Robert E. Emery
Professor of Psychology
Box 400400
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA, USA 22904
Email: ree@virginia.edu
International Conference on Children and Divorce
Norwich, UK, July 2006
This talk has three key themes: children’s pain in the face of parental divorce,
parents’ grief over the loss of their marriage (and how their emotional dynamics can
cause conflict, undermine co-parenting, and exacerbate children’s emotional struggles),
and the benefits of mediation and other interventions that recognize the emotional
dynamics of family relationships when parents part but nevertheless find ways to
encourage long term, collaborative parenting and co-parenting.
Research on how children are affected by divorce often continues to be polarized
into “children are doomed” and “children are resilient” camps. These debates may reflect
political and personal biases, but scientifically the differences have been fueled by lack of
clarity in how “children’s well being” is defined and the methods used to assess well
being (objective versus case studies). Making a distinction between “pathology” and
“pain” greatly clarifies the debate and the scientific evidence. Most children from
divorced families are resilient as indexed by the absence of psychopathology as is
generally indicated on standardized, objective measures. Yet a great many resilient
children nevertheless report painful feelings about the past and ongoing worries about
present relationships, as often noted in case studies. This part of the presentation focuses
on the results from the presenter’s study using an objective measure of psychological
“pain” that documents its prevalence among an otherwise resilient group of young people
from divorced families.
Conflict, anger, and pain are normal reactions to the break up of a romantic
relationship, but partners who are also parents can express and act on their emotions in
ways that are toxic to their children. Divorce mediation is a potential solution to the
emotional dilemma faced by former partners who remain parents, and mediation also is a
more family-friendly alternative to the slow, adversarial justice of the legal system. Using
results from the presenter’s twelve-year follow-up of families assigned at random to
mediate or litigate custody, this talk proves that, even more than a decade later, children
benefit greatly if their parents work to cooperate as parents even in the midst of the hurt
and pain of divorce.
After a mere five hours of mediation, both parents were far more likely to be
involved in their children’s lives if they mediated instead of pursuing the legal route. For
example, twelve years after settling their custody disputes 54 percent of nonresidential
parents who tried mediation talked with their now adolescent/young adult children weekly
compared to a mere 12 percent of parents who went stayed in the adversary system. Over
the years, parents who mediated also talked together more about their children, and
nonresidential parents who mediated remained significantly more involved in virtually
ever area of their children’s lives, including discipline, religious and moral training, and
celebrating special events and holidays with their children. Because of the rigorous
scientific procedures used in this study, we know that the findings are not a result of
cooperative parents choosing mediation while angry parents went to court. Five hours of
mediation caused these dramatic differences twelve years later.
How can we explain these outcomes? In addition to focusing on the need for
parting parents to work together in the business of parenting their children, the success of
mediation seems to stem from encouraging former partners to find new ways of dealing
with the grief surrounding the break up of a marriage or long-term romantic relationship.
The speaker uses his twenty-five years of clinical experience, and results from a new
study testing his theory of grieving following the end of a serious romance, to outline the
key tasks parents must complete in the emotional process of parting. Parents who find
new ways to part can promote their children’s resilience despite the pain of separation
and divorce.
References and Resources:
For parents:
Emery, R.E. (2006). The truth about children and divorce: Dealing with the
emotions so you and your children can thrive. New York: Plume. (Paperback)
For practitioners:
Emery, R.E. (1994). Renegotiating Family relationships: Divorce, child custody,
and mediation. New York: Guilford. (Second edition due in 2008)
For researchers (or practitioners/parents interested in research details):
Emery, R.E. (1999). Marriage, divorce, and children's adjustment (2nd Ed.)
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Scientific articles:
Laumann-Billings, L. &. Emery, R.E. (2000). Distress among young adults from
divorced families. Journal of Family Psychology, 14, 671-687.
Emery, R.E., Laumann-Billings, L., Waldron, M., Sbarra, D.A., and Dillon, P.
(2001). Child custody mediation and litigation: Custody, contact, and co-parenting 12
years after initial dispute resolution. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69,
323-332.
Sbarra D.S. & Emery, R.E. (2005). Coparenting conflict, nonacceptance, and
depression among divorced adults: Results from a 12-year follow-up study of child
custody mediation using multiple imputation. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 75,
63-75.
Sbarra, D.S. & Emery, R.E. (2005). The emotional sequelae of non-marital
relationship dissolution: Descriptive evidence from a 28-day prospective study. Personal
Relationships, 12, 213-232.
D’Onofrio, B., Turkheimer,E., Emery, R., Slutske, W., Heath, A., Madden, P., & Martin,
N. (2005). A genetically informed study of marital instability and its association with
offspring psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114, 1130-1144.
D’Onofrio, B., Turkheimer,E., Emery, R., Slutske, W., Heath, A., Madden, P., & Martin,
N. (2006). A genetically informed study of the processes underlying the association
between parental marital instability and offspring life course patterns. Developmental
Psychology.