ARTICLES

The Continuing Debate About Overnight Visitation

Another Look at the Developmental Research:
        Commentary on Kelly and Lamb's "Using Child Development Research
        to Make Appropriate Custody and Access Decisions for Young Children"
              Judith Solomon and Zeynep Biringen
Kelly and Lamb (2000) recently provided a summary of the attachment literature and a set of guidelines for visitation and custody for young children in divorced and separated families.Here, Solomon and Biringen review the same literature with an eye to critically evaluating these guidelines, especially the suggestion that more, rather than fewer, transitions between parents are appropriate for very young children. Three types of empirical findings raise questions regarding the appropriateness of Kelly and Lamb's guidelines. These include differences in the development of infant-mother and infant-father attachments, young children's sensitivity to overnight separations from the primary caregiver, and the possibility of infant preferences for primary versus secondary caregivers in time of stress. The authors argue that considerably more rigorous research is required before submitting Kelly and Lamb's suggestion to social policy.

Using the Empirical Literature to Guide the Development
of Parenting Plans for Young Children:
     A Rejoinder to Solomon and Biringen
              Michael E. Lamb and Joan B. Kelly
Most infants form attachments to both of their parents roughly the same age. These relationships are consolidated by continued interactions, ideally in a broad array of contexts, whether or not the parents live together. The mechanisms underlying the formation and consolidation of relationships with both parents appear to be similar, although most infants establish preferential relationship with the persons who take major responsibility for their care. When parents separate, children often experience distress, and their adjustment is adversely affected when the relationship with one of the parents is severed. This can be avoided by developing parenting plans that continue to ensure that children have regular interaction with both parents in a broad array of contexts. Overnight periods provide opportunities for many important interactions.

Never Paint by the Numbers
     A Response to Kelly and Lamb (2000), Solomon and Biringen (2001),
     and Lamb and Kelly (2001)
              Jonathan W. Gould and Philip M. Stahl
As the debate continues on ways of thinking about access between separated and never-married parents and their very young children, the authors suggest a way that child custody evaluators can integrate this discussion into their evaluations. They conclude that evaluators must pay attention to family dynamics and all of the research when making specific recommendations to parents and the courts regarding the access and residential arrangements of very young children.

Court Affiliated Parent Education

Assisting Children through Transition:
     Helping Parents Protect Their Children From the Toxic
     Effects of Ongoing Conflict in the Aftermath of Divorce
              Joanne Pedro-Carroll, Ellen Nakhnikian
              and Guillermo Montes
The negative effects of prolonged interparental conflict on children are well documented. This article describes a preventive intervention designed to help separating parents to (a) reduce the stress of a breakup on their children (b) learn skills for protecting them from the toxic effects of ongoing conflict. Assisting Children through Transitions (A.C.T.) For the Children is based on a risk and resilience model emphasizing skills training and effective parenting practices. Post-program results from 609 participants indicate that the majority of male and female participants reported and increased awareness of the deleterious effects of interparental conflict on children and learned skills for protecting children from ongoing conflict. Most participants report firm intentions to continue to use skills for reducing conflict with a former spouse and to support their children's healthy relationship with both parents. Study limitations, directions for future research, and implications for legal and mental health practitioners are discussed.

Status of Court-Connected Programs for Children
Whose Parents are separating or Divorcing
          Robyn J. Geelhoed, Karen R. Blaisure
          and Margie J. Geasler
This article reports on programs for children whose parents are divorcing or separating. Data were obtained from 67 courts and 81 program providers across the United States. Most court systems with children's programs used community providers and encouraged rather than required children's attendance. The average program consisted of one or two sessions, with a length of 4 to 5½ hours. A partial list of commercially available curricula is provided in the appendix.

Mediation Developments

Confidentiality Revisited: California Style
              Hugh McIsaac
 
A Study of Domestic Mediation Outcomes With Indigent Parents
              Judith V. Caprez and Micki A. Armstrong
This research is a study of domestic mediation outcomes of a group of indigent clients served by a grant awarded to Family Development Services at Fort Hays State University by the Kansas Supreme Court Dispute Resolution Council. The period studied was September 1998 through December 1999. There was a total of 29 mediation cases included in the study. The results demonstrated that domestic mediation with indigent clients is equally as effective as domestic mediation with nonindigent clients. Several dependent variables were examined in respect to positive correlations with mediation outcomes.

STUDENT NOTES
Mediation Trends:
    Survey of the States
              Carrie-Anne Tondo, Rinarisa Coronel
              and Bethany Drucker

In the Aftermath of Troxel v. Granville:
     Is Mediation the Answer?
              Michael E. Ratner
While the Court in Troxel v. Granville opines about the problems litigation creates, that of both expense and intrusion into the lives of families in the midst of grandparent visitation disputes, the Court decision falls short of posing a solution.The focus of this note is to propose a standard for mediation as a viable alternative to traditional litigation in such cases. The hope is that mediation will serve the best interests of the child.

Supervised Access and Exchange

An Exploratory Study of Supervised Access and Custody Exchange Services:
     The Parental Experience
              Barbara E. Flory, Jerry Dunn, Marla Berg-Weger
              and Marguerite Milstead
An exploratory outcome study to investigate the ability of a supervised access and custody exchange center to function as a safe visitation enforcement mechanism of the court was accomplished as part of a larger study investigating child well-being. During a 6-month period of program participation, frequency and consistency of noncustodial parents' access to children dramatically increased and interparental conflict significantly decreased, demonstrating that supervised visitation and custody exchange centers that function in partnership with family court during interim court processes can address the unmet needs of family court and high-conflict domestic disputant as well.

Custody Evaluations

Partner Violence and Risk Assessment in Child Custody Evaluations
              William G. Austin
How to integrate the problem of partner violence into a child custody evaluation is analyzed within a risk-assessment approach. The research literature on partner violence is reviewed to examine the issues of establishing a base rate for partner violence and its relative frequencies for both genders. Theoretical typologies of partner violence are reviewed and a new typology presented that is more suitable to the predictive task in the custody evaluation. A model of how the evaluator should approach partner violence is described, with an integration of a risk-assessment approach to child developmental outcomes as associated with custody and parenting time arrangements and a violence risk assessment of a perpetrator/parent.

BOOK REVIEW
Philip M. Stahl's Complex Issues in Child Custody Evaluations
              Reviewed by Janet R. Johnston

Index