making contact: how parents and children negotiate and ... · how parents and children negotiate...

Making contactHow parents and children negotiate andexperience contact after divorce

Liz Trinder, Mary Beek and Jo Connolly

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has supported this project as part of its programme of researchand innovative development projects, which it hopes will be of value to policy makers,practitioners and service users. The facts presented and views expressed in this report are,however, those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation.

© Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2002

All rights reserved.

Published for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by YPS

ISBN 1 84263 078 4 (paperback)ISBN 1 84263 093 8 (pdf: available at www.jrf.org.uk)

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Contents

Acknowledgements iv

Summary v

1 Introduction 1The context 1Aims of the study 1Methods 2

2 How contact varies 5Introduction 5Consensual committed contact 6Faltering contact 12Conflicted contact 14

3 Why does contact vary? 24Introduction 24Direct determinants 25Challenges 31Mediators 36Time 44Summary 45

4 Implications 46Implications for policy-makers 46Implications for practitioners 47Implications for parents 48

References 49

Appendix: Further sample details 51

The Lord Chancellor’s Department and NorwichCourt Service provided invaluable support inenabling us to make contact with separatedparents. We would like to thank Suzanne Coulsonand Sandra Kielty who undertook some of thechildren’s interviews. We had invaluable supportand advice from our advisory group: HarrietBretherton, Eunice Halliday, Clem Henricson,

Acknowledgements

Charlie Lewis, Mavis Maclean, Bren Neale, CharlesPrest, Martin Richards, Margaret Robinson, ShelleyDay Sclater and Susan Taylor from the JosephRowntree Foundation. Thanks also to Bruce Smythfrom the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Ourgreatest debt is to the parents and children whoagreed to be interviewed for the study. We hopethat we have done justice to their accounts.

iv

Key findings

• This study aimed to examine how adults and

children negotiate contact, how contact is

experienced and what factors or issues shape contact.

We set out to construct a sample of contestedand uncontested contact cases as a means toidentify what makes contact ‘work’ or ‘notwork’ for children and parents. The finalsample consisted of 140 individuals from 61families, half of which had entirely privatelyordered contact arrangements, with theremainder having varying degrees ofinvolvement with lawyers and the courts.

• The quality and quantity of contact varies

tremendously. Nine different types of contactarrangement were identified within threeumbrella groupings:

1 Consensual committed: where both parentsand children were committed to regularcontact and interparental conflict was low orsuppressed. These arrangements took threeforms. Reconfigured continuing families werecharacterised by frequent contact andfriendly relationships between parents.Flexible bridgers had ad hoc contactarrangements with parents working togetherto overcome logistical barriers. The tensely

committed had regular ongoing contact, withboth parents supportive of each other’srelationship with the children despite adegree of parental tension.

2 Faltering: where contact was irregular or hadceased, without court involvement. In theambivalently erratic grouping both parentswere, or had become, ambivalent about theimportance of contact and no contacttimetable had ever been established oradhered to.

3 Conflicted: where role conflicts and/orperceptions of risk resulted in disputes about

the amount or form of contact. Competitively

enmeshed parents battled over their respectiveroles largely in private. Parents in theconflicted separate worlds resolved the issue byceasing all communication. Two groups tookdisputes to court hearings, in the rejected

retreaters grouping leading to the withdrawalof the contact parent, whilst the ongoing

battling group fought on. In the contingent

contact grouping, contact was continuingsubject to formal and informal riskmanagement strategies.

• Contact places significant demands on both adults

and children. It is important to recognise thatcontact is a difficult process for everyone,whatever the nature of the arrangements. Even‘working’ arrangements had some associatedproblems. It was clear, however, that wherecontact was not working there were evengreater demands upon, and emotional costs for,both adults and children. Looking across thesample the problems identified by childrenwere parental conflict, relationships with newpartners of contact parents, difficulties inestablishing a meaningful relationship with thecontact parent and not being consulted aboutcontact. For resident parents, the problems werethe continuing emotional engagement with theformer partner, erratic contact parents, conflictand risk, whilst for contact parents the majorproblems were adjusting to contact status andinsecurity about one’s relationship with thechildren, conflict and logistics (time, money anddistance).

• There is no single ingredient, or individual,

responsible for making contact work or not work.Instead, it is the attitudes, actions andinteractions of all family members – that is,resident and contact parents and children – thatshape contact. There are a wide range of factorsthat determine the quality and quantity ofcontact including challenges (the nature of the

Summary

v

Making contact

separation, new adult partners, money,logistics, parenting style and risk), mediatingfactors (beliefs about contact, relationship skills,external agencies) and direct determinants(commitment to contact, role clarity andrelationship quality) all interacting over time.

• High quality contact requires ongoing proactive

efforts to make it work, not just the absence of major

problems between parents. Making contact workrequires a continuing process of negotiating andbalancing relationships, an insight into theperspectives of others, an ability to compromiseand open, honest communication betweenparents and children. Where contact wasworking it was also based on the commitmentof all parties to contact, together with a‘parental bargain’ where the non-residentparent accepted their status and in turn theresident parent proactively facilitated contact.Beyond that there is no single best form ofcontact arrangement or ideal quantity ofcontact. It is the quality of relationships ratherthan the precise amount of contact that isimportant.

• Parents do have difficulties in finding an appropriate

balance in talking to children about the separation

and contact arrangements. In some cases childrenappeared too involved; however, in some of theconsensual groupings, the efforts of parents tomake the parental relationship work meant thatsome children felt that they had not beenconsulted about contact. It is helpful if parentsgive children permission to alter contact to suittheir own needs.

Practical implications

• The private ordering or ‘no order’ principle of the

Children Act 1989 appears to be working well,

enabling parents who can do so to make workable

contact arrangements without external intervention.

• Existing interventions for families where contact is

faltering and conflicted require rethinking. Relianceon court orders is not enough or necessarilyhelpful in enhancing the quality of relationshipswhich is critical to making contact work. Awider range of services, including therapeuticinterventions, which go beyond imposing anoutcome without providing a solution toconflict should be developed by the Childrenand Family Court Advisory and SupportService (CAFCASS). More supervised ratherthan supported contact centres are needed tomanage cases involving risk to parents orchildren. Information for parents should bemade more generally available, with practicaland realistic strategies for managing contact.Counselling services should be more widelyavailable for children. Consideration should begiven to introducing a statutory requirementthat non-resident parents should maintainregular contact with children if this is inchildren’s best interests.

vi

1

The context

One of the responses to high rates of divorce andcohabitation breakdown has been to emphasise theimportance of contact as a means to maintainrelationships between children and their absentparent. There is now a strong although rebuttablelegal presumption in favour of continuing contact,although a meta-analysis of 63 studies hassuggested that it is the quality not the quantity ofcontact that is associated with children’s well-being(Amato and Gilbreth, 1999).

It is clear, however, that the practice of contact isdifficult for many families. A substantial proportionof children do lose contact with their absent parent.In Maclean and Eekelaar’s (1997) study, 32 per centof divorced parents were no longer having contact,with the proportion even higher for formercohabitees. Where contact does occur it can be asource of ongoing parental conflict (Wolchik andFenaughty, 1996), reflected in the steady rise in thenumber of applications for contact orders since theimplementation of the Children Act 1989 (Pearce et

al., 1999) with additional problems with theenforcement of orders (Advisory Board on FamilyLaw, 2002). There are concerns too about the risksto women and children of contact with violent men(Hester and Radford, 1996; Advisory Board onFamily Law, 1999).

There have been a number of studies examiningthe reasons why contact continues or ceases andwhy the amount of contact varies. Studies haveconsidered a wide range of factors. The followingare associated with continuing contact:

• Sociodemographic status: higher income andeducation (Stephens, 1996; Cooksey andCraig, 1998).

• Legal status: divorcing rather than cohabitingparents or ‘never (lived) together’ parents(Maclean and Eekelaar, 1997).

• Geographic: fathers living in close proximity(Cooksey and Craig, 1998, Smyth et al., 2001).

• Economic: fathers who pay child support(Maclean and Eekelaar, 1997; Smyth et al.,2001).

• Family Formation: further birth children forthe contact parent, but not the repartneringof the resident parent (Manning and Smock,1999; Smyth et al., 2001).

• Parental relationship: contact is more frequentwhere there is less conflict (Smyth et al.,2001). Wolchik and Fenaughty (1996), incontrast, found no association between levelof conflict and amount of contact, but asignificant association between residentparent’s anger/hurt about the divorce andtheir perceptions of the contact parent’sparenting abilities. Findings have beenmixed on whether parental involvement pre-divorce is linked to continuing contact(Cooksey and Craig, 1998).

Aims of the study

Although there is a strong presumption of contactin law and policy, existing research has shown thatthere is considerable variation in the extent ofcontact and ongoing concerns about commitmentto contact, conflict and harm. Researchers have alsoidentified a range of factors that influence thequality and quantity of contact. The aim of thisstudy therefore was to take a detailed look atparticular sets of contact arrangements to identifyhow contact is experienced by family members andhow it is negotiated. In particular, we were seekingto work out how and why contact ‘works’ in somefamilies, but not others, and what issues or factorslead to, or negate, the need for court involvementin contact.

In order to understand how contact operatesand is experienced it was important to get theperspectives of all the key players, that is, residentand contact parents and children. One of theproblems of research in this area is that studies are

Introduction

2

Making contact

frequently based on unrelated parents and childrentalking about different sets of contactarrangements. We set out to recruit ‘family sets’ ofresident and contact parents and children from thesame families in order to identify how mothers,fathers and children viewed the same set ofarrangements as well as the actions of each other.

