Preserving Family Ties: An Authoritative Guide to Understanding Divorce and Child Custody, for Parents and Family Professionals

Copyright © 2018 Mark David Roseman, Ph.D., CFLE.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-0953-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0952-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0954-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017919044

WestBow Press rev. date: 1/30/2018

DEDICATION

For Allison Beth, Stefanie Jill, and Andrew Scott

Always my children

For Toby and Sid, Mom and Dad

Thank you for giving me life, love, and spirit.

Without words, my love always.

For David L. Levy, Esq.

A kinder, wiser, more compassionate, dedicated, humble and gregarious, child advocate and mentor will not easily be found.

What children do at home, they will do to society.

—Karl Augustus Menninger, MD

The Crime of Punishment (New York: Viking Press, 1968)

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Purpose

PART I: THE SOCIAL CONFLICTS OF THE FAMILY

Chapter 1

The State Of The Family: Divorce, Custody, And Children

The Demographics Of The Family

Child Custody And Child Access (Visitation)

Child Custody And Litigation

Financial Effects And The Workplace

Child Access And Parental Conflict

Best Interests Of The Child Standard Vs. Tender Years Doctrine

Chapter 2

Effects Of Parental Separation And Divorce

Effects On Children

Effects On Parents

Family Violence

Culture And Conflict

Parental Alienation

Parental Adjustment To Trauma

Child Adjustment To Trauma

Father Absence And Father Presence

Children And Public School

Behavior Modifying Prescriptions

Chapter 3

Intervention Theory: How Tradition And

Research Can Effectively Intersect

The Case For New Interventions

Holistic And Complementary Theory

Current Challenges To Families In Transition

Chapter 4

The Historical Realities Of Family Litigation

The Emotional Perspective: From Marriage To Divorce

Status Quo For Litigating Parents

The Historical Perspective Of Child Custody

The Challenge Of Culture And Family Values

Court And Cultural Sensitivity

Current Realities Of Litigation

Child Custody And Litigation

Litigation And Child Access (Visitation)

Family Structure And Public Policy

Shared Parenting And Enforcement:

A Matter Of Civil Rights

Family Outcomes, Behavior, And Prediction

Part Ii: The Future: Bridging The Past With The Present Historical Perspectives And New Paradigms For Family Healing

Chapter 5

Emerging Possibilities For Improving

Child Outcomes

Family Professionals: New Agents

Of Positive Change

Holistic Protocols

Intake

Parent Education

Professional Development

A Case For New Court Services

New Court Paradigms: A Case For Change

A Case For A Unified Courtroom

New Paradigms For Visitation

Virtual Families, Visual Realities:

What Children See

Helping Families Heal: Identifying Family Needs

Family Adaptation

A New Vocabulary

Chapter 6

Future Needs, Present Opportunities

What We Know

Building Upon Community Assets

The Workplace As Community Resource

Summary Assessment For Change

Future Implications And Protocols For Change

New Paradigms: A Case For

Court-Based Intervention

Chapter 7

Project Fact: A Court Resource Program

(Families And Children In Transition)

