Divorce and joint custody: Loss and transition in the end of parental marriage, mourning the marital relationship, and the reformulation of a co-parental dyad
Item
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Title
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Divorce and joint custody: Loss and transition in the end of parental marriage, mourning the marital relationship, and the reformulation of a co-parental dyad
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:3c59309209eb:11086
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identifier
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11313
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Creator
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Oakes, Margaret Leila,
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Contributor
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Elliot Jurist
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Date
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2011
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Clinical psychology | Individual & family studies | Children of Divorce | Co-Parenting | Divorce | Joint Custody | Object Relations
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Abstract
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This study examined the experience of children raised in joint custody following divorce and identified strategies for empathic, responsive co-parenting within a refashioned family design. Retrospective accounts of seven adults reared in joint custody, supplemented by the accounts of seven parents, representing seven families, were gathered via semi-structured interviews; qualitative coding was employed to identify emotional and practical struggles that are commonly found, but are often insufficiently addressed. Results are supplemented with four extensive case studies, providing close analysis of broad themes emergent in the research. Children of divorce suffer losses at both the environmental and the object-relational level. The environmental losses are more easily observed: loss of familial intactness, loss of daily contact with each parent, and loss of contact with both parents together, referenced here as the 'marital-parental dyad.' Loss and disruption at the representational level is more difficult to recognize. When parents divorce, and as children move repeatedly between parental homes in joint custody, what becomes significantly compromised is the 'parental-dyadic object': an internalization of parents as a joined and cooperative entity, providing important parental scaffolding and definition at a primary object relational level. Findings suggest that parents might ease loss reactions in children through the establishment of a post-divorce cooperative parental relationship that emphasizes the aspect of the marital-parental relationship that is not dissolved with the marriage. In addition to a literature review from psychoanalysis and from contemporary writings on divorce, theories of immigration and biculturalism were reviewed to consider movement from the 'old world' of the intact family to the 'new world' of the family of divorce, and the subsequent back-and-forth movement between the different 'cultures' of parental homes. Much of the existing literature on divorce and joint custody highlights the problem of ongoing post-marital conflict. In this study, overt conflict was less evident than passive expressions of anger between parents, via disparagement and avoidance of contact, which interfered with parents' capacity to provide post-divorce cooperative co-parenting and left children susceptible to loyalty binds and competing identifications, impeding their sense of broad family belonging. Recommendations for moving away from conflict, beyond civility, and toward cooperative co-parenting are outlined.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
