Child Alienation: “1000 Little Bricks”
© 2013 By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. [An excerpt from the book Don’t Alienate the Kids! Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce] In this chapter, I explain a theory of child alienation that I have developed called “1000 Little Bricks.” It’s based on three Cultures of Blame and the little behaviors (bricks) that children absorb from them. When these three cultures reinforce each other, it is a “perfect storm” which can build alienation. This is in contrast to what cultures are supposed to do by protecting children and building their resilience for the future. If any one of these stopped being a Culture of Blame, I believe there would be much less child alienation: 1. A family Culture of Blame, when a high-conflict parent is involved. 2. Today’s family court Culture of Blame, which pits parent against parent in an unnecessary contest over who is the “all-good” parent and who is the “all-bad” parent in a divorce, and which involves many family members and professionals who become emotionally “hooked” and feed the escalating conflict. 3. Our society’s increasing Culture of Blame, which turns complex problems into the simple blaming of individuals, with lots of all-or-nothing commentaries, unmanaged emotions and extreme behaviors repeated endlessly through the news media, entertainment and politics, which feed alienation on a larger scale and influence children’s personality development. I will also introduce the brain science which explains more about how children learn and absorb these Cultures of Blame, without anyone intending it or even realizing it. It is similar to the way that children learn prejudice. Cultures define desirable behavior, what is undesirable but tolerated, and what is unacceptable. Cultures define values, status, and punishments for their people. This is all learned, but without anyone specifically teaching it. Everyone absorbs their culture every day through thousands of comments, jokes, images, whispers, styles, gossip, accusations, praise for heroes, disparaging remarks for villains, and social punishments for those who violate the values or the power structure of the culture. A Family Culture of Blame A Culture of Blame from Day One: High-conflict parents (especially borderlines and narcissists, as described in Chapter One) naturally split people into “all-good” and “all-bad.” From birth, children of HCPs learn about this. For example, Aunt Mary has been the HCP’s favorite sister for many years. But then she goes on a trip and doesn’t invite the HCP. The HCP is offended and sees Aunt Mary now as “all-bad.” The children learn to take the HCP’s side against Aunt Mary, and this calms down the HCP parent. Then, the HCP gets in a dispute with the neighbor. The children know what to do. It’s automatic. And the other parent, who may not be an HCP, has also learned that you don’t argue with an angry HCP when he or she is splitting people into all-good or all-bad. If you do argue with splitting, then YOU become a target and treated as all-bad too. So the children have learned the family Culture of Blame: The HCP parent is unpredictable and frightening. This parent’s intense anger and blame can flare up at any moment. The family solution with an HCP parent is usually to tolerate and adapt to this inappropriate behavior – until it becomes intolerable. Most families don’t have this Culture of Blame within the family. But for HCPs, it’s all about family – the hated people are usually those they used to love, because of splitting. The people they are preoccupied with the most are usually close family members, such as the other parent, one of the children (often HCPs treat one child as “all-good” and another as “all-bad”), one of the grandparents, or other relatives. The children are used to disliking and criticizing one or more of their family members. So it’s a natural progression to absorb the HCP’s emotions about the other parent in a divorce. The child doesn’t have to be given any instructions. The whole family culture has been doing this for years – including the HCP’s relatives. And the non-HCP parent has learned to tolerate it, so the children learn to tolerate it too. It’s contagious and mostly non-verbal. Right and Left Brains The human brain is divided into a right hemisphere and a left hemisphere. Each of these “brains” process different information at the same time. The left hemisphere is active in processing language, words and details. When the left hemisphere is working on solving a problem, you may be conscious of thinking about it. The left brain is more active with problem-solving tasks and planning for the future. The right hemisphere is more focused on the big picture, non-verbal behavior, and people’s moods. It is very attentive to other people’s tone of voice, facial expressions and hand gestures. If someone in your environment is especially angry or fearful, your right brain will pick up this anger and fear, and your body may tense up before you consciously know why. For the first three years of life, children’s right brains are dominant and developing rapidly, in comparison to their left brains. This means that they are learning every- thing based primarily on their parents’ tone of voice, facial expressions, hand gestures and the emotional messages they are constantly sending out. They become highly familiar with their parent’s regulation of their own emotions and their general level of peacefulness or anxiety. They learn what triggers anxiety in their parent and what calms them down. This is all learned before they really understand language. Their parent’s body language is really all they need to know. They learn the family’s Culture of Blame very quickly and thoroughly – and nonverbally and unconsciously. With an HCP parent, blaming someone becomes natural. Children quickly learn who’s powerful and who’s not in their family culture. They learn whose moods dominate everyone else’s behavior. It’s natural to want to be on the winning side – for survival. Children are on the road to becoming alienated against several people in their lives well before their
Thoughts on Shared Parenting Presumptions (Part 4/4)