Our aims, in brief, were to:

• understand how adults and childrenexperience contact

• identify how contact arrangements arenegotiated and developed over time,including the relative influence of mothers,fathers and children, and the role of externalagencies

• identify what factors or issues lead topositive, negative or mixed contactexperiences, in other words what makescontact ‘work’ or ‘not work’ for children andparents, and what gives rise to disputes overcontact.

Methods

Who took part in the study?

The data for this project are based on qualitativeinterviews with adults and children from 61families. We conducted 140 interviews: 48 withresident parents, 35 with contact parents and 57with children/young people. Families wererecruited from a range of sources, a court service

mailout, articles in local newspapers, posters, acontact centre and snowballing (see Appendix).

We had three aims in sampling:

1 to build a sample incorporating a range ofcontact arrangements, including both‘contested’ and ‘uncontested’ contact as ameans to explore what gives rise to contactdisputes

2 to include a broad range of families, with amix of socio-economic backgrounds, ages,legal status and time since separation

3 to recruit ‘family sets’ of both parents andchildren where possible.

Recruiting full family sets proved challenging.Nonetheless, in just under two-thirds of families,we achieved interviews from at least twoperspectives (Figure 1).

This is a purposive rather than a representativesample. Our aim was to identify and explore indepth different types of contact arrangement, andin particular to ensure that we had a balance ofcontested and uncontested cases. We managed toachieve this balance. In 33 families contact had notbeen raised as a particular issue with solicitors orneither parent had seen a solicitor. In five familiesat least one parent had sought legal advice aboutcontact. The remaining 23 families had had muchmore extensive legal involvement (see Appendix).

Although there is deliberate over-sampling ofcontested cases, the sample otherwise contains a

Number of families20151050

Resident parent only

Contact parent only

One parent + child

Both parents

Both parents + child

Figure 1 Extent of interviewing per family

3

Introduction

broad mix of families. The Cardiff Children’sPerspectives and Experience of the Divorce Processstudy (Butler et al., forthcoming) provides a usefulcomparison. That study was based on arepresentative sample drawn from court records of104 children from 70 recently divorced families. Weinclude below further details of the sample, withcomparisons to the Cardiff study where possible:

• Average age of interviewed children: Theaverage age of the children at interview was10.8 years. Figure 2 gives the agedistribution. The mean age of the children inthe Cardiff study was 11.5 years.

• Socio-economic class: 29 families were white-collar/professional, 22 blue-collar/manual,ten were unemployed. In the Cardiff study,46 resident parents were in paidemployment, 21 not in paid employmentwith missing data on three, and 47 absentparents were in paid employment, 11 not inpaid employment and 12 ‘don’t know’ ormissing data.

• Ethnicity and nationality: in 52 families, bothparents were white UK nationals. Eightfamilies contained at least one non-UKnational parent. Only three non-whiteparents were interviewed. All the Cardiffchildren were white British.

• Length of parental relationship: parents hadbeen together for an average of ten years,

with a range of two to 21 years. The averagelength of the relationship in the Cardiff studywas 11.4 years.

• Time since separation: the mean length of timesince separation was 4.8 years, with a rangefrom a few months to 15 years. In the Cardiffstudy, the average was three years.

• Gender of resident parent: mothers were theresident parent in 54 families, fathers theresident parent in six families and in onefamily residence was divided equally.Mothers were the resident parent in 65 out of70 families in the Cardiff study.

• Legal status: in 54 families the parents hadbeen married, in six families the parents hadcohabited and in one family the parents hadnever lived together. All parents were thebiological or adoptive parents of the childrenconcerned. The Cardiff study drew itssample from divorce records.

The comparison with the Cardiff study providesconsiderable reassurance that our sample is broadlybased. A sample of 140 in-depth interviews from 61families is very large for a qualitative study. Evenso it is likely that we will have missed certain typesof contact arrangements. The sample includedfewer younger parents (in their twenties), fewerblack families and fewer former cohabitees than wewould have liked, each of which might havedistinctive approaches and experiences of contact.

Number interviewed20151050

16–18

13–15

10–12

7–9

4–6

Ag

e b

and

Figure 2 Age of interviewed children and young people

4

Making contact

The interviews

We began the interviewing process with a singleadult who had agreed to be interviewed.Interviews with further family members wereconducted if the original informant chose to passon details of the project and after the other adultand/or children had given informed consent. Inorder to maintain confidentiality we had separateinterviewers for each adult, as well as a specialistchildren’s interviewer.

The interviews with parents were looselystructured to permit interviewees to talk in depthabout their experience and raise issues that werepertinent to them. In each case the interviewcovered six broad topic areas:

• nature of the separation

• expectations and wishes for contact

• history and nature of contact

• arranging and negotiating contact

• sources of advice and support

• evaluation of contact arrangements.

The children’s interviews included structuredand unstructured discussion and structured tasks.The topics covered were:

• pattern, amount and development of contact

• feelings at different points in contact (using‘emotions’ faces for young children)

• involvement in decision-making aboutcontact

• advice for children and parents onsupporting children after divorce andinvolvement in decision-making (usingvignettes)

• evaluation of contact arrangements.

The analysis

All interviews were taped and transcribedverbatim. The data were analysed using thegrounded theory approach to qualitative analysis(Strauss, 1987), facilitated by the software packageQSR NVivo. A brief account of the method ofanalysis can be found in the Appendix.

One important point to note is that we were nottrying to identify which was the ‘true’ account fromall of those given by different family members, butinstead to identify how each individualexperienced the same arrangements. The analysisthat follows is therefore based on the perspectivesof all the family members who were interviewed,sometimes highly consistent, at other timesdiametrically opposed.

Anonymity and language

The majority of interviews were carried out in EastAnglia. We have retained local expressions ininterview extracts, e.g. ‘he do’ or ‘he let’ rather than‘he does’ or ‘he lets’. To preserve anonymity wehave used age bands rather than exact ages forchildren, and have changed non-essential detailssuch as locations and children’s gender in somecases. All names are pseudonyms.

5

Introduction

The nature of contact varied enormously across thesample. In some families contact was very frequentwith both parents supporting the children’srelationship with the other. In other families contactarrangements were irregular and infrequent, andthe parental relationship was a source of mutualfrustration; alternatively, contact, whether frequentor infrequent, could generate high levels of conflictbetween parents.

A sense of the variation in the nature of contactis evident in the frequency of contact. Somechildren in the sample had frequent contact whilstothers had had very little or no face-to-face contactwithin the past year (see Figure 3).

The type of contact schedule in operation variedby amount, frequency, flexibility, predictability andby lead decision-maker. Five different types ofschedule were evident:

1 Rigid: tightly scheduled arrangements withminimal room for flexibility, developed byparents to avoid the need for parentalcommunication or defined by court orders.

2 Flexibly routine: predictable arrangementsestablished by parents with scope forflexibility to accommodate parent and childcommitments and additional visits.

3 Fitted in: irregular pattern of contact due tologistical constraints for parents, although setwithin a general expectation of makingcontact as frequent as possible. Each contactwas negotiated separately by parents to fitaround logistical constraints and parent/child commitments.

4 Self-servicing: irregular but fairly frequentpattern of contact directed by teenagers.

5 Sporadic: irregular and infrequent pattern ofcontact with failed attempts to establish apredictable pattern of arrangements.

The data on the amount and form of contactcapture only part of the story however. As well asthe quantity of contact, it was the quality of contactand the quality of parent–child and parent–parentrelationships that diverged significantly across thesample. A core task for the analysis was to map outdifferent patterns or types of arrangements thatcaptured all elements of quantity and quality,meanings and experiences of contact. We identifiedthree broad ‘umbrella’ groupings of different typesof contact:

1 Consensual committed: both parents andchildren are committed to regular contactand interparental conflict is low orsuppressed.

2 How contact varies

Number of families20151050

Never

Occasional

Monthly

Fortnightly

Weekly

Two/threetimes per week

Daily

Mo

st f

req

uen

t w

ith

insi

blin

g g

rou

p

Figure 3 Frequency of contact over last year

6

Making contact

2 Faltering: contact is irregular or has ceased,without court involvement.

3 Conflicted: role conflicts and/or perceptionsof risk result in disputes about the amount orform of contact.

In the remainder of this chapter we describe thecore characteristics of each of the three groupingsand their subtypes (see Figure 4, and the Appendixfor a full summary table).

The description of each grouping below alsoincludes a short section identifying the ‘strengthsand difficulties’ of the arrangement. It is importantto note that all groupings had some problemsassociated with them, although the level ofdifficulty varied significantly. Conversely, in somegroupings it was easy to identify the benefits ofcontact for all family members, whilst in others oneor more of the family members found contact to behighly stressful and contact was clearly notworking.

Drawing on our analysis of the different typesof contact we define ‘working’ or ‘not working’contact in the following terms:

1 Working or ‘good enough’ contact requiresthat all the following apply:• contact occurs without risk of physical or

psychological harm to any party• all parties (both adults and children) are

committed to contact• all parties are broadly satisfied with the

current set of arrangements for contactand do not seek significant changes

• contact is, on balance, a positiveexperience for all parties.

2 Not working or ‘not good enough’ contact isdefined as when at least one of the followingapplies:• contact poses an ongoing risk of physical

or psychological harm to at least oneparty

• not all parties are committed to contact• at least one party seeks significant

changes to the existing contactarrangements

• contact is, on balance, not a positiveexperience for all parties.

Using these definitions, the arrangements in the‘consensual committed’ umbrella group wereworking. They were not problem-free, but thedifficulties were relatively minor or manageableand were outweighed by the rewards. In contrast,families that we classified as part of the ‘erratic’ or‘conflicted’ umbrella groupings had contactarrangements that were not working.

