, G., & Payne, J. L. (2020). Modes of communication between high-conflict separated parents: Exploring the role of media multiplexity and modality switching. Journal of Family Communication, 20(3), 189-205.Empirical study of which channels high-conflict separated parents actually use and how they switch between them.
- Eddy, B. (2014). BIFF: Quick Responses to High-Conflict People, Their Personal Attacks, Hostile Email and Social Media Meltdowns (2nd ed.). High Conflict Institute Press. And: Eddy, B., Burns, A., & Chafin, K. (2020). BIFF for Co-Parents. High Conflict Institute Press.The origin of the BIFF method. Practice guidance from an attorney and clinical social worker, widely taught in family courts — but a book, not a study. Listed so readers know exactly what kind of source it is.
- AFCC Task Force on Parenting Coordination (2020). New AFCC guidelines for parenting coordination (2019). Family Court Review, 58(3), 644-657.Professional guidance that explicitly addresses the use of technology in high-conflict co-parenting and the handling of intimate partner violence.
For school-age children and teenagers, kids in shared care generally do as well as or better than kids in sole care — but the families who end up in shared care were different to begin with, and nobody has fully separated the arrangement from the people who chose it.
Bauserman's 2002 meta-analysis of 33 studies (over 2,650 children) found children in joint custody scored better on adjustment measures than children in sole custody, with the exception of academic performance. Nielsen's 2018 review of 60 studies tallied the results this way: compared with sole physical custody, children in joint physical custody had better outcomes on all measures in 34 studies, better on some and equal on others in 14, equal on all in 6, and worse on one measure but equal or better on the rest in 6 — none were worse across the board. Two very large population studies point the same direction with more nuance. Bergström and colleagues (2015) surveyed 147,839 Swedish sixth and ninth graders and found children in joint physical custody reported fewer psychosomatic problems than children living mostly or only with one parent, but more than children in nuclear families. Hjern and colleagues (2021), following 31,519 children in the Danish National Birth Cohort to age 11, found the same ordering on mental health. The serious criticism is selection. Steinbach's 2019 review of 40 studies concluded that samples are dominated by 'self-selected highly educated parents with a high socio-economic status, a low conflict level, and children between the ages of 6-15,' and that 'the risks and benefits of JPC are not clear yet.' Braver and Votruba (2018) put it sharply: most studies use static group comparisons, and during the period studied 'JPC was virtually never imposed on consistently unwilling families' — so the arrangement and the kind of family that chooses it are tangled together. They propose propensity-score analysis, natural experiments around law changes, and regression discontinuity designs as the way out, and conclude only provisionally that joint physical custody 'probably does cause benefits to children on average.' Where conflict is high, the picture is more complicated: Mahrer, O'Hara, Sandler and Wolchik's 2018 review of 11 studies found that where conflict was measured years after the divorce, more shared time was associated with poorer adjustment in high-conflict families, whereas where conflict was measured during or shortly after the separation the associations were mostly not significant.
That the research proves 50/50 custody is best for children. It does not, and the researchers who most favor shared parenting say so themselves. What the research shows is that shared-care children, on average, do at least as well as sole-care children — in samples of families who mostly chose shared care voluntarily, had lower conflict, and had more money and education than average. That is a real finding. It is not a finding that imposing equal time on an unwilling family produces the same result.
What to do about it
- Do not read 'shared care is associated with better outcomes' as 'my child needs exactly 50/50.' The studies compare broad categories, and the large registry studies show shared-care children doing better than sole-care children but still not as well as children in intact families — the arrangement is not the whole story.
- Optimize for what the research keeps identifying as the active ingredient: at least one parent providing warm, consistent, structured parenting, and enough time with them for it to land. Sandler's high-conflict study found that was what separated the children who did well.
- Be honest with yourself about whether you are choosing shared care because it fits your child's life or because it feels like a fair split of a scarce resource. The families in these studies mostly chose it because it worked for them.
- Longer blocks usually beat more frequent swaps for school-age children — fewer transitions, fewer forgotten bags, fewer disrupted weeks. There is no evidence that a specific rotation is best; there is evidence that the frequent-moves objection to shared care did not hold up in the Swedish data.
- If your conflict is still high years after the split, shared time is the arrangement most likely to be affected. That is the situation where the review evidence turns negative — which is an argument for reducing contact between the adults, not necessarily for reducing the child's time with a parent.
- Ask for a schedule that can be revised without going back to court. Adolescents in particular need it to bend.
Nielsen's own stated limitations apply to the whole literature: the studies report correlations, not causation; study quality varies; most data come from mothers only; and effect sizes are generally small to moderate. Almost all of this research is on children roughly 6-15; it does not transfer to infants and toddlers, which is covered separately. Nielsen's review is also a vote-count tally rather than a pooled quantitative meta-analysis, and she is a well-known advocate for shared parenting — which is a reason to read her alongside Steinbach and Braver, not a reason to discount her. Country context matters too: the Swedish and Danish findings come from systems where shared care is common and normal.