HISTORY AND OVERVIEW

Strategic Goals Of Project Fact

Reasons For Project Fact

How Project Fact Will Help Parents

How Project Fact Will Help Attorneys

Family Knowledge Center

EPILOGUE

A Common Understanding

Coping With Divorce

Joint Custody: Advocacy And Support

Bibliography

Endnote

Part Iii: The Child Custody Journey

Section 1

Legislative Achievements For Child Custody

Section 2

Holistic Concepts For Family Healing

Section 3

The Author’s Journey

About The Author

FOREWORD

For almost 50 years, I have invested in my career of exploring mental health phenomenon and those diagnoses associated with trying to identify the entities and processes associated with the treatment of these wonders of creative minds at work. My teaching at various institutions of higher learning with my being an associate professor of psychiatry at Brown and Columbia Universities’ Medical Schools and being a full professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School after receiving my post-doctorate education in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School afforded me the experience of finding that medical students, psychology interns and psychiatric residents as well as practitioners in the field knew very little of what keeps us going in the true dynamic sense and puzzled workings of marriage and family processes. Couples plotted along while raising families and the children survived through development and parental conflicts. However, wounded parents and their battered children had lifelong scars of getting through this maze of uncharted territory for them. What was clear is the evidence of experienced outcomes showed individuals and partners in prior intimate relationships accumulated battle scars from their efforts to swim ashore to rescue the children they purported to love in shouting the message of trying to save them. Dr. Roseman points out his treatise of discoveries of what has happened to many of these families in an effort to appreciate and understand them and what occurs at the final point of their custody contest in their local court of jurisdiction.

For generations, women or mothers have relied upon receiving sole custody while fathers got destroyed in their attempts to bring out the darker side of some of these women whom have chosen to lie and misrepresent their former husbands and fathers in the raising of the children. Now in contemporary society, it is not necessarily a given that women receive custody but instead there is a presumption of joint custody and that the law states that these parents should continue in shared parenting even though they have chosen a different path for their own individual lives and future relationships. David Levy, an attorney and as a parents’ rights advocate lead the charge and challenge by establishing a Children Rights’ Council located in Washington, D.C. alongside of Dr. Roseman as his assistant in every move that he motioned the public and professional associations and practitioners of law and mental health staff in proceeding along the lines that he created.

Dr. Roseman engenders to emphasize the importance of recognizing the multiple threads of variables that appear regardless of orientation such as culture, gender and sexism, heritage, psychopathology, parental intellectual capacity, physical abilities, addictions and various displays of substance abuse, and finally psychological states that the parents present. Dr. Richard Gardner at Columbia described parental alienation syndrome where the parent went to great lengths to point out the shortcomings of one parent while blowing their own horn as being of utmost capability.

Thus, one parent was described as all competent while the other parent was referenced as all incompetent with a trail of negative findings that were spurious and found to be untrue as confabulated and constructed by the parent alienator but offered to the court as fact and real. I met Dr. Gardner at the Children’s Rights Council’s Annual Conference in Washington. D.C. in which they each gave book reviews: Dr. Gardner spoke of his textbook called The Parental Alienation Syndrome whereas I presented the book I had just written with attorney Lenard Marlow The Handbook of Divorce Mediation published by Plenum in NYC. This led to a close professional relationship allowing us to work together in future projects.

The child internalized what the alienator purported from the chorus of supporters which was fiction but the child believed every word which was echoed about how terrible the other parent was in which they eventually believed it or the child went along with it to be co-opted by the powerful parent that had the presence of the child within his home and network to control.

Dr. Roseman also points out that Dr. Urie Bronfenbrenner at the University of Rochester contributed his psychological-social model of what the connection was and the interplay between what we feel, what we perceive as the reality, and what we do in terms of action. This approach served as the basis for family dynamics regardless of theoretical orientation. Add to the legal terminology that has changed in the last few centuries and we have a mountain of literature which this textbook helps explain as the developing occurrences that have taken place and fathers, in particular, have gained increasing viability in the courtroom and outside of the courtroom to influence child custody and shared parenting for the children and the family. David Levy was the king of Joint custody as he was known to be and advocated this stance is his work and his testimony to the family courts and judges. He assisted in molding and facilitating this model whenever possible and he indirectly accomplished the task of the fathers’ rights representative to further promulgating this advocacy position. This influence helped equalize the advantage that mothers had in the courts and their historical roots of taking care of the children while men engaged in income producing activities .Internationally, this trend was flourishing throughout the world as men became fathers and nurturing studies showed that fathers as well as mothers could play a role in child development and caring for the children, regardless of the gender. Dr. Ron Levant was considered the mover of this direction and point of view in emphasizing the importance of fathers in the family which somehow was a neglected area of study and practicality. Dr. Roseman joined David Levy in 1999 as the spokesman of joint custody and shared parenting. Dr. Roseman was speaking in NYC while Mr. Levy was speaking in Washington, D.C and through the channels he opened at the Children Rights Council which was broadcasted throughout the U.S,Canada, Europe and Australia and many locations abroad. Dr. Roseman expounds how 15 states are still struggling with the concepts of parental alienation, parental conflicts and unequal parental rights as they have become to be known for this lack of remedy and progressive approach to these new doctrines and child custody laws and statues that have been adopted in other states.