Consensual committed contact

Overview

There were three different types of arrangementswhere both parents and children were committedto regular contact. In all three groupings parentssubscribed to current child welfare principles ofputting children first, enduring parentalresponsibility and parental amicability. Parents hada friendly relationship in the ‘reconfiguredcontinuing families’ and ‘flexible bridgers’groupings, but parents in the ‘tensely committed’grouping had to work harder to manage conflict.Contact was very frequent for the ‘reconfiguredcontinuing families’, a little less so for the ‘tenselycommitted’, with arrangements in the ‘flexiblebridgers’ grouping arranged on an ad hoc basis toencompass logistical constraints.

Reconfigured continuing families (three families)

The same as it was before apart from I’m not stayingthere any more.(Contact father)

Overview

There were three families who were seeking tomaintain a continuing sense of family life afterparental separation. Contact was extensive, with a

7

How contact varies

Figure 4 The three umbrella groupings and their subtypes

Consensualcommitted

All committed to

regular contact, and

conflict is low

ConflictedRole conflicts and/or

perceptions of risk

contact disputes

(amount or form)

Flexible

bridgers

Ambivalently

erratic

Competitively

enmeshed

Conflicted in

separate worlds

Rejected

retreaters

Ongoing

battling

Contingent

contact

Ad hoc contact arrangements; parents worked

together to overcome logistical barriers

Parents battle over their respective roles

largely in private

Parents resolved contact issues by ceasing all

communication

Parents took disputes to court; non-resident

parent withdrew as a consequence

Parents took disputes to court; both parents

fought on

Parent–child contact continued but was subject

to formal and informal risk management

strategies

Frequent contact, and friendly relationships

between parents

Reconfigured

continuing families

FalteringContact is irregular or

has ceased, and no

court involvement

Regular, ongoing contact; both parents

supportive of each other’s relationship with the

children despite a degree of parental tension

Tensely

committed

Both parents ambivalent about the importance

of contact; no contact schedule had ever been

established or adhered to

8

Making contact

well-established and reliable pattern of staying visitseach weekend, as well as near-daily school runs orafter-school visits. The children were central to bothparents’ lives, with none of the parents having newpartners or full-time employment. Parents now hada friendly relationship following often stormymarriages. Both parents emphasised the importanceof the children’s relationship with the other parent,and considered the other to be a good parent,though with scope for minor everyday conflicts:

The only thing I would say about it is that he let themget away with too much. But then that’s my opinion.He thinks I am too strict so you are going to get thatwith anybody.(Resident mother)

Parents operated together as a unit, backingeach other up in parenting matters:

When [child] says ‘She has been horrible to me’, I say‘Well you must have done something to make herhorrible to you’. Well [child] says ‘I did this, that andthe other’ and I say ‘Well there you got to accept it. Ifyou do something wrong you get told off the same asyou do when you are here.’(Contact father)

Relationships between children and each parentwere positive. Children were comfortable with bothparents with considerable overlap between the twohomes in the form of joint celebrations and outings‘as a family’, and encouragement to phone eachparent whichever household they were in. All thechildren had an explanation about why theirparents couldn’t live together:

I like it at Dad’s but I like it here as well because I cansee them both, not at the same time, but differently.

Interviewer: Do you speak to dad on the phone?

Yeah loads of times. Same with Mum when I goround to Dad’s. They are friends but they don’t wantto live with each other because they have rows.(Child, 7–9)

The relatively minor difficulties reported bychildren concerned missing parents, friends andpets when at the other house.

None of the parents used the language of ‘equalparenting’ or rights. Instead, arrangements werecast in terms of children’s needs, in particular theideas of ‘putting children first’, ensuring continuityand shielding children from conflict. Fathers hadincreased parenting involvement after separation,but the residential status (and centrality) ofmothers was not questioned:

I knew she’d always live with her mum … Because,she’s just yeah she adores her mum. It’s strangebecause I take her everywhere … But she loves hermum more.(Contact father)

It was clear that the resident parent remainedthe key decision-maker, although they were highlyfacilitative gatekeepers providing that it wasconsistent with child welfare principles:

I said you can see the children when you like, howyou like, whatever time you like … in front of thechildren he does not call me [names] and I do not callhim. And that is the rule we have got really.(Resident mother)

Both fathers and children appeared to accept thecentrality of maternal decision-making, althoughsome of the older children were beginning to makesome decisions about the timing of contact:

She has always been in charge. Mum just decided itreally … But yeah, sometimes I just go because I justfeel like getting out of the house for a little while.(Child, 10–12)

The emphasis on parental decision-makingmeant that all of the arrangements were entirelyprivately ordered with minimal contact withlawyers. There was also a strong injunction againstextended family members ‘interfering’ in contact.

9

How contact varies

Evaluation: strengths and difficulties

Contact appeared to have benefits for all: contactparents were assured of a substantial continuingrelationship with the children, residential parentshad a break from childcare and children hadcontinuing and meaningful relationships based ona considerable amount of ‘normal’ life with bothparents. Contact was not a battleground and adultsand children were pleased with their arrangements.

These arrangements did require substantial timeand emotional investment in both the children andthe other parent to sustain the relationship. Someparents noted that the arrangements meant thattheir personal lives were on hold. That type ofinvestment, or possible entanglement, in thecontinuing family may not be possible or desirablelong-term as children develop their own interests,or if parents were to gain new partners.

Flexible bridgers (two families)

His father telephones him and speaks to him, aboutevery other day, every three days and they have longtelephone conversations. And he has come to seehim or I have taken Marco to Spain about every twomonths. We haven’t actually ever sat down and saidthis is what we are going to do for the rest of Marco’schildhood, we have said we will cross each bridge aswe come to it.(Resident mother)

Overview

In these two families parents were also friendly andmutually supportive, however significant practicalproblems (irregular work patterns and distance)precluded a regular pattern of frequent contact.There was frequent phone contact but directcontact occurred on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

As with the reconfigured continuing familiesgrouping there was a strong and recurrentemphasis on dominant child welfare discourses.There was general agreement about the respectiveroles of both parents and no concerns about thecommitment of each parent to contact despite

relatively limited and ad hoc arrangements forcontact. Parents endorsed each other’s parentingability and offered mutual support to each other asparents:

She’ll do her best to help me. And the same the otherway round. If she needs anything I’ll do whatever Ican to help her, because, if she’s got a problem, thenthe kids have got a problem … She’ll say, ‘They’vebeen a handful this week’ and, if they’ve been nastyto each other or being spiteful towards her, you know,verbally, then I’ll tell them, you know, but she candeal with it most of the time.(Contact father)

The logistical demands faced by parents meanta flexible approach of fitting contact around pre-existing child and adult commitments, but alsomutual facilitation of contact by sharing thetransport burden (e.g. meeting halfway, takingturns to travel), making the home available as acontact venue and using indirect contact:

I send him and other relatives … pictures that [child]has done and that he has made, things fromplaygroup. Letters with my news.(Resident mother)

As with the reconfigured continuing familiesgrouping, there was minimal involvement withsolicitors to initiate the divorce and friendlyrelationships with extended families but aprohibition on interference with contact.


These were families where conflict-free contactoccurred as much as possible, despite majorpractical constraints. Parents had established amutually supportive relationship with someemotional boundaries established, partly bydistance and partly by the subsequent repartneringof at least one parent. Nonetheless there weredifficulties; the continuing engagement with theother parent could be emotionally confusing orburdensome:

10

Making contact

We don’t argue or shout anyway but we, weespecially want to, show [child] that we arecomfortable. Of course I don’t enjoy having himaround now. But I feel that … this is the best thing for[child] really.(Resident mother)

Equally, the ad hoc arrangements for contactrequired a high degree of parental trust andflexibility, with the risk of both parents feeling letdown:

There was a slight conflict at one stage where shesaid I wasn’t seeing them enough because shewanted more time on her own … And after we’d hada discussion, she sort of calmed down a little bit andshe was fine. I got upset once, because I do all theringing, I’m always ringing them and I said … ‘Whydon’t you ring me or get the kids to ring?’ … Butshe’s never stopped them, she’s never preventedthem.(Contact father)

We have no data from the children’sperspective.

Tensely committed (22 families)

To myself I always think no matter what I feel or howhurt I am he is [children’s] father and this is going tobe it for the rest of our lives and so we have to geton. No matter what happens we have to get on.(Resident mother)

Overview

In 22 families contact was sustained and all partieswere committed to it, but there was a degree of‘surface correctness’ and tension underlying thedetermination to ‘do the right thing’ for thechildren. Much of the tension stemmed from thenature of the break-up, with third parties beinginvolved in three-quarters of families. In one casethese difficulties precluded contact in the earlymonths, but for all families in this grouping contactwas ongoing at interview and parental

relationships were reasonably friendly or workable.Newer arrangements were typically alternateweekends plus weekday direct or indirect phonecontact. The older established patterns, wherechildren were now approaching their mid to lateteens, were evolving into less frequentarrangements.