© 2013 By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. Legislating Shared Parenting All states and provinces currently mandate significant parenting time for both parents, unless there are compelling reasons (domestic violence, child abuse, etc.) not to do so. It is universally seen as in “the best interests of the child.” However, mandating percentages of time has been avoided, as children and parenting are too complex to resolve with a calculator, the way that child support can be done. Yet several states and provinces have strong movements desiring mandated shared parenting. While I understand this, as described in other sections of this article, and have clients who are part of such movements, I think that such a mandate will not accomplish its desired goals and will be overturned within a few years of its establishment – because it is too large of an intervention for a problem that is not as widespread as it feels. For example, in the Australian study of parenting plans developed in court-mandated mediation in which the parents were required to “actively consider equal or substantively shared parenting,” the research showed that shared parenting plans (35-65% or higher) didn’t last more than a year, whereas primary parenting plans (less than 35-65%) were more stable. Primary parenting plan mediated, still in place 49% Shared parenting plan mediated, but now primary 28% Shared parenting plan mediated, still in place 17% Primary parenting plan mediated, but now shared 6% In the United States, Canada and Australia, the vast majority of separated and divorced parents (approximately 80% or more) reach agreements for parenting on their own, out of court, which is always preferable to a court imposed parenting plan. They don’t need a new mandate. While some parents – especially fathers – would like to have more time, they have reached agreements that appear to fit the reality of their lives, which includes much more time than their fathers had with their children. The fathers’ rights movement dates back to the 1980’s, when partly due to its efforts the courts shifted to standards that no longer gave mothers automatic priority but instead considered “the best interests of the child.” Since then, fathers have dramatically increased their involvement in their children’s lives. Many more have become the primary parent than ever before, and many have had equal shared parenting for some periods of their children’s lives. The majority of parents who bring their parenting disputes to family court have also been satisfied enough to accept the outcome, although not always happily. I have represented mothers who lost custody and I have represented fathers who won custody. So I know that it is not exclusively a fathers’ rights issue, although that is how it may appear to the public. Nowadays, in court, mothers are getting less time with the children than they did in the past and fathers are getting more. In my almost 20 years as a family law attorney in California, we are much closer to gender neutrality than ever before. Even when court orders are made, as I explained above, these court orders are not always followed and the parents end up doing some other arrangement anyway on their own – for better or for worse. While some parents may give up on the one hand or grab more time than the order says on the other hand, I don’t believe that mandated shared parenting orders will make much of a difference to them, since they are not following the court’s orders anyway. A Small Percentage of Parents There is a small percentage of people who have been to family court about parenting issues and were highly dissatisfied. This includes some people who have been wronged by the court system because they had one of the worst attorneys, evaluators or judges. Yes, there are some of each, but fortunately a small percentage – as in all fields. Unethical attorneys can be disbarred. Unethical evaluators can have complaints filed. Unethical judges can be relieved of their duties. This does happen occasionally. The proponents of shared parenting presumptions are sincerely trying to make things better and see a shared parenting mandate as a solution. Unfortunately, it is a universal solution applied to a narrow problem for a few. Our legal system is an incredibly flexible system and I believe a more effective approach would be to educate the courts and the public about parenting and co-parenting, rather than imposing a presumption. The other group of people who are highly dissatisfied includes those parents whose own bad behavior was exposed and family court decisions were made because of that – yet they are unable to see it. Some of these people have high-conflict personalities and blame others for everything to unconsciously deflect from their own behavior. Such high-conflict people will not be satisfied regardless of what happens, including legislated presumptions. For them the “issue’s not the issue,” their personality is the “issue.” They will always find a new issue and see others at fault. Instead of solving a widespread problem, legislating a mandate for shared parenting with a percentage attached will create a widespread problem. Just as many people refinance their mortgages when rates are lowered, I believe that many parents with existing custody and access orders will return to court to change them if such a mandate goes through. Rather than creating less litigation, it will create more. I also know that when “one size fits all” solutions are applied legislatively to the courts, that they sometimes end up getting overturned. In California we had the 3 Strikes law for criminals, which was supposed to solve the “problem” of judges using too much discretion in making sentencing orders. However, a few years later it had to be changed to allow judges discretion again. Judges are not a major problem – in family law or elsewhere. Family court is not broken – it is just facing mental health problems among litigants that it is just now learning how to handle. Yes, there are huge social
Thoughts on Shared Parenting Presumptions (Part 3/4)
