The Ideology Inside APA Parent Coordination Guidelines

Family Court Practices — Explode Fireworks in the Storm

This protocol analysis reveals father’s rights ideology is entrenched in custody systems. The American Psychological Associations (APA) Parent Coordination Guidelines cite 13 father’s rights authored books and scads of fatherhood research to legitimize court management and intrusion.

SEMINAL ARTICLE REVEALS STRUCTURE

First published in 2004, in AFCC’s Family Court Review “Parenting coordination for high conflict families” (Coates, Deutsch, Starnes, Sullivan & Sydlik) is a foundational article outlining a collusive process. A court employee or private appointee becomes the family’s manager. The manager is awarded judicial authority to resolve disputes for the purpose of building functional, enduring coparenting relationships. Special masters, hearing masters, counselors, coparenting facilitators, mediator/arbitrator and Guardian Ad Litems can perform the management role.

This article makes it clear: family court employees and appointees work together, collaboratively as facets of a multi-disciplinary team; a fact undisclosed to litigants. An “interdisciplinary team” — judge, lawyer and mental health practitioner — work together to manage and force even the most detrimental parent/child relationships.

IDEOLOGY

Guidelines expose ideology. Court employees and appointees believe themselves capable of resolving “disputes” even where serious violence and control exist. Evidence of harm and unfit parenting is kept off-the-record, “out of the public eye.” Due process rights are violated by the management system which ignores factors that normally contribute to judicial custody determinations. The ideology equalizes the parents by discounting cause.

“The course of the divorce process is commonly one of heightened anger and conflict, anxiety, diminished communication, and sadness or depression for one or both partners. These negative emotions are often accelerated by the separation and the adversarial nature of the divorce process… this relatively small group of parents is not able to settle their child-related disputes in custody mediation, through lawyer-assisted negotiations, or on their own. They turn to litigation in the years following separation and divorce to settle these disputes and utilize disproportionate resources and time of the courts. They are more likely to have significant psychological problems, which may interfere with their parenting, and they more often expose their children to intense conflict and intimate partner violence, also commonly referred to as domestic violence…family court judges, divorce intervention researchers, and psychologists practicing in the divorce and family area explored alternative interventions that would diminish the use of the adversarial process to resolve child-related disputes and deal effectively with these parents to reduce the conflict to which children were exposed.”

BOOKS

Father’s rights ideologues publish a plethora of books that promote ideology, legal maneuvers and court-ordered mental health interventions. Authors and affiliations expose the networks reach. Books cited in PA Parent Coordination Guidelines represent the tip of the iceberg.

• Marriage, Divorce, and Children’s Adjustment, Emery, R. E. (1999). Emery is a preeminent father’s rights research author working out of the University of Virginia. Emery promotes family systems and pathologizing children.
• Scientific Basis of Custody Decisions, RGalatzer-Levy & Kraus. Authors are father’s rights.
• Caught In The Middle: Protecting The Children Of High-Conflict Divorce, Garrity, Baris (1994), promotes father’s rights and parental alienation.
• Coping With Divorce, Single Parenting, And Remarriage: A Risk And Resiliency Perspective Hetherington, (1999). Author is father’s rights.
• For Better Or For Worse, Hetherington, Kelly (2002). Authors are members of Northern California parental alienation researcher network.
• In The Name Of The Child: A Development Approach To Understanding And Helping Children Of Conflicted And Violent Divorce, Johnston, Roseby, & Kuehnle (2009). Authors are father’s rights domestic violence practitioners.
• Dividing The Child, Maccoby &Mnookin, (1992). Authors are father’s rights.
• Strengthening Couple Relationships For Optimal Child Development: Lessons From Research And Intervention, Schulz, Pruett, Kerig, & Parke, American Psychological Association. Authors are: “developmental psychopathology experts, couple relationship researchers, and clinician-researchers who have developed innovative preventive couple interventions… With its diversity of theoretical perspectives — including attachment, family systems, developmental, and social learning frameworks — this book will be an invaluable resource for clinicians, researchers, and family and health policy professionals.”
• Divorce and Family Mediation: Models, techniques and, Folberg, Milne, Salem 2004, Guilford Press. Chapter “Therapeutic mediation with high-conflict parents: Effective models and strategies” Pruett, Johnston.
• Surviving The Breakup: How Children And Parents Cope With Divorce, Wallerstein, Kelly, Basic Books (1980). Authors are members of Northern California research network. Research is based on high education, high income parents.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE PROTOCOLS

Guidelines claim “PC seeks to rely on the extensive empirical and clinical research involving violence between partners, including research differentiating among patterns of domestic violence.” Understanding the content and authorship of citations reveals that victims will not be protected. Instead victims will be blamed for instigating the assault, defending themselves and the children, and/or will be pathologized/psychologically labeled.