Parents also strongly subscribed to dominantchild welfare discourses. This was alsoaccompanied, for residential parents, with apersonal ‘child welfare burden’ of ‘putting childrenfirst’ where it meant ongoing involvement with anadulterous former partner or the frustrations ofdealing with a less committed father:

Everybody has said to me, ‘Oh I think you’re beingremarkable’, you know, but I have to think aboutthem, I have to put them first and I just think that ifwe were shouting and screaming at each other, it justdoesn’t get you anywhere.(Resident mother)

Resident parents (all women with oneexception) actively facilitated contact, makingsuggestions about activities or sharing the burdenof travelling. In some cases the degree of residentialinsistence on, and facilitation of, contact managedto elicit relatively high and consistent involvementof fathers who might drop out of regular contact:

It was so painful seeing them and then letting themgo that I thought right, well [pause], I thought that itmight be just easier to say ‘I don’t want to see youany more’. It was an idea that I toyed with. I don’tthink I really believed in it and I talked to one or twofriends about it and they said, ‘No, absolutely not’.(Contact father)

If there was any sort of hiccup or change of plan thennine times out of ten she would sort out thecompromise situation … she would put herself out tomake sure that things would run smoothly or changeweekends or do things like that … she has alwaysbeen very keen to keep contact.(Contact father)

11

How contact varies

For contact parents acceptance of their new non-residential status was hard. There was a significantsense of loss and insecurity about their relationshipwith the children, with a fear that children wouldnot want contact if it were not enjoyable, hence areluctance to enforce discipline:

There’s a bit of apprehension, will they still want tosee me, are they going to get on with everyone? Andthis great sense of loss. The seeing them was easy, itwas the giving them back again which was bloodyhard and often I would sort of drive away in tears.(Contact father)

Because I’d only see them every fortnight I wasactually loath to lay down any parental authority,because I kind of like valued the time I had with themand I didn’t want to be put in the position where I hadto say, ‘look I hear that you’ve been doing this anddoing that’.(Contact father)

Although parents did their best to avoid conflictthere were occasional arguments between parentsabout financial matters, the timing of contact andthe presence of new partners at contact. Residentparents, especially, had to work hard to separateout the roles of former spouse and parent:

I did make a point of saying to them that he was stilltheir dad and whatever happens between us he’s stilltheir dad and he’s not changed in that respect. It’s mehe’s fallen out with, not them.(Resident mother)

Nonetheless, both parents strongly endorsed theother’s relationship with the children as well aseach other’s parenting abilities. At least one of theparents in each family had repartnered. Theparenting role of new partners was downplayedbut it meant that contact was therefore about thecontinuity of two separate parent–childrelationships. Christmas and birthdays tended tobe celebrated separately (over two days or part-days) and boundaries often had to be renegotiated:

I said ‘I don’t want to have this constant contact, itdoesn’t do me any good’. So I went through a periodof dropping the child in the door and I refused to go inthe house because I didn’t know whether she wasthere or not. And I took to taking the child myselfbecause if he comes in my house the whole house istaken and you cannot have a life.(Resident mother)

Children’s reaction to contact was variable.Younger children tended to enjoy contact, althougha few were reluctant to go on every scheduled visit.For older children in long-term contactarrangements the most difficult thing to achievewas the meaningful relationship they wanted withsomeone they saw relatively infrequently in a fairlyartificial situation:

I can’t talk to dad as much as I’d like to. It’s like whenI see dad, it’s like, ‘Oh hi, how are you? Blah, blah.’It’s like, I don’t know him and that’s what I don’t like.That upsets me, just not knowing him as much as I’dlike to.(Child, 13–15)

Even more difficult for young people was thepresence of the new partner of the contact parentwith whom all the young people had difficultrelationships, sometimes avoiding contact as aresult.

These arrangements were privately ordered,with again minimal contact with solicitorsregarding contact arrangements. Teenagers wereincreasingly influential in shaping the quantity andquality of contact. As peer activities became moreimportant, young people scaled down thefrequency of contact or actively attempted to builda more meaningful relationship with the contactparent.


Despite some underlying tensions, contact wasongoing and sustained. Families were faced withthe task of dealing with roles and boundariesbetween the first and second family. For resident

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Making contact

parents this meant ongoing contact with the formerpartner; for contact parents the sense of being asecondary parent; and for children the difficultiesof relating to someone who they saw less regularlyand who might have a new partner. Logistics couldbe important, too, with some contact having to beconducted over long distances.

Consensual committed contact: explaining these

arrangements

There were three common factors shared by thesegroupings. These were:

1 Child welfare discourses: parents were stronglycommitted to ideas about putting childrenfirst, the importance of contact andamicability.

2 Role clarity: resident and contact roles wereclear. Contact parents accepted their rolesand in turn resident parents continued toproactively facilitate contact.

3 Empathy and insight: adults had a balancedview of their former partner, recognisingstrengths and weaknesses. They couldidentify with the other’s and especially thechildren’s perspectives, sometimes drawingupon personal experience or examples fromfriends caught in conflict.

The three different contact solutions arrived atlinked to three other issues:

1 Logistics: none of the adults in thereconfigured continuing families group wasin full-time employment and each livedwithin a short drive of each other. In contrastpractical issues of time, money and distancewere more important in the tenselycommitted and especially in the flexiblebridgers groupings.

2 Reason for separation and new partners: in thereconfigured continuing families and flexiblebridgers groupings no third party had been

involved in the separation. In thereconfigured continuing families parents hadnot repartnered, but in the flexible bridgersgrouping new partners were introducedslowly and sensitively. All the tenselycommitted families contained at least oneparent who had repartnered, often causingthe separation.

3 Demographic/time factors: the reconfiguredcontinuing families and flexible bridgersarrangements were of reasonably shortstanding with fairly young children. All wereformerly married working-class families. Incontrast the tensely committed grouping wasmore heterogeneous, including both short-and long-term arrangements, children of allages, parents of all social classes, differentlengths of cohabiting and maritalrelationships, and close and distant locations.

Faltering contact

Ambivalently erratic (eight families)

I wish having left that I’d, you know, broken allcontact and I also wish that I hadn’t thought that thekids needed that link, because in fact since hiscontact has been very sporadic and erratic, and in factit’s probably been more damaging than if they’d justnever seen him.(Resident mother)

Overview

No fixed or regular pattern of contact had everbeen established in eight families. Contact wasintermittent and decreasing to the point in twofamilies (both resident fathers) where no contacthad occurred in the last year. Contact, when ithappened, tended to be day visits only.

In the tensely committed grouping somepotentially erratic arrangements were solidified byongoing efforts of the resident parent to sustaincontact. In this grouping both parents appeared

13

How contact varies

ambivalent about contact. Resident parents wereaware of current child welfare principles andwould have preferred to operate within them:

I just get very envious of these couples that split upand they have got such an amicable arrangement, thefathers desperately want to see their children and Ithink what did I do wrong?(Resident mother)

However, these principles were consideredunrealistic where contact parents were seen asunreliable and uncommitted. Instead, residentparents had moved to an alternative set of childwelfare principles questioning the value of contactfor children in favour of the ‘clean break’:

Yes I know children need their father but they needthe right sort of father, they don’t need this, theywould be best off without him. If he don’t see him orhear from him then he gets on with his life … oncethey hit six they can join clubs and things at school,he has got a social life now.(Resident mother)

Well he is upset about it, but you know, perhaps it’sover … he over-emphasises it.(Resident mother)

Some of the contact parents also appeared tofavour the idea of the clean break, not only for thechild, but also for their own need to move on:

Once the family unit went down, as far as I wasconcerned that was it. If I took that stance when wefirst broke up I’d have probably got over it a lotquicker than what I did, but because I kept on havingaccess … You know I’ve got a life to get on with youknow. So has [child].(Contact father)

Facilitation of contact in this grouping wasreactive or passive. After early abortive attempts bysome resident parents to establish a contact regime,the resident parents had moved towards waitingfor the non-resident parent to make contact:

I’ll leave it to him to contact me. And that’s partlybecause he’s difficult to contact. I mean I’ve got anaddress, but I don’t try, I leave it to him to contact.(Resident mother)

The parental relationship was not overtlyhostile or angry, although mutually frustratingwhere it still existed. Residential parents wereimmensely frustrated that the contact parent wasrefusing to establish a regular schedule for contact,would give little or no notice of a visit or acancellation, or would be late:

I’m trying to be stronger about saying, ‘look I’ve gotsome rights as well’ ... It wasn’t as if he couldn’t giveus the notice. He just didn’t choose to give us thenotice … He likes to be in control and I think it’s hisway of controlling me.(Resident mother)

However, attempts to formalise arrangementswere also perceived by some contact parents ascontrolling:

She try and dictate, you know you’re a useless fatherand says this is when you’re going to have him, this iswhat you’re going to do now, this is this, this is that.(Contact father)

Contact parents also pointed to the logisticalfactors – money, distance and accommodation –that they felt that the resident parent discounted,and also pointed to the unfairness of having to doall the travelling. However, there was also littleindirect phone contact.

The children’s response was mixed. Somechildren desperately missed their parent and foundit hard to understand why they could not see them:

I remember phoning her, and someone picked up thetelephone and then put it back down. But I’m tryingto get in contact by writing letters, but she hasn’treplied.(Child, 13–15)

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Making contact

Other children seemed to reflect back theparent’s disinterest and did not want more regularcontact:

I didn’t want to go, and then, like there was like a littleboy there. I said to him, ‘hit me’, and then I pretendedthat I got hurt, so I come home.(Child, 10–12)

Grandparents and aunts/uncles had becomemore emotionally salient for these children.Ongoing contact was sustained in most cases withthe extended family of the non-residential parent:

In fact the person who has been most helpful hasbeen his sister, so I often ask if she will have thechildren and she has actually been really helpful and itenabled me to do some of things that I wanted to do.(Resident mother, ambivalently erratic)

In some cases the resident parent had consultedsolicitors or attended mediation to establish acontact regime. All reported frustration at thecapacity of the legal system to enforce contact.