The 10 sources behind this
- Bauserman, R. (2002). Child adjustment in joint-custody versus sole-custody arrangements: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Family Psychology, 16(1), 91-102.The first meta-analysis on this question: 33 studies, over 2,650 children.
- Nielsen, L. (2018). Joint versus sole physical custody: Children's outcomes independent of parent-child relationships, income, and conflict in 60 studies. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 59(4), 247-281.The most-cited tally of the literature, with an explicit study-by-study breakdown and an attempt to see whether income and conflict explain the advantage.
- Bergström, M., Fransson, E., Modin, B., Berlin, M., Gustafsson, P. A., & Hjern, A. (2015). Fifty moves a year: Is there an association between joint physical custody and psychosomatic problems in children? Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 69(8), 769-774.National classroom survey of all Swedish sixth and ninth graders, N = 147,839. Directly tested the 'all that moving must be stressful' hypothesis and did not find support for it.
- Hjern, A., Urhoj, S. K., Fransson, E., & Bergström, M. (2021). Mental health in schoolchildren in joint physical custody: A longitudinal study. Children, 8(6), 473.31,519 children in the Danish National Birth Cohort followed to age 11, adjusting for early-childhood indicators of parents' relations, income, education and psychiatric care.
- Steinbach, A. (2019). Children's and parents' well-being in joint physical custody: A literature review. Family Process, 58(2), 353-369.The best single statement of the selection-effect criticism, reviewing 40 studies published 2007-2018.
- Braver, S. L., & Votruba, A. M. (2018). Does joint physical custody 'cause' children's better outcomes? Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 59(5), 452-468.A methodological article specifically about whether the observed benefit is causal, written by authors who favor shared parenting and still take the selection problem seriously.
- Mahrer, N. E., O'Hara, K. L., Sandler, I. N., & Wolchik, S. A. (2018). Does shared parenting help or hurt children in high-conflict divorced families? Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 59(4), 324-347.Review of 11 studies on the interaction between shared parenting time and conflict. The key finding is that timing of the conflict measurement changes the answer.
- Sandler, I. N., Wheeler, L. A., & Braver, S. L. (2013). Relations of parenting quality, interparental conflict, and overnights with mental health problems of children in divorcing families with high legal conflict. Journal of Family Psychology, 27(6), 915-924.Study of families in high legal conflict. Found children do better when they get enough time with at least one parent who parents well — quality mattered more than the conflict level.
- O'Hara, K. L., Sandler, I. N., Wolchik, S. A., Tein, J.-Y., & Rhodes, C. A. (2019). Parenting time, parenting quality, interparental conflict, and mental health problems of children in high-conflict divorce. Journal of Family Psychology, 33(6), 690-703.Found a curved relationship: more parenting time predicts a better father-child relationship up to a point, past which more time adds nothing.
- Baude, A., Pearson, J., & Drapeau, S. (2016). Child adjustment in joint physical custody versus sole custody: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 57(5), 338-360.A second, later meta-analysis of the same question, often cited alongside Bauserman and Nielsen.
Whether babies and toddlers should have regular overnights with each parent is genuinely unsettled — respected researchers disagree in print, and anyone who tells you the science has spoken is overstating it.
In 2014 Richard Warshak published a consensus report in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, endorsed by 110 researchers and practitioners, whose central assertion was that 'there is no evidence to support postponing the introduction of regular and frequent involvement, including overnights, of both parents with their babies and toddlers' (p. 60). Two studies sit on the other side. McIntosh, Smyth and Kelaher (2013), using nationally representative data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, reported that after controlling for parenting style, parental conflict and socioeconomic factors, a greater number of shared overnights predicted some less settled and less well-regulated behavior in 0-1 and 2-3 year olds — but none in 4-5 year olds. Tornello and colleagues (2013), using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, found frequent overnights significantly associated with attachment insecurity among infants, with a less clear relationship for toddlers, and — importantly — no direct link between frequent overnights and adjustment problems at ages 3 and 5. Warshak criticized the Australian study in detail; McIntosh, Smyth and Kelaher replied in the same journal in 2015, arguing that some of his criticisms 'involve serious misrepresentations of our aims, methodology, and findings,' and that this is a debate that 'cannot yet be resolved by science.' The most useful document for a parent is the middle position that came out of an AFCC think tank the same year: Pruett, McIntosh and Kelly (2014) concluded that 'cautions against overnight care during the first three years are not supported,' while 'the limited available research substantiates some caution about higher frequency overnight schedules with young children, particularly when the child's relationship with a second parent has not been established and/or parents are in frequent conflict to which the child is exposed.' They frame the goal as a 'triadic secure base' — an arrangement that supports the child's secure attachment to each parent and each parent's recognition of the other's importance — rather than a contest between attachment and father involvement.
