Social issues involving young children and warring interest groups make good media fodder. So researchers involved in these areas have to decide very carefully how to promote their findings to stop their work from being taken out of context. The latest chapter of the “shared care” debate shows how tricky this can be.
The 2006 reforms to the Family Law Act promoted the idea of fathers and mothers sharing the care of their children after separation. Opponents saw the changes as a disaster brought about by fathers’ rights groups; supporters saw it as fair and a recognition that men’s family roles had changed.
Australia was ahead of the pack in recognising equal rights for parents. It was only last year that Israel’s justice ministry accepted the findings of an expert committee recommending the “Tender Years Doctrine”, which automatically gave the care of children under six years old to their mother, be scrapped.
In Britain, two private members bills – the Shared Parenting Orders and Children’s Access to Parents bills – have been introduced to give fathers greater access to their children after divorce.
The Australian reforms have not been accepted without conflict. After criticism from legal experts and women’s advocates, sections of the reforms were amended last year to make it clear that the interests of the child were to be rated above sharing of care between parents.
Now questions are being asked again about the basis of shared care. There’s a debate about whether very young children, those under two years old, for instance, should be allowed to spend the night with their other parent (in most cases,the father) after separation.
A recent report on post-separation parenting to the attorney general recommended that “shared care should not normally be the starting point for discussions about parenting arrangements for very young children.”
The report used supporting evidence from an examination of data from Growing up in Australia, a large national study following children and their families from the first year of life. It concluded that babies under two years who lived one or more overnights a week with both parents were significantly stressed.
Based on this report the Australian Association for Infant Mental Health (AAIMH), a group of professionals involved with families and their infants, released a set of guidelines – Infants and overnight care – post-separation and divorce – for deciding on this issue when parents separate.
Their rules are clear: children under two years should not have overnight time away from the primary care-giver unless it’s necessary. In high conflict cases before the family court, no overnight care is appropriate before the child is three years old.
For such a sweeping decree, you’d expect the research to be pretty much watertight. But there are few studies of overnight care with young children and the results from these are contested.
Researchers have also pointed to weaknesses in the AAIMH guidelines. Although the Growing up in Australia study began with over 10,000 children, in the under-two age group, for the purposes of the guidelines, only 21 parents were classed as primary carers, and 64 ended up in the shared-care group. What’s more, the primary-care group included children who did stay one night a week with the other parent. So the evidence for overnight care away from the primary carer being damaging for infants is suggestive but not conclusive.
There’s nothing sinister in this; the authors of the Australian study are well-respected researchers with impressive track records in the area. Evaluation of emerging research is expected to detect flaws and doubts.
But guidelines barring parents from overnight care of their children ought to be firmly based on solid evidence. In this case, it appears that the results of the research have been stretched too far. Those deciding on parenting arrangements for young children after separation will still need to weigh up the benefits and the costs of sharing night-time care.
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Comments (6)
Robin Bell
(Research Academic Public Health, at University of Newcastle)
I agree with you completely Richard. Considerations of overnight contact for young children (or contact generally) should always be informed by solid evidence, particularly when evidence based on scientific studies is used to establish guidelines for judicial consideration.
I note that much of the data in these studies was derived from resident mothers only, and may be biased as a result (given the relationship between the mother and father failed). Not a robust guide to judicial practice considering…
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Charles Pragnell
Chairperson, National Child Protection Alliance (logged in via email @iprimus.com.au)
Richard – if you wish to examine `riskiness’ in research, then the classic must be the acceptance by Family Courts of Parental Alienation Syndrome, and conjectures and speculations of `coaching’ and `alienation’ of `Expert’ witnesses, which are based in that theory. PAS was created and promulgated by a self-confessed paedophile sympathiser in the absence of any scientifically-conducted research, yet was been readily accepted by some less discriminate members of the psychiatric/psychology community…
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Richard Fletcher
(Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Health at University of Newcastle)
I think that you make some important points Charles about the way we are dealing with the welfare of children when parents separate. The move away from court-based decisions to mediation between separating parents over the care of their children was an important step forward for children’s welfare. However deciding on the best arrangement for the care of dependent children when mothers and fathers cannot agree, remains a thorny problem. As you point out, not all separating parents are motivated by the needs of their children. Although the judiciary are not usually experts in child development it falls to them to make decisions in these contested, complex cases. For this reason, the way that research into the effects of various post-separation arrangements for children are summarized and conveyed is very important. In the case of research into overnight care the evidence is relatively thin and so making sweeping rules based on the available studies is risky.
elspeth mcinnes
senior lecturer and social researcher (logged in via email @unisa.edu.au)
The author focuses on gender politics and avoids the neuro-developmental science which underpins the recommendations with regard to post-separation parenting arrangements for very young children. Developmental science now clearly points to the significance of healthy attachment between the infant and primary carer, which is underpinned by secure continuing contact between carer and child. Despite the social transformation of women's paid work outside the home, it is women who carry the baby give…
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Charles Pragnell
Chairperson, National Child Protection Alliance (logged in via email @iprimus.com.au)
The 'High Conflict' cases referred to by Richard Fletcher are largely generated by the adversarial nature of the proceedings and the gladiatorial stances of legal representatives. Such a venue and proceedings are not the most appropriate way to determine such important matters as the future lives of children and young people and where many of those providing opinions on children's lives rarely have the necessary knowledge and training in child development, child protection, children's needs, and the ability to relate to and converse with children.
Charles Pragnell
Chairperson, National Child Protection Alliance (logged in via email @iprimus.com.au)
Richard Flethcher's comments carry more than a hint of a `Shoot the Messenger' response from a Father's `Rights' perspective. Judicial considerations should be guided primarily by the Needs, Wishes, and Rights of the children, and not from a parental rights argument. Many decades of psychological research has shown that children's primary needs are for constancy, consistency, and stability in their lives in the early years (see the Tender Years Doctrine for example).
There are three general approaches…
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