Contact was occurring in some cases, and none ofthe children wanted to terminate all contact. Theproblem with the ‘clean break’ was that not allfamily members were fully committed to it. Someof the residential parents wanted a clean break buttheir children did not, whilst other residentialparents were engaged in a frustrating push-pullstruggle with their former partner, prompted by thechildren’s desire to have contact.

Explaining these arrangements

It is impossible to identify the initial causes of thelack of parental commitment to contact, althoughthe parental relationship was of shorter durationthan the sample average. No maintenance or childsupport was being paid. The resident parent hadbeen the most involved parent prior to separation.Contact parents appeared to feel hurt, excludedand misunderstood, and pointed to logisticalfactors, including distance which was a significant

problem in some, but not all, cases. In turn, residentparents felt let down and frustrated, leading to aspiral of misunderstanding andmiscommunication, and mutual confirmation ofnegative perceptions of the other. All the childrenin this grouping were relatively young with limitedability to insist on contact.

Conflicted contact

Overview

There were five groupings where there weresignificant disputes about amount or form ofcontact, and/or where past or present violence orabuse was impacting on contact. ‘Competitivelyenmeshed’ parents struggled over their respectiveroles largely in private. Parents in the ‘conflictedseparate worlds’ resolved the issue by ceasing allcommunication, ironically following mediation.Two groups took disputes to court hearings in the‘rejected retreaters’ grouping leading to thewithdrawal of the contact parent, whilst the‘ongoing battling’ group fought on. In the‘contingent contact’ grouping contact wascontinuing subject to formal and informal riskmanagement strategies.

Competitively enmeshed (five families)

My ex-wife wanted to maintain, she wanted the lastsay in everything basically, because she sees themother’s role in a relationship a lot differently than Idid.(Contact father)

Overview

Contact for these five families took the form of aprivate battle for increased time with the childrenand over the meaning of the resident and contactparent roles. Contact was based on a complicatedpattern of daily or near daily frequency.

Parents articulated current child welfarediscourses, but differed in their interpretation ofwhat these principles meant in practice:

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How contact varies

I was trying to think about what was best for[children]. I think [ex-husband] was thinking forhimself and quite often does still now.(Contact mother)

Resident parents were not seeking to endcontact, but instead turn what were seen as chaoticand burdensome arrangements for the children(and themselves) into a ‘standard package’ ofweekly or fortnightly weekend contact, withthemselves clearly established as the residentparent:

My vision of when your mum and dad separate is thatyour dad comes and takes you out on a Sunday andyou go the zoo. But it is control, control.(Resident mother)

In turn contact parents did not accept a clearlysecondary parenting role, felt that the residentparent was undermining their relationship with thechildren and sought to maintain or increase contact:

I felt that unfair pressures had been put upon thechildren, not to spend as much time with me as theywanted … there always has been a lot of pressure inthat direction, according to the children.(Contact father)

The level of contact in some respects wassimilar to the reconfigured continuing familiesgrouping. Here, however, the contact parent wasless likely to subscribe to ideas about maternalcentrality and instead emphasise mother–fatherequivalence:

Don’t for a minute believe that you’re a second-rateparent because you’re a father, but by the sametoken don’t believe that you’re any better than theother person. It should be equal all the way through.(Contact father)

Relationships between parents were tense andcompetitive but at the same there was a relativelyhigh degree of parental contact, with some jointcelebrations and house entry rather than doorstep

handovers, often initiated by the children. Thesense of competition between parents, however,undermined their ability to share parenting tasks,decision-making or facilitating the other’srelationship with the children:

I just felt any communication with him was not goingto help either me or the children, it would all beammunition … his interests were in scoring pointsrather than helping the children.(Resident mother)

Parents were critical of aspects of each other’sparenting, with each parent feeling that the otherwas under- or over-supervising the children:

They would be returned very upset and often a bitfrightened because they had been left in the houseon their own and they were actually quite young and Ifound that very hard really to cope with.(Resident mother)

Nonetheless, the children maintained goodrelationships with both parents. All wanted contactto occur although some children found the patternof contact with frequent changes burdensome.Children had three strategies for dealing with theconflict. One was to withdraw from the situation asmuch as possible:

I always found myself worrying about like because Ihear mum and dad arguing over the phone. It’s justmore worry and you can’t do anything about it. I getout a lot more now because I don’t have to worryabout anything, it’s good just to go out.(Child, 13–15)

The second strategy was to attempt to diminishor minimise the conflict. Some children steppedinto the decision-making vacuum where bothparents felt that the other had more control overarrangements:

I used to be with [one parent] on Tuesdays, but I saidI wanted to be round my [other parent]. Then I wasnormally only round [one parent] till 4, then I moved it

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Making contact

to 5, then I moved it to half 5 … I make the decisionnormally.(Child, 7–9)

The third strategy was to take on responsibilityfor parents’ welfare:

I almost timetabled the days so that neither parentwas on their own at any point so if I was going to mydad’s for 4 o’clock, my [brother] had to be timetabledfor 4 o’clock here.(Child, 16–18)

The pattern of decision-making in these familieswas complex. In one case the impasse was resolvedby an overseas relocation of the resident parent andchildren following a court hearing. Otherwise thesewere arrangements that remained privatelyordered with no involvement from outsideagencies, although some residential parents wouldhave welcomed an external referee.


These were arrangements where children hadfrequent contact allowing them to build positiveand meaningful relationships with both parents.Although lengthy legal battles were avoided,contact was an ongoing struggle between parentswith children brought into the conflict or activelyengaging in ways to limit the conflict.


These had been long-term relationships where thenow contact parent (including one mother) had hadsustained prior involvement in parenting. Parentslived close by, facilitating regular frequent contact(although one subsequently relocated). The criticaldifference with the reconfigured continuingfamilies grouping, or with the more frequenttensely committed contact families, was thedifficulty for parents in agreeing their respectiveroles, with contact parents pushing for an equalrole and resident parents seeking to defend or re-establish their role.

Conflicted separate worlds (two families)

I normally get a message via [child] and I use [child]as a mouthpiece as well. As you can imagine the lessI speak to her the better I like it.(Contact father)

Overview

Two families had contact arrangements whereparents did not communicate. In each case oneparty accused the other of abusive phone calls andin both there were long-standing financial disputes.Contact was fairly extensive but handovers tookplace in the street. In both cases there had been anearly involvement in mediation.

Despite parental antipathy both parentssubscribed to the principle that children shouldhave ongoing contact and considered the otherparent to be minimally competent. It was notpossible to shield children from parental conflict:

And the children I try to keep out of it as much aspossible, but it is very difficult because it involveseveryone and with someone in the backgroundmanipulating the children to get through to me.(Resident mother)

Parents also employed an additional set of‘parental welfare’ principles, of parental need forcontact and fairness for parents, ideas thatpotentially clash with child welfare principles:

And now I know [laughs] they are getting fed up, wellthey have been fed up for some time … But Isuppose it is better than me seeing them for aweekend once a fortnight.(Contact father)

I only agree with the fairness of if my partner hasthem for three weeks, then I will have them for threeweeks as well at another time so that everything isbalanced and works out that way.(Resident mother)

In both cases direct parental communicationhad long since broken down. There was no joint

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How contact varies

parental decision-making and amendments tocontact arrangements were therefore conducted bymessages sent via the children. All the childreninvolved in these arrangements were teenagers andhad some input into organising and amendingarrangements within the constraints imposed bythe framework. One teenager had chosen to rejectall contact with the non-residential parent. Theremaining children either initiated contact on theirown terms or made minor adjustments within ashared care arrangement. In both cases the parentshad one or two mediation sessions early on butthere had been no further legal involvement.


Contact was ongoing without further court battles.All children who wanted contact were able toorganise it for themselves. The ongoing conflictcontinued to provide a significant source of stressto parents and children:

Interviewer: Any other things that are issues for you?

When the parents don’t get on. Hm because that kindof gets stressing really.

Interviewer: Is there anything that you hope mightchange?

Our parents will talk civilly. That’s about it really.

(Child, 13–15)

The level of parental stress and preoccupationwith the battle restricted the ability of parents tosupport the children:

How the children feel about it I really don’t know,they tolerate it I think more than anything.(Resident mother)


In both cases the separation was initiated by theinvolvement of a third party, leading to one parenthaving an ongoing sense of injury and todifficulties in communication which becamemutually sustaining. The lack of parental decision-

making about contact was manageable in bothcases as all the children were teenagers able toorganise contact and act as go-betweens.

Rejected retreaters (two families)

But it was drummed out of her at home because hermother would say, to have nothing to do with herfather, me.(Contact father)

Overview

In two families contact had ceased following ashort but decisive legal battle about it. According tothe contact parents the resident parents weredirectly opposed to contact and had encouragedthe children to reject the contact parent. In bothcases the contact parent withdrew, with tentativeattempts to re-establish contact via the residentparent being spurned.

The perception of the contact parent was that theresident parent wanted to monopolise parenting:

Well, she always felt that they were her property, ifyou know what I mean. So I suppose she wouldgenerally feel that they’d be better off only having theone influence.(Contact father)

Rather than fight on the contact parent chose towithdraw, not wanting to force themselves uponapparently rejecting children, and partly to protectthemselves from further hurt:

They decided … whether or not they werebrainwashed into that I don’t know, but they said theydidn’t want the contact themselves and I thought, Ithought to myself, well if they’ve got to be herebecause the judge says so then they’re going to befidgety and bored. I thought it would be easier simplysay the arrangement was I was happy not to specifycontact, but I would send them birthday cards,Christmas cards, ring them up on their birthday andkeep in contact that way.(Contact father)

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Making contact

Some effort was made to establish direct andindirect contact to no avail. In both cases theapproach was made via the resident parent whorejected the request:

But the situation we’ve got now is that a couple ofyears ago I sent them Christmas cards and the firstpost immediately after Christmas Day she’d postedthem back to me.(Contact father)


We had no data from resident parents and childrenmaking these arrangements impossible to evaluate.