Two opposite myths, both common. One: 'science says babies shouldn't do overnights away from their mother.' Two: 'science says equal time from birth is fine for everyone.' Neither is what the literature supports. The published middle ground rejects blanket prohibitions on overnights while also urging caution about high-frequency schedules for under-threes where the second relationship is new or the parents are in conflict the child sees.
What to do about it
- Do not let either side's headline decide this for you. Both camps have published in good journals and both have been formally rebutted. This is a decision about your particular baby, not a referendum on the literature.
- Ask the question the middle-ground researchers ask: has this child already built a real relationship with the second parent — hands-on, day-to-day feeding, soothing, bedtime — or not? Both sides agree that matters more than the number of nights.
- If the second relationship is still forming, frequent short daytime contact builds it faster and with less strain than jumping straight to long overnight blocks. Then step up as it takes hold.
- Build in a review date. Write into the plan that you will revisit the schedule at, say, 18 months and again at three. What is right for a nine-month-old is not right for a three-year-old, and a plan that cannot change becomes a plan you have to litigate.
- Watch the child, not the calendar — sleep, feeding, settling, and how they are at reunion are what the researchers on both sides actually measured — and keep conflict out of the handover, which is the one thing both camps agree makes any schedule worse.
- If a professional tells you the research 'clearly shows' one answer here, ask which studies. The honest answer is that it does not.
The infant samples in these studies are small. In the underlying 2010 Australian government report, only 63 of 248 children under two were in shared overnight care, and only 26 of 587 two-to-three-year-olds. The authors themselves flagged their samples as small and non-random, and called for observational research with adequate sample sizes, which has not yet arrived. The outcomes measured are proxies — irritability, settledness, emotion regulation, attachment classification — not long-run wellbeing. No randomised evidence exists and none is likely to, for obvious ethical reasons. Also note that most of this research assumes two safe, willing, available parents; where there is family violence or substance misuse, this literature is not the right guide.
The 8 sources behind this
- Warshak, R. A. (2014). Social science and parenting plans for young children: A consensus report. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 20(1), 46-67.The consensus report, endorsed by 110 researchers and practitioners, arguing there is no evidence for postponing overnights with infants and toddlers. The most-cited document on this side of the debate.
- McIntosh, J. E., Smyth, B. M., & Kelaher, M. (2013). Overnight care patterns following parental separation: Associations with emotion regulation in infants and young children. Journal of Family Studies, 19(3), 224-239.The Australian study at the center of the dispute, using nationally representative LSAC data across three age bands, controlling for parenting style, conflict and socioeconomic factors.
- McIntosh, J. E., Smyth, B. M., & Kelaher, M. (2015). Responding to concerns about a study of infant overnight care postseparation, with comments on consensus: Reply to Warshak (2014). Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 21(1), 111-119.The formal published reply. The clearest single document showing that this is contested rather than settled.
- Tornello, S. L., Emery, R., Rowen, J., Potter, D., Ocker, B., & Xu, Y. (2013). Overnight custody arrangements, attachment, and adjustment among very young children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 75(4), 871-885.US study using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, representative of 20 US cities over 200,000 population. Found frequent overnights linked to infant attachment insecurity but not to adjustment problems at ages 3 and 5.
- Pruett, M. K., McIntosh, J. E., & Kelly, J. B. (2014). Parental separation and overnight care of young children, Part I: Consensus through theoretical and empirical integration. Family Court Review, 52(2), 240-255.The AFCC think-tank middle ground, co-authored across the divide. The single most balanced statement available, and the source of the 'triadic secure base' framing.
- McIntosh, J. E., Pruett, M. K., & Kelly, J. B. (2014). Parental separation and overnight care of young children, Part II: Putting theory into practice. Family Court Review, 52(2), 256-262.The practical companion, offering a structured set of considerations for individual cases rather than a blanket rule.
- Kelly, J. B., & Lamb, M. E. (2000). Using child development research to make appropriate custody and access decisions for young children. Family Court Review, 38(3), 297-311.The influential earlier argument that young children need frequent contact with both parents rather than long gaps.
- Solomon, J., & Biringen, Z. (2001). Another look at the developmental research: Commentary on Kelly and Lamb's 'Using child development research to make appropriate custody and access decisions for young children.' Family Court Review, 39(4), 355-364.The published rebuttal to Kelly and Lamb, arguing the attachment evidence does not yet support their transition guidelines. Shows this disagreement is 25 years old.
What actually helps the children
The conflict finding, what to tell them, and the four things that reliably make it worse.
The legal side of the same question
What your state actually presumes about custody, and the number that changes support.
What actually helps the children
The four things that reliably make it worse, and how strong the evidence behind each part is.
When there is a new partner in the picture
Stepparenting, the discipline question, loyalty binds — and the stepfamily numbers that turn out to have no source.