Dr. Richard Sauber

March, 2017

S. Richard Sauber, PhD, ABPP — Forensic Psychologist, is a Board-Certified Diplomate in Clinical and Family Psychology and has testified in 16 states and 17 counties within the State of Florida. He was Professor of Psychology in the Departments of Psychiatry at Brown, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania Medical Schools in addition to being a fellow at the Harvard Medical School and the author of 16 textbooks published in the field. Dr. Sauber holds Diplomates in the American Board of Disability Consultants and the American Board of Sexology where he also maintains the status of Supervisor of New Diplomates in Training.

Dr. Sauber is Founding Editor of The American Journal of Family Therapy (1976-2015) and recommended Dr. Len Sperry, (MD and PhD) to continue in this capacity as editor. He is editor of the International Handbook of Parental Alienation Syndrome with Dr. Richard Gardner, co-editor of PARENTAL ALIENATION: The Handbook for Mental Health and Legal Professionals, and co-editor with Dr. Amy Baker of WORKING WITH ALIENATED CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

PREFACE

Thank you for picking up this book.

If a separated parent, you’ve taken a courageous step, perhaps one of your most difficult and initial steps in learning who and why a love relationship has markedly changed. It is an imperative to accept these changes in order to move forward emotionally and practically.

If a family professional, an attorney, a family judge, an educator, a therapist, one whose work directly affects parents and children, you will hopefully gain a new perspective of contemporary family issues that are not expressed well in the courts, or by state statute. The issues of child custody are weakly if at all acknowledged by our medical providers, clergy, or social leaders. Our public schools, its teachers, staff and management do try to assist children who are found to have severe home life issues as homelessness, poverty, mental health. Yet, they have few if any resources to offer children and parents when parents separate. The social statistics you will find later in this handbook bare them out. The cost to society is great.

My goal for each of you, my hope, is that each of you venturing now, even thumbing through those chapters whose headings may catch your eye, that each of you so doing will find a nugget, a gem, a suggestion, a statistic, a notion, a law, a discussion, something that will cause you to pause, to reflect and to use.

First written as my doctoral dissertation, Preserving Family Ties reflects the social science becoming more available. It, too, reveals my own discovery about marriage, about divorce, about children, about change, about surviving transitions. It is also about the social systems affecting this experience.

To be honest, I began my doctorate in family studies at the suggestion of my sister, Janet who was completing her own doctoral studies. She urged me to use the doctoral program as an alternative to my personal malaise following my divorce. Through this academic study, she advised me, I would uncover why marriages fail, how this action affects parents and children, and resources which additionally influence parental choices and child outcomes. A trained therapist, she told me the doctoral program would be personally reflective and professionally valuable. She told me I could, and should, make a difference for others. Janet opened my eyes to a new direction. My Aunt Marion encouraged me to explore every opportunity, to be open to possibilities.

Yes, I thought, I wanted to know why I internalized rejection and how self concept manifests itself as we struggle with divorce as a most difficult life change. I needed to know what I might do to help myself, to help others during the numerous divorce transitions. I sought to find some road map showing how to improve outcomes for children when parents separate.

This has proven my most perilous journey. It indeed has been my longest journey, and my most difficult, with effects lingering for years. I have often reflected on the institution of marriage where we are first attracted through love, and later, sometimes perplexed about our own conduct in the marital roles as husband, wife, and parent.

