Comments, teaching & HuffPo Divorce

My most recent post on the Huffington Post has gotten the most comments to date.  (about 290 in 3 days).  Most of my other posts generally only got less than 50 comments.

The comments vary widely.  On the one hand, you now get to hear what the students in the back of your class are whispering to each other during the lecture.  For example, in response to the title of my post "Are the courts biased in favor of mothers, one commenter, wrote,  "When someone tells you there are no dumb questions, refer them to this headline."  Funny and snarky.

Overall, this post got some very thoughtful and interesting commenters.  [These are probably like the students who sit in the front of the class.]  For example, 715W posted the following,

The solution is to put divorce into an administra­­tive system rather than the judicial system.

To each divorce case, assign an administra­­tor trained in mediation/­­conflict resolution­­.

The commenter goes on the explain more about how this system of managing custody issues would work with this system.  

There were also a number of commenter who cited specific research and/or other scholarship that enriched the discussion.  Chris Sirhc writes, 

"The court's ability to determine the best interest of the child is limited. See Robert Emery's review of custody evaluators­. He is particular­ly daming: 'There is essentiall­y no psychologi­cal science to support the measures and constructs designed specifical­ly for the assessment of child custody arrangemen­ts for individual children.' "

http://psi­.sagepub.c­om/content­/6/1/1.ful­l

 In many cases these publications we new to me or added significant new perspectives to the discussion.  This is the type of discussion that I would hope my work fosters.

The third type of postings are the personal stories.  In many of the cases in this particular post the stories are by men who appear to have had particularly challenging, perhaps unfair treatment by the court system.  Michael Morrison wrote,

"I'm one of those odd-ball men who was awarded custody of his daughters. A couple of years later, Mom landed in jail, and decided that she wanted custody of the kids...Rem­ember, she was in jail.

Every few weeks, I'd be subpoenaed to appear in court. The experience was absolutely surreal: She would appear in her finest orange jail garb, and explain to the judge why she thought she should have custody. I would then have to explain why I thought custody shouldn't be awarded to an inmate.

This went on for months. It was absurd, and the court would never have countenanc­ed this sort of lunacy had the genders been reversed."

Overall, I think this was a good discussion.

Outline of an Educational Blog Post on Divorce

In writing for the Huffington Divorce page, I am trying to develop blog posts that have the following structure:

a) interesting/engaging/provocative opening sentence
b) a couple of interesting practical ideas that could be helpful to someone
c) links, directions, ideas about how learn more or do something to more.

This is one of my better posts in which I feel like I executed my approach well:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-hughes/are-children-of-divorce-d_b_799355.html

Additionally, I cite the research literature when appropriate and I use scientist's names to link to ideas or findings. I am also trying to take a hopeful, but realistic perspective on these issues. To do this I try to distinguish between what can be changed and what can't be changed in order to provide a broader perspective.

Effects of Divorce on Children

One of the enduring questions in the last 30 years has been the question about the effects of divorce on children. Our scientific and clinical understanding of this issue continues to increase (see my summary of these findings.)

I am always interested in how scientific results get presented in the popular press so I was eager to listen the the American Radioworks documentary on "divorced kids" that was recently released. (Nov 20, 2009). The main challenge in presenting this topic is capturing the complexity of the findings which generally show that although divorce does have negative effects on children in general, the effects are small and most children are not much different than children who grow up in families in which there has never been a divorce.

Many popular media either emphasize the negative effects of divorce or the lack of differences. In short, they rarely tell the more complicated story. "Divorced Kid" generally emphasizes the negative effects. The produced only interviews social scientists who have generally found the negative effects of divorce on children (Judith Wallerstein and Nicholas Wolfinger). Other scientists who have provided an alterative perspective such as Paul Amato, Mavis Hetherington, Robert Emery, and Constance Ahrons are not included.

Despite the general emphasis on the negative effects, this report does not overwhelming emphasize the negative impacts. The produced does interview a variety of adults whose parents divorced and captures the various paths to healthy relationships and good marriages that were found (including the producer's own marriage). She also explores the development of parenting programs for divorcing couples and the creation of services for children that have been created in the past 30 years to help families deal with divorce. She describes some of the court reform efforts to introduce mediation as a solution to divorce that have contributed to less high conflict processes of handling issues of custody and child support. There is still much work to be done in this area, but we have developed better services and supports for families going through divorce.

We have also learned much about marriage in the past 30 years and we have tools that can help newly marriage partners develop better strategies for dealing with conflict and developing strong relationships. The most damaging outcome for children of divorce is for them to conclude that their future is doomed or pre-ordained by this one life event. This is completely wrong and there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. The overwhelming evidence is in the other direction. Children from divorcing families can grow up to have healthy and satisfying lives. They may have to work harder, find extra supports from others and take advantage of educational or counseling services, but it is clearly possible.