• High conflict divorce, violence, and abuse: Implications for custody and visitation decisions. Dalton, Carbon, & Olesen, 2003; Juveniles & Family Court Journal. Olesen is an alienation practitioner. Dalton is affiliated with BWJP & AFCC. Carbon was appointed OVW Director under President Obama; and is a past President of NCJFCJ and AFCC. The article is foundational and relies on differentiation and family systems, two theologies that blame victims for negatively reacting to his behavior. The article portends to teach Judges to distinguish between conflict and domestic violence.
• Research on domestic violence in the 1990s: Making distinctions. Johnson, M. P., & Ferraro, K. J. (2000). Journal of Marriage and Family. Another foundational article building on the classification/differentiation model.
• Custody disputes involving allegations of domestic violence: The need for differentiated approaches to parenting plans. Jaffe, Johnston, Crooks, & Bala, (2008). Family Court Review. This is another foundational article grounded in differentiation theory — that domestic violence and child abuse allegations are driven by hostility, distrust, fear, and blaming of one another. Bala, Jaffe, and Crooks are Canadian university affiliates. Johnston is Janet Johnson a California sociologist whose work undergirds the entire philosophy of domestic violence assessment, treatment and management.
• Differentiation among types of domestic violence: Research update and implications for interventions,.Kelly & Johnson, (2008) Family Court Review. This article was retrieved from the New Mexico Coalition for DV.

NOTE: Seminal AFCC article Johnson/Kelley reformulated alienation theory uses a Family Systems/Dynamic approach to justify custody orders and services created to change perception instead of behavior.

ARTICLES

Articles cited in APA Parent Coordination Guidelines further expose foundational ideology, authorship, and intervention methods (practices).

Janet Johnston/Johnson

• High-conflict divorce. Future of Children, Johnston, (1994).
• Building multidisciplinary professional partnerships with the court on behalf of high-conflict divorcing families and their children: Who needs what kind of help? Johnston, (2000). University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review. Incorporated into Innovations in Interventions with High Conflict Families, a 303-page Professional Resource, retrieved from AFCC’s website.
• A child-centered approach to high-conflict and domestic-violence families: Differential assessment and interventions. J Johnston, (2006), Journal of Family Studies, 12, 15–35. doi:10.5172/jfs.327.12.1.15

Joan Kelly — Advisor to fathers’ rights group Children’s Rights Council (CRC) who implemented Welfare Reform.

• Children’s adjustment in conflicted marriage and divorce: A decade review of research, Kelly, (2000, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Retrieved from National Institute of Health (NIH) pubmed.
• Psychological and legal interventions for parents and children in custody and access disputes: Current research and practice, Kelly, (2002), Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law, 10, 129 –163. Can download or read entire article at
• Parents with enduring child disputes: Multiple pathways to enduring disputes, Kelly, (2003). Journal of Family Studies.
• Family mediation research: Is there empirical support for the field?, Kelly (2004) Conflict Resolution Quarterly. . Relies on unpublished dissertations to claim mediation decreased litigation.
• Preparing for the parenting coordination role: Training needs for mental health and legal professionals, Kelly (2008), Journal of Child Custody. This training article is part of a special issue on parenting coordination — introduction and article by Matthew Sullivan, (California parental alienation practitioner, AFCC past President), Fidler (Canada Parental alienation practitioner).

PROGRAM TO RESEARCH

Citations reveal connections between community programs and eventual research publication. This author cannot possibly document the multitude of programs contributing to research outcomes, however the two samples below give the reader the pattern and means to follow-the-researcher to the community program.

• Effects Of The Dads For Life Intervention On Interparental Conflict And Co-Parenting In The Two Years After Divorce Cookston, Braver, Griffin, deLuse & Miles, (2007). Cookston is a father’s rights researcher affiliated with San Francisco University. Braver works out of Arizona University. Griffin is a social worker who promotes Family Systems.
• Supporting Fathers Involvement is a California welfare funded community program that bumps outcomes to University of Berkeley Professors Carolyn Pape Cowan, Philip Cowan. Supporting Father Involvement in the Context of Separation and Divorce, their research article authored with AFCC affiliate Marsha Kline Pruett claims “mothers often perform a gatekeeping role” (gatekeeping is a substitution for alienation).

FATHER’S RIGHTS

The APA Parent Coordination Guidelines cite numerous father’s rights research and practices. A sample includes:

• Interparental conflict as a risk factor for child maladjustment: Implications for the development of prevention programs, Grych, (2005), Family Court Review. “Programs for children are likely to be most helpful if they help children learn ways to cope with situations in which they feel pressured to side with one parent against the other and avoid feeling responsible for parental problems. Although psycho-educational programs are widely available and often court-mandated, evaluation studies are rare and support for their efficacy is mixed.”
• Parenting coordination and court relitigation: A case study, Henry, Fieldstone & Bohac (2009), Family Court Review. Authors claim parenting coordination reduces litigation.
• Programs for promoting parenting of residential parents: Moving from efficacy to effectiveness, Wolchik, Sandler, Winslow, & Smith-Daniels, (2005), Family Court Review. This article leads me to another community/research circle that should be investigated for its intrusion on family court litigation outcomes.

CONCLUSION

Contested custody does not proceed according to the Rule of Law and Rules of Evidence, or due process. Instead, government, private and trade associations entrenched treatment and management systems that profit from the most egregious forms of parental behavior. While the actors hold hearings and issue legally enforceable orders, legitimacy of process is merely pretense. The protocols point out the subterranean truth.