I have journeyed from fear, to serial dating, to writing and performing standup comedy. I have sometimes felt a character in a tragic comedy, with feelings heightened and disappearing as unexpected ocean waves. Yet, the journey had also inspired me to achieve academic and professional skills - all new learning - as Dr. George Olshin, my former doctoral advisor at the Union Institute & University had frequently called these wonderful, life changing experiences.

It is often the loss of a love relationship, a separation, divorce - all changes in one’s most intimate social relationships, your family – which will trigger the most difficult and challenging of personal travels. This book was motivated by the search to answer the questions about my own divorce as I considered, What has happened? What have I done to cause this? How can I go forward, as a parent, a father, and now, a single man?

Helping me was the process of psychotherapy, and a therapist who had instructed me to consider that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. This was the initial epiphany for me, that the role of our own individual childhood and family experience had somehow shaped our self perspectives, and (differing) values. It was this idea that as children, we would be consciously and unconsciously subject to, influenced by, and frequently drawn to those qualities and dynamics we experienced and observed in our youth.

This was amazing to me for I then, and only then, really began to think that individuals clash more when values may be different, when traditions and cultures are not the same. But most revealing in my therapy was to especially appreciate that our lives are all about context, about who we are, as much as where we are in life, what is our emotional status, and what is the source of our belief systems. It was a moment of personal discovery to more completely accept that indeed, we are products of our early life experience. We are molded by this.

As you begin to read Preserving Family Ties, as your eyes scroll down the Table of Contents, as you leaf through the text, your mind will likely race. It will search for immediate answers, seeking a formula for saving yours or a client’s relationships with children, husband, wife, partner. You may want a quick resolution to an already financially and emotionally draining legal separation and custody battle.

You may want to know why this has happened, to you.

You may want to know how to advise your client with more sensitivity.

You may find that help you want, for now. You are concerned for yourself, your children and/or your clients. You’re concerned how to either ‘navigate’ the family court system or how to best prepare for a ‘new’ future.

It’s tough, very tough to emotionally prepare for an arduous journey as well as to actively engage that journey. Whether waking in the morning to sunshine or to stormy weather, it is often our attitude, our perception, which can give us our motivation, our confidence, our support.

This book is written to help you. It provides invaluable research in family dynamics, high conflict divorce and child outcomes when parents separate, when they divorce.

It was written to offer you, the parent and you, the family practitioner, with a more complete insight as to what parents have experienced, perhaps why and how all of us in society can work towards improving the futures for parents and children post separation and divorce.

Nevertheless, this book was not written to give you a formula for action. Preserving Family Ties was written to provide you the context for the changes you have experienced in your marriage, your relationship, your parenting style, and your expectations. I have written this book to offer that context in which a new reality is unfolding. It is written to provide you the tools to understand the process of child custody, to apply new understandings to you or your client’s case for effective co-parenting plans. This text is designed to help more fully understand the context for custody litigation. Further, it is expected the reader will find more meaningful therapeutic interventions. It was written to give you clearer meaning and purpose. It was written to help many survive this traumatic life change, divorce.

I wish to confirm for you that there is no magic wand to solve those problems that parents may encounter, real or imaginary. Our imagination can play havoc with this journey of family transition. But it’s also true that the future for our children, for each parent, for grandparents and other extended family members, can be far better than imagined with information, education and support.

My goal, then, is to provide you with the background of today’s society. It is also my aim to provide you with an understanding of many facets of contemporary society and to suggest that you have an opportunity to help improve outcomes for children.

Please read Preserving Family Ties with pen and highlighter and underline those concepts new to you, highlight sections of special interest, bookmark helpful pages. Note the plentiful research, and consider the recommendations which may offer you alternatives to more reasonable efforts to permit happier parents, and allow improved outcomes for children when parents choose to separate.

Take your time to contemplate and reflect.

Does it take a village? You decide; when you’re ready. Meantime, please read this book carefully and with as open a mind as you can, now. It was pioneering child psychiatrist, Karl Menninger who wrote in the 1930’s that as parents, we subconsciously and consciously model our values as much as our behavior serves to model for our children.

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