These were arrangements where resident parents,and possibly the children (all teenagers), wererejecting contact with the non-resident parent, forunknown reasons. In both cases the non-residentparent appeared to have limited involvement inparenting prior to the separation which mightaccount for their tentative approach:

I was waiting for them to get to that little bit olderwhen you could have a conversation, a meaningfulconversation, rather than child talk, you know but feltfrustrated because we never went anywhere thatsort of challenged their mind or thinking.(Contact father)

Ongoing battling (seven families)

If I let her get away with it I just know that thedefined order that I have got, she will just continue toeat away at, because she wants me to have nothingto do with the children whatsoever. Her goal will beto have me gone.(Contact father)

Overview

In seven families parental conflict was prolongedand intensifying. There was an ongoing legal battleover the pattern, although not explicitly theprinciple, of contact. Disputes concerned all aspectof contact timetables (e.g. delivery and return

times, allocation of holidays). The timetable disputewas accompanied by allegations of emotionalabuse and violent incidents accompanying contact.There were repeated cycles of solicitors’ letters,directions and full hearings and ever more definedcontact orders. Arrangements were highlyscheduled, but the operation of orders continued togive rise to disputes. The situation was stalled orworsening. In some cases weekend staying contactwas continuing, in others contact was now indirectonly.

Limited reference was made by parents to childwelfare principles, other than to suggest that theywere being ignored by the other parent. Residentparents were not opposed to contact but arguedthat the behaviour of the contact parent madecontact unworkable:

He has never tried to work at [child’s] level and at hispace to allow him to do things his way. He hasalways said ‘this is my way and if you don’t want todo it this way then I won’t see you’ which to a child isemotional blackmail. He has got to accept that this is[child’s] home and that he has made himself anoutsider.(Resident mother)

The children have dealt with it in their own way, he’sthe one that’s lost out and still losing out, he’s turningthem against him and he still thinks it’s me.(Resident mother)

Contact parents, in direct contrast, reported thatresident parents were seeking to underminecontact:

She feels that she has the moral high ground, ‘youwalked out of this marriage, you have nothing to do,the kids don’t want anything to do with you, I don’twant anything to do with you, we are now a familyunit’.(Contact father)

There was no evidence that resident parents haddirectly attempted to influence the children against

19

How contact varies

contact. However, it was also clear that neitherparent attempted to facilitate the other’srelationship with the children. Parentscommunicated only through lawyers or byelectronic communication (faxes, texting, email).

We cannot say whether there was a history ofabuse in any of these families. It appeared,however, that what were presented as primarilyinterparental disputes over roles were alsogenerating, or fuelling, acts of violence andallegations of physical and emotional abuse. In fourof these cases assaults were alleged, althoughinvolving new partners rather than the biologicalparents. Whilst parents described their ownrelationship with the children as positive, theformer partner was presented entirely in negativeterms, as insensitive, manipulative, punitive orobsessive.

All the children involved were fully aware ofthe ongoing conflict, either being informed by oneor both parents or witnessing disputes. The degreeof children’s distress was partially acknowledgedby the parents but responsibility was placed on theactions of the other parent:

I’ve gone up the school and they’ve said ‘He’s been intears all day, because “something about the judge”,sobbing uncontrollably’. So I managed to actuallyspeak to her [mother] and ask her ‘What are youdoing, why are you doing it?’ … the last weekend Ihad him he said … ‘The judge, Dad, I’m going to havea word with him’, he said, ‘It should be half each’. So,I don’t know where he’s getting it from. I’ve beentaking all the welfare reports very seriously and, buthe’s been involved so much he knows exactly what’sgoing on.(Contact father)

Children were clearly aware of their parents’feelings about each other and they seemed the mostinformed about contact and the nature of the familydisputes, including financial matters:

The court welfare officers said that I shouldn’t betelling the children everything that happens, but then Idisagree with that. [Child] when I come back fromcourt sits me down and says ‘right what happened?’He says ‘I have a right to know, it’s my life’. I agreewith him, so I tell him most of it, what concerns him.(Resident mother)

Try to tell [child] everything because my mum told meeverything.

Interviewer: So you knew what was going on.

To build a bigger picture of what is happening.

(Child, 10–12)

In two cases some, or all, of the children hadresolved the conflict by rejecting the non-residentialparent:

I would never ever ever ever ever have contact. Iwould say for my bit I wish [father] died.(Child, 7–9)

I only get upset after I have seen my dad, then I getbetter, then he comes along and then I get upsetagain and so I said the perfect way is that I just don’tsee him.(Child, 10–12)

Children lived in two separate emotionalworlds with little if any contact with one parentwhilst with the other. Handovers occurred in thestreet or at contact centres.

A wide range of agencies were involved to dealwith disputes, allegations and incidents –mediation, the courts and court welfare service,contact centres, psychiatrists, police and socialservices. Solicitors were viewed as extremelysupportive or avaricious. But residential andcontact parents were united in their dissatisfactionwith the legal system either on grounds of lack ofenforcement or favouring the other party/gender:

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Making contact

According to most people I have got reasonablecontact, but that’s nothing compared to some form ofco-parenting I want to be involved in. I am able toarrange my life to do that and that’s causing thecourts and the system a lot of problems.(Contact father)

They try and get you in court as a formula … we don’tfit that formula, the children themselves are peoplethat don’t fit that formula. This is my life and I’ve hadno say in it at all, nothing has been discussed, nothinghas been asked, nothing has been done at all, it’s likebeing puppets.(Resident mother)

Equally, children who had been interviewed bycourt welfare officers had felt misunderstood andmisrepresented:

We have to tell these people [CAFCASS] who go tocourt for us, they don’t always listen and they telltheir opinion instead of what we said, which I don’tlike because then it doesn’t get through to the judgeand so sometimes the wrong decisions are made.(Child, 10–12)


It is difficult to identify any particular strengths. Ineach of these cases the parents appeared highlystressed and preoccupied by the battle and acontinuing sense of persecution by the otherparent:

He wants to make life as difficult as possible for meso that I will have a nervous breakdown and he willbe able to take the kids.(Resident mother)

Children were trapped in highly conflictualsituations, whilst even those who did not wantcontact were still the subject of disputes.

We cannot identify the original ‘cause’ ofdisputes or determine whether or not contact wassafe or appropriate for those involved. Whateverthe original issues involved, the subsequent actionsand reactions of each parent seemed to escalate the

conflict further, resulting in a negative downwardspiral with each action confirming a sense ofinjustice and anger and negative perception of theother. Ongoing court involvement had not offered away out of conflict or addressed the concerns ofeach parent, and instead seemed to sustain andeven exacerbate the conflict.


In each case one or both parents had felt angry,embittered or abandoned from the beginning of asudden, unannounced separation, sometimes butnot always involving a third party. Some of theparents in this group had mental health problems.Most, however, were simply caught up in a battlewith no prospect of resolution. Adults held fixedand absolute opinions with the actions of theformer partner seen as completely unjustifiable andinappropriate. Parents expected that the courtswould do exactly as they wished, and legalpractitioners and court welfare officers wereevaluated according to whether or not they acteddecisively in accordance with the parent’s wishes.

Contingent contact (ten families)

Overview

In ten families the primary issue about contact fromthe point of separation was the attempt to continuecontact whilst attempting to manage potential riskto a parent or child from domestic violence,physical sexual or emotional abuse of the child,neglect or abduction. These were cases where theconflict related to managing risk rather thandisputes clearly about the relative involvement ofeach parent in the child’s life.

This is a more heterogeneous grouping than theprevious ones, defying easy generalisation. Threeof the cases centred principally upon concernsabout the non-residential parent’s addictionproblems, two concerned abduction and twoconcerned child abuse. Three cases concerneddomestic violence issues only, although domesticviolence was also a factor in four of the other cases.

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How contact varies

In five cases involving domestic violence casesthere had been no further incidents although acontinuing perception of risk. In two cases therewere subsequent acts of violence to the mother orchild, and in one case violence had started onlyafter the separation:

He wasn’t violent at all during our relationship, at all,but of course as soon as it broke up he was violent.And he would do it in front of [children] and he would,I mean physically smash my head up against the doorand the police were there every weekend.(Resident mother, informal supervision)

The pattern of contact arrangements varied. Inthree cases the resident parent’s perception of riskhad diminished significantly. In each case there hadbeen significant legal involvement but contact wasnow regular, frequent and unsupervised. In sevencases the perception of risk remained. In three casescontact was occurring at a supported contact centreunder a court order. In one abduction case contactwas indirect only. In three cases the resident parentwas attempting to organise ‘informal supervision’by having extended family or new partners presentat regular contact outside of the context of the courtorder. In one case involving a parent with a drugaddiction problem the resident parent was seekingsupervised contact. Finally, in one domesticviolence case, contact was suspended pending afinal hearing.

