Co-Parenting After Divorce

Rising to the challenge.

by Edward Kruk, Ph.D.

Parent-Child Reunification After Alienation

Never give up on reunification efforts...the primary response of the alienated parent must always be one of loving compassion, emotional availability, and absolute safety. Read More

The Impact of Parental Alienation on Parents

The key to engaging alienated parents is to validate their parental identity, and combine advocacy efforts with counseling focused on enhancing their role as active and responsible parents. Read More

The Impact of Parental Alienation on Children

Parental alienation involves the “programming” of a child by one parent to denigrate the other “targeted” parent, in an effort to undermine and interfere with the child's relationship with that parent, and is often a sign of a parent’s inability to separate from the couple conflict and focus on the needs of the child. Read More

Co-Parenting Infants and Very Young Children

The failure to recognize the depth of children’s attachments to both of their parents is the most significant omission of traditional attachment theorists. In those families in which children are securely attached to two parents who have been integrally involved as caregivers, co-parenting after divorce is vital to infants' and young children's well-being. Read More

Equal Parenting and Quality of Parent-Child Attachments

Equal parental responsibility provides a context and climate for the continuation or development of high quality parent-child relationships, allowing both parents to remain authoritative, responsible, involved, attached, emotionally available, supportive, and focused on children’s day-to-day lives. Read More

Family Therapy and Parenting Coordination to Reduce Conflict

Children’s needs for protection from parental conflict must be addressed before the establishment of any co-parenting arrangement after separation, and a full range of supports must be made available to parents in high conflict situations. Within these programs, children’s needs become a means of connecting the parents in a positive direction. Read More

Divorce Education and Therapeutic Family Mediation To Resolve Parenting Disputes

When it comes to the resolution of co-parenting-related matters, programs and services such as divorce education and therapeutic family mediation are much more than dispute resolution devices. More than anything else, these are vital interventions that should serve primarily to increase parents’ attunement to their children’s needs and “best interests.” Read More

Father Absence, Father Deficit, Father Hunger

Whereas parents in general are not supported as parents by our social institutions, divorced fathers in particular are devalued, disparaged, and forcefully disengaged from their children’s lives. Researchers have found that for children, the results are nothing short of disastrous, along a number of dimensions. Read More

Co-Parenting and High Conflict

Conflict is a normal part of everyday life, and to completely shield children from normal day-to-day conflict may in fact be doing them a disservice, as conflict presents an opportunity for resolution of disputes, healing and reconciliation. Conflict is not inherently bad for children. It is persistent, unresolved conflict that is dangerous for children. Read More

Sixteen Arguments in Support of Co-Parenting

Our current system of resolving child custody disputes rarely considers either children’s needs from children’s own perspective, or current research on child custody outcomes. Read More