© 2013 By Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq. Thoughts on Shared Parenting Presumptions (Part 3/4) Research It has been said that you can find research to support any opinion, and that is particularly true in the area of parenting after divorce or separation. However, most of the research emphasizes different aspects of the same problem, so that we can benefit from looking at the research – so long as we make the effort to understand it. The following are quotes from studies reported in the Family Court Review, the journal of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), one of the most respected sources of information on parenting in divorce. Some studies support equal shared parenting schedules: Respondents [college students in one study] wanted to have spent more time with their fathers as they were growing up, and the living arrangement they believed was best was living equal time with each parent. The living arrangements they had as children gave them generally little time with their fathers. Respondents reported that their fathers wanted more time with them but that their mothers generally did not want them to spend more time with their fathers. (Fabricius and Hall, Young Adult Perspectives on Divorce, Family Court Review, October 2000.) The present findings [in another college student study] indicate that divorce leaves young people with strong feelings of “missed opportunities” and “emotional longing” for a father-child relationship – feelings that remain salient for years after the divorce has been finalized….The present results thus are consistent with calls for family law reform mandating that children spend equal amounts of time with their mothers and fathers following divorce. (Schwartz and Finley, Mothering, Fathering, and Divorce: The Influence of Divorce or Reports of and Desires for Maternal and Paternal Involvement, Family Court Review, July 2009.) Other studies oppose shared parenting mandates: Australian family law now endorses the active consideration of equal or substantively shared parenting in most cases where parents are able to share overall parental responsibility and decision-making [defined as] a division of care between parents at a rate of 35:65% or higher. [Prior to the new legislation, such an arrangement] was “relatively rare,” occurring in about 9% of the general population of divorcing families in 2003. It was a parenting arrangement that proved viable for a small and distinct group of families …electing a shared arrangement [with] the ability of parents to get along sufficiently well…. [In contrast] the literature is stronger on the poor fit between shared parenting and unremitting post-divorce conflict. Beginning two decades ago, Johnston and colleagues…identified cautions against substantively shared parenting for children whose parents’ ongoing acrimony and inability to encapsulate their conflict meant continued exposure to toxic inter-personal dynamics and the diminished responsiveness of each parent…. [After] four years children in shared care arrangements… reported sustained levels of inter-parental conflict, while children in traditional [primary parent] arrangements reported significant decline [in conflict]. Children in shared care were also significantly more likely to report feeling caught in the middle of their parents’ conflict [and] children more often wished to change [the shared arrangement]. (McIntosh, Legislating for Shared Parenting: Exploring Some Underlying Assumptions, Family Court Review, July 2009.) It helps to look at the different emphases of these studies. The first favoring more father contact was reported during the college years. It appears that these young adults grew up when fathers were generally less involved than many are today – by the agreement of both parents. From my recent mediation cases, I have observed that younger parents are much more likely to develop parenting plans with a greater role for fathers than I observed when I started my law practice in 1993. However, the majority of these plans are not equal shared parenting plans, but often 25-30% with fathers who are satisfied with these schedules. If the young adults in the first set of studies had this amount of time with their fathers and if their mothers supported their father’s relationship with them, it may be that they would have felt more satisfied. Their opinions about equal parenting time were a conjecture rather than based on experience. Their perspective may have also been based on their more recent adolescent years. The second set of studies (McIntosh reports on Johnston’s studies as well as her own), emphasize the experience of younger children living in shared parenting arrangements – and feeling distress. When I heard Jennifer McIntosh speak at the 2011 AFCC conference, I remember her examples of children about 8 years old and younger. Especially in a culture where only 9% of divorced families had a history of shared parenting, it may be these children felt frustrated because of their young age and their experiences with young peers who appeared to have the “benefit” of growing up with a “primary” parent. What this research suggests to me is that there are two very different issues involved here: 1) At what age is a primary parent preferable and at what age is shared parenting preferable? 2) Does shared parenting work if it is imposed, rather than the agreement of the parents? It appears to me, from reading this and a lot of other research, that there really are at least three distinctly separate age periods affected by children of divorce and separation, with different abilities and needs, as I described above. Equal shared parenting arrangements appear very likely to fail during the first 3 years – the most important formative years of a child’s life. While I have seen some highly cooperative couples manage this by age 4, I have also seen children of 6 and 7 struggling with equal shared schedules. A significant factor is the parenting history. Moving suddenly from a primary parent system (say, 80-20) to shared parenting system (say, 50-50), can be traumatic for a child who might otherwise handle it as a gradual transition. Likewise, from my experience and observations, I have seen many cooperative 50-50 parenting plans for children age 5-12 change to one primary house during