None of the resident parents was seeking toterminate contact although all were seekingcontinuing or further safeguards. Resident parentsused current child welfare principles; however,contact was contingent upon two additional factors– the continuing expressed wishes of children to seethe other parent, and the resident parent’sperception of their own and the child’s safety:

As long as he can be safe and as long as he’s happyto see his dad as well, if he ever turned around to meand said ‘I don’t want to see my dad’ I would respecthis wishes. But I think you need to know who your

parents are. Warts and all. You need to have anaccurate picture of who your parents are.(Resident mother [‘informal supervision’])

It’s half of him, it’s a part of him that he wants to findout about so. If he wants to see his dad that’s fairenough and when he says ‘no I don’t want to anymore’ then I shall stop it. He is his own self, he hasgot a right to make up his own mind about hisparents.(Resident mother, supported contact)

All the resident parents were facilitating contactto varying degrees. This ranged from takingchildren to a contact centre, to organising indirectcontact, to organising ‘informally supervised’contact. In each case contact orders were compliedwith.

Some of the contact parents who wereinterviewed acknowledged some element of risk,although some argued that the conditions placedon contact were unreasonable or that their formerpartner was obstructing contact:

I had a row and slapped her that caused anotherargument. I was done for it. I deserved it I shouldn’thave slapped her … I couldn’t see the kids foranother six weeks and then I had to go back to thecontact centre … I can’t understand why she won’tlet me take him out of the building. It’s just she ispunishing me because of the arguments. I don’tknow what the reason is. Well yes I did smash thewindows and break the TV but the kids were not inthe room when it happened. I’m very bad tempered. Iwas totally out of control.(Contact father)

The thing that annoys me is that I am not seeing mydaughter for some reason, she [mother] says that shewon’t come because she can’t forgive me for whathappened with i.e. the domestic violence in thehouse. Other people seem to think that she is beingkept back and that and that things just ain’t quite rightfor some reason.(Contact father)

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Making contact

The response of the children to contact waswidely divergent. One child with unsupervisedcontact was clearly worried about contact. Some ofthe children with indirect or supported contactwanted contact but the relationship with thecontact parent was somewhat distant or low-key:

If you don’t live with your dad that’s quite hard tokeep up with ’em, because you’re saying somethingand then they say something completely differentand then you try and stick to what you’re saying andthey say something else and ignore what you saidand they didn’t understand you so, it’s just best tospeak slowly and stay to one thing.(Child, 10–12)

Another child where the risk of domesticviolence had subsided enjoyed her frequentcontact.


These were all cases where contact was ongoingdespite elements of risk. In some cases parentswere able to establish a workable relationship,particularly where the perception of risk haddiminished significantly. In other cases there was ahigher degree of antipathy or fear of the otherparent:

We go through highs and lows, we can be quite politeto each other mainly because if I see him I still havethis sense of fear, you know I still feel frightened. Youcouldn’t reason with him, he is lacking the ability toreason.(Resident mother, informal supervision)

With the exception of an indirect contact onlycase, the highest level of vigilance in these caseswas a supported contact centre. Contact parentswere frustrated at having to use the centre andwanted unsupported contact. Residential parentsexpressed some concern or disquiet about the levelof security or supervision offered by supportedcontact centres (see also Furniss, 2000):

I don’t leave [child] in there with him.

Interviewer: You stay?

Yeah I wouldn’t leave [child] alone with him … Assoon as I walk out of there I am always watching overmy shoulder in case he is following me.

(Resident mother)

Some resident parents however attempted tomanage risk privately to enable contact to occur. Inthree cases (involving addiction and/or violence),the resident parent tried to ensure that aresponsible adult (partner or grandparent) was inthe house, although this did not always guaranteesafety:

He started saying ‘you don’t understand me, I need tosee my dad’ and I wanted him to see him but if hewasn’t agreeing to the contact centre there just didn’tseem an alternative … There were times whenmaybe [child] didn’t want to go, he wasn’t very keen,he did hit [child] again and I spoke to him about it … Ithink it happened several times actually, he phonedme to say that his dad was asleep and that thewoman wasn’t in the house, would I come and gethim and I’d call and collect him.(Resident mother)

We cannot make any assessment about whetheror not contact was safe in these cases. What doesemerge is that there are few options to ensure thatcontact can be made completely safe where residentparents and children are wanting contact to occur.The resident parents had all found their lawyerssupportive, although one ‘informally supervised’case had not consulted a solicitor. However, it isclear that low vigilance supported contact centresare being used where resident parents perceive ahigher degree of risk. There are also extremelydifficult questions to address about what supportcould, or should, be offered to families whereresident parents are committed to contact but aremanaging risk privately.

23

How contact varies


This was the most heterogeneous of the groupings,with families experiencing a wide range ofdifficulties and risks. The common factor was thatresident parents remained committed to contactdespite a greater or lesser degree of risk.

24

Introduction

In the previous chapter we described the verydifferent ways in which contact is organised andexperienced in different families. In this chapter weturn to look at why contact varies so much andwhat factors makes contact work or not work.

The answer is not straightforward. Our analysissuggests that the success or failure of contact cannotbe attributed to or blamed on a single individual.Instead, we have to understand contact as beingabout individuals operating within a network ofrelationships or family systems (Emery, 1994).Contact is not made (or disrupted) by one person,but by at least three (the resident and contact parentand each child), with their relationships also setwithin a wider context that includes new partners,extended family and external agencies.

There are also multiple factors involved inshaping the quality and quantity of contact. Wehave developed a four-layer model of thedeterminants of contact based on a comparison ofthe core characteristics or properties of the differentumbrella groupings and sub-types (see Figure 5).

The four layers of the model are as follows:

1 Direct determinants: these are overarchingfactors that directly determine the quality andquantity of contact, that is they are the threecritical features that separate the threeumbrella groupings. The three directdeterminants are:• commitment to contact of resident and

contact parent and children• role clarity, acceptance and congruence• relationship quality between parents and

between parents and children.

2 Challenges: the challenges are contact-relatedissues or potential problem areas thatfamilies may or may not have to negotiate.These challenges may be present atseparation or emerge later on. The challengesare:

• nature of the separation• new adult partners• financial settlements/child support• logistics: time, money and distance• parenting style/quality• risk/safety issues.

3 Mediators: the mediating factors areessentially filters that influence howchallenges are responded to and in turnunderpin, or contribute to, directdeterminants. The mediating factors are:• beliefs and discourses about contact• relationships skills: empathy and insight,

ability to think through situations and tocompromise

• extrafamilial involvement: family andfriends, legal system and other agencies.

4 Time: the challenges, mediators and directdeterminants factors are interactive, but thisinteraction also develops over time. The twokey time factors are:• child age and stage• time post-separation.

The model in Figure 5 highlights the complexityof the processes by which families manage or donot manage contact. There is no single magicingredient that makes contact work or not work,but instead a wide range of factors at differentlevels. The remainder of this chapter examines eachlayer and each factor in more detail, beginning withdirect determinants. Before we do so, however, it isimportant to stress that this is an interactive anddynamic model. Although we will discuss eachfactor separately, it is important to recognise theinteraction between factors and processes, betweenlayers and within layers. There is a connection, forexample, between commitment to contact andrelationship quality, with poor quality relationshipsweakening commitment to contact, which may inturn lead to further deterioration in relationships.This example also highlights the possibility of

3 Why does contact vary?

25

Why does contact vary?

mutual influences or circular relationships betweenfactors and between layers. In the consensualcommitted groupings, for example, there was ahigh commitment to contact, a strong belief in childwelfare discourses and generally positive views ofthe former partner’s parenting style. Which of thesepredated or caused the others is impossible todetect.

Direct determinants

By comparing the fundamental differences betweenthe three umbrella groupings we isolated threefactors or processes that appeared to directly shapethe nature of contact. What separated the three

umbrella groupings above all were commitment tocontact, clarity of roles between parents andrelationship quality (Table 1).

Commitment to contact

Contact requires the commitment of allparticipants, resident and contact parent andchildren to make it work (Table 2). Where contactparent’s commitment to contact was weak, in theambivalently erratic and rejected retreatersgroupings, contact was irregular or had ceased.

The commitment of the resident parent tocontact was also critical. In the consensual and thecontingent contact groupings, resident parentsengaged in a wide range of strategies or ‘emotion

Figure 5 Model of the determinants of the quality and quantity of contact

Commitmentto contact

Relationshipskills

Finances

Logistics

Newadult

partner

Beliefs,discourses

Nature ofseparation

Externalagencies/networks

Parentingstyle/quality

Roleclarity

Risk/safetyissues

MEDIATORS

CHALLENGES

TIME

Children’s age and stageTime since separation

DIRECTDETERMINANTS

Relationship quality:parent–parent,parent–child

CONTACT

26

Making contact

work’ (Seery and Crowley, 2000) to facilitatecontact. This went well beyond a passive orrhetorical endorsement of contact, and entailedproactive facilitation strategies to ensure thatcontact did occur, that the non-residential parentremained engaged and that contact was a highquality and safe experience for children. In some ofthe tensely committed cases this facilitation ofcontact appeared to keep some contact parents whomight otherwise find contact too difficult engaged:

When I first met [new partner] he [father] backed offa bit and I rang him and said ‘I’d hate to see him takeyour place, because he’s not the dad’. It was like ashot up his backside and he just reverted back to howhe’d always been and that’s how it’s gone on.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

Elements of this emotion work or facilitation ofcontact were:

• encouraging contact: with the other parentand children

• encouraging a sense of ongoing parenthood:e.g. emphasising the secondary status ofstep-parents, sharing decision-making,invitations to school report evenings

• enabling contact to occur: e.g. being flexibleover schedules, taking children to contact orsharing the travelling, providing a venue forcontact

• promoting a positive image of the otherparent: e.g. avoiding criticism of the otherparent, organising Mother’s/Father’s Daycards

• promoting high quality relationships: e.g.organising or making suggestions for contactactivities, encouraging a normal routine,

Table 1 Core characteristics of umbrella groupings

‘Working’ contact ‘Not working’ contactCore factor or process (consensual committed) (faltering and conflicted)

Commitment to contact All party commitment to contact, Low and/or uneven commitmentand to contact, and/or

Role clarity and congruence parental role bargain, and no parental role bargain, and/or

Relationship quality good or adequate quality conflicted relationships betweenrelationships between parents and parents and possibly parents andparents and children children

Table 2 Cross-family commitment to contact

Non-residential parent Residential parent Children’s commitmentcommitment to contact commitment to contact to contact Groupings

Mid-high High Mid–high Reconfigured continuingfamiliesFlexible bridgersTensely committedContingent contact

Low–mid Low–mid Low–high Ambivalently erraticRejected retreaters

High Low–mid Low–high Competitively enmeshedConflicted separate worldsOngoing battling

27


encouraging listening between parent andchild, establishing risk reduction measures

• peacekeeping or mediating between childrenand the contact parent: e.g. raising issueswith the contact parent, suggesting non-confrontational strategies for children.

Children’s commitment to contact varied also.Their commitment was linked to the quality of theirrelationship with the contact parents (and step-parents) as well as their age. But it was also linkedto the commitment of both parents to contact. Someambivalently erratic children had picked up theirparents’ disinterest and rejected them in turn.Equally, the proactive facilitation of contact byresident parents in the consensual and contingentcontact groupings gave children the emotionalpermission to enjoy contact that was missing in theconflicted separate worlds, rejected retreaters andongoing battling groupings.

Role clarity: the parental role bargain

By itself commitment to contact is not sufficient todetermine contact. Commitment has to be alsolinked to clarity and agreement about therespective roles of family members. In the falteringgrouping the major problem was lack ofcommitment to contact. In the conflicted groupings,with the exception of the contingent contact group,the major problem was that the contact parent wasmore committed to contact than the resident parent

wanted. In contrast what appeared to make contactwork in the consensual (and to some extentcontingent contact) groupings was that parents hadstruck an implicit role bargain where the contactparent accepted their non-residential status and inturn the resident parent proactively facilitatedcontact. There was no role bargain in thecompetitively enmeshed, conflicted separateworlds and ongoing battling groupings where therespective roles of both parents were disputed, andthe non-resident parent continued to challengetheir non-resident status and the authority of theresident parent.

Acceptance of non-resident status required twothings. First, it precluded seeking or threatening achange of residence, either outright or throughincremental changes in contact. Second, it requiredan acknowledgement that the resident parent hadgreater, but not total, responsibility for day-to-daycare and decision-making.

This parental bargain appears conservative,based as it is on the idea of a resident and contactparent, usually on a gendered basis. Certainly, itmilitates against the idea of shared residence orshared care based on the idea of two equal parents.But the bargain does appear to work. Whereresident parents considered their status underthreat there was very little facilitation of contact;conversely, in the consensual groupings, residentparents were secure enough in their role to activelyfacilitate contact (Table 3).

Table 3 Facilitation and role congruence

Acceptance of non-resident statusResidential facilitationof contact Low High

Low Competitively enmeshed Ambivalently erraticConflicted separated worlds Rejected retreaters?Ongoing battling

High No cases Reconfigured continuing familiesFlexible bridgersTensely committedContingent contact?

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Making contact

Ironically, providing that both elements of theformula are in place, and depending upon logisticalfactors, the parental bargain can result in lowconflict but extensive contact resembling sharedcare, albeit with a different meaning for theparticipants. There were no examples of successful‘equal rights’ shared care in the sample, and indeedthe most active proponents of shared care werecontact parents in the competitively enmeshed andongoing battling groups.

Relationship quality

Contact, above all else, is about relationships andthe variable quality of relationships had asignificant impact on how contact was organisedand experienced by all parties. Our analysis,particularly of commitment and role clarity,suggests that the critical relationship for setting theframework for contact is that between resident andnon-resident parents. It is not the only one thatcounts, however. Relationships between childrenand both parents are also highly influential inshaping contact. Other relationships in the networkcan also be important, particularly the relationshipsbetween children and parents’ new partners andbetween siblings. Furthermore it is important torecognise that each set of relationships doesinfluence the quality of other sets of relationships.The child–contact parent relationship, in particular,is acutely sensitive to the quality of the parent–parent relationship (and see Dunn and Deater-Deckard, 2001).

Conflicted parental relationships

Parental relationships within the faltering andconflicted grouping were difficult. In these familiescontact had become an additional or prime sourceof parental conflict. Relationships werecharacterised by arguments, mistrust andsometimes fear. Both resident and contact parentsfelt overwhelmed and disempowered by the other(see also Buchanan et al., 2001):

The worst thing, the really worst thing is that I haveto go through this period of, sometimes acute,anxiety in order to solve a problem with my ex-wife.(Contact father, competitively enmeshed)

I don’t want to communicate with him, I don’t wantto be anywhere near him, I don’t want to be in a roomwith him because deep down inside he does unnerveme, he really does unnerve me and I am sick of it, Ihave had enough of it.(Resident mother, conflicted separate worlds)

The consequences for contact were that parentshad great difficulties in working together toorganise contact, in establishing and adhering to acontact timetable and in accommodating changesto schedules. Parental meetings at handovers couldbe fraught, sometimes violent.

The consequences of poor parent relationshipswere extremely difficult for children to manage (seealso Dunn and Deater-Deckard, 2001). Childrenvaried in their responses but for many it meant thatcontact was a difficult experience of, at times,doubtful quality. Some of the children seemedresigned to the conflict (e.g. some of the conflictedseparate worlds children), others were desperatefor change or simply numbed:

The poor kids are standing there and we just get inthe car … I said ‘I’m sorry you had to witness that’[assault between new partners] and Annie just goes‘why can’t you talk, why can’t you talk?’ and that’s allshe was. Chris said nothing at all … That’s him yousee, he is very sensitive and he just doesn’t show anyemotion whatsoever. He just never cries.(Contact father, ongoing battling)

Alternatively, children responded to the conflictby reducing the amount of contact they had. Somechildren attempted to remove themselves from theconflict by being away from both parents as muchas possible with friends. Others, in the rejectedretreaters and ongoing battling groupings, rejectedthe contact parent and aligned with the resident

29


parent. This could be an appropriate response to aninsensitive or punitive parent (Kelly and Johnston,2001), but it was also apparent that some childrenwere faced with intense loyalty conflicts:

Interviewer: So before you see your dad, do youknow how you feel?

Well the whole family usually gets well not upset butthey all feel uptight with it. I feel that I have to makethe most of mum before I leave the house, before Ileave to go with dad. I shall feel a bit more sad thanhappy because every time I go with my dad thenwhen I come back dad and mum always have anargument when mum comes to pick me up orsomething like that.

(Child, 7–9, ongoing battling)

Friendly or suppressed conflict parental

relationships

In the consensual committed groupings levels ofparental conflict were significantly lower andparents were able to work together in organisingcontact and giving children emotional permissionto retain relationships with both parents. In thesegroupings contact was ongoing and broadly apositive experience for all parties. But ‘doing theright thing’ placed significant demands on parents.The difficulty for these parents was the emotionalcost of the necessary ongoing contact with the otherparent and the need to remain as friendly aspossible. For some this meant that there was afeeling that they could not move on emotionally:

I think, oh god, what does he have to ring [thechildren] every night for? In the early days that really,really got on my nerves, but now perhaps not so bad.I do resent the fact that he’s going to have to be inmy life for as long as the children are here with me.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

This was a particular difficulty with infantswhere the need to keep some continuity of carerequired even more frequent contact between

parents resulting in emotional confusion and someresentment:

And because she was a baby, I mean she was stillbreast-fed, so he would actually come over andbabysit for me. Which is quite difficult because thenthat means he is in my home.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

In some cases parents deliberately renegotiatedboundaries to reduce the amount of direct contactbetween parents whilst retaining a workingrelationship:

She wanted as minimum contact with me aspossible. It has helped us both I think, more Sarahthan I because she could come to terms with thingsmore, she didn’t have to keep being reminded that Iam still around so but now three years on we havemoved on and we are very friendly. There are timeswhen it is a little bit difficult but now we are veryfriendly and it’s very easy.(Contact father, tensely committed)

Children in these groupings were aware of thetensions between parents but were encouraged byboth parents to maintain relationships with theother, even though this could be tinged at timeswith a degree of parental conflict:

Even though mum would always say somethingnasty about dad or whatever, she’d then say, ‘but he’syour dad, you know’, and ‘I’m sorry’ and she wouldsay to me, you know, ‘you always … love your dad, Iwant you to love’ … dad would always say, ‘be goodfor your mum’, even though they sort of hated eachother they’d encourage us to be good and love theother one sort of thing.(Child, 16–18, tensely committed)

Contact parent–child relationships

It was not just the level of conflict between parentsthat mediated the relationships between parentsand children. Even where parental conflict waslimited, some children still found it difficult to

30

Making contact

sustain a meaningful relationship with the contactparent. This was evidently the case where contactwas infrequent or had effectively ceased. But, evenwith regular contact, there was a sense from somechildren of losing touch with the non-residentparent. Amato and Gilbreth’s (1999) meta-analysisfound that warm relationships between contactparent and child, and especially authoritativeparenting practices, were associated with positiveadjustment for children. It is, though, a difficultrelationship to make work in the somewhatartificial and possibly conflictual context of contact,not least because high quality relationships aregenerally not routinised or scheduled but occurwhen each party wishes.

Where levels of conflict were low and contactwas relatively frequent, younger children tended toenjoy a pattern of contact that was often activity-based. But, from early teens, young people acrossgroupings became increasingly preoