Research Makes a Case Against Joint Custody for Some

When Kim, a young woman in Southern California, decided to have a baby, she assumed that the child would be hers to bring up as she pleased. After all, she was not married to the baby’s father, and by the time the baby was born she and her boyfriend had irrevocably parted.

But her boyfriend thought otherwise, and the courts agreed. To Kim’s dismay, the baby’s father was awarded joint physical custody--the baby boy must spend part of each week with his father and part with his mother. Kim has a stormy and bitter relationship with her former boyfriend. She said she fears for her baby’s emotional well-being if he grows up splitting his time between parents who are so angry with each other.

“The courts don’t seem to be interested in a child’s emotional and physical well-being,” Kim said. “As the judge put it, he’s looking for ‘cigarette burns, bruises and broken bones.’ ”

No One’s Best Interest

Psychologist Judith Wallerstein, executive director of the Center for the Family in Transition in Corte Madera, Calif., emphatically agrees with Kim that, in her case, joint physical custody is not in the best interest of anyone.

Wallerstein and her colleagues have recently completed a study showing that joint physical custody is detrimental to children of divorce if their parents are warring. Even if the parents have an amicable relationship, joint custody has no effect on the emotional health of the children or on how parents adjust to the divorce.

These findings on joint custody are based on three recent studies by Wallerstein and her colleagues. One experiment at Wallerstein’s center looked at how children adjust to custody arrangements made voluntarily by parents. The researchers studied 101 children from a well-educated, middle-class suburban community for two years after their parents’ divorce.

In about one-third of the families, the parents had voluntarily selected joint custody. From a standard battery of tests and clinical interviews, the researchers concluded that joint custody makes no difference in these children’s psychological well-being.

Boys Not Helped

Wallerstein was particularly disappointed that such joint-custody families did not help boys. Many therapists and social scientists have hoped that boys’ longing for their fathers could be assuaged by joint custody.

A second experiment, led by Stanford University sociologist Janet Johnston, looked at 100 families from mixed social and economic classes who were engaged in bitter divorces. One-third of the children were in joint custody and the rest in sole custody. The researchers found that joint custody was actually worse for the children than sole custody.

Girls, in particular, were hurt by these forced arrangements, Wallenstein said. “No longer part of her mother’s protective orbit,” the girl “loses her value and her identity as her mother’s psychological extension and close ally and becomes instead either the fantasy rival, the fantasy traitor--tainted by contact with the enemy--or both.” As a consequence, the girl “has protection nowhere,” Wallerstein said.

A third experiment, led by psychologist William Coysh, examined the parents of middle-class families to see whether custody arrangements made a difference in how parents adjusted to divorce. “One of the most persuasive arguments for joint custody has been that fathers feel much better about themselves and are better parents when they undertake joint custody of their children,” Wallerstein said. But she was surprised by the result: Custody arrangements had no effect.

Wallerstein said the findings “are not an argument against joint custody, but they also are not an argument that it will benefit the child.”

These results may not surprise experts in family studies, but they are politically difficult because they could take away from the gains of fathers’ rights groups, which have argued for joint custody as a major way for fathers to have access to their children. Starting in the late 1970s, joint custody became an option for the divorce courts in most states.

Wallerstein’s research flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that children of divorce do better if they split their time between their parents. Not surprisingly, many divorced men have hotly contested her findings. Some contend that the study was too small in scope and looked at the parents and children for too short a time to be conclusive.

Many divorced men think Wallerstein’s findings do not bode well for fathers seeking custody. If the courts are persuaded that joint physical custody is detrimental, they fear, sole custody will go to the mothers.

James Cook, president of the Joint Custody Assn., a group with 3,000 members in 43 states, said half-jokingly that “a natural extrapolation” of Wallerstein’s study is that more fathers should get sole custody. But, he added, “I think that’s not likely in today’s society.”

Disappointing Findings

Wallerstein is disappointed that her findings were not more optimistic. “It would be nice to feel that we could cut into a child’s unhappiness.” Children of divorce are often unhappy and troubled, regardless of what sort of custody arrangements are in place, Wallerstein said. She said she thinks the focus for the children of divorced parents should be on individual relationships with each parent, not custody issues.

Researchers think that the most important influence on the emotional health of children is the quality of their relationships within their family, however that family might be structured, said Robert Emery, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. For example, psychologists used to think that boys needed their father within the home until at least age 7 or 8. Now they have discovered that the physical presence of a father in the family is less important to boys than are warm and supporting adults.

This shift occurred “partly in recognition of the changing American family and the changing demographics of divorce. It is an appreciation of plurality,” Emery said. But the focus on relationships also means that if divorced parents are angry and bitter, children will suffer and they will suffer more if they’re exposed more to the conflict through joint custody.

“Whether the child feels accepted or rejected is very important,” Wallerstein said. “But custody doesn’t convey that. It is a much more subtle, much more elusive issue of how the child perceives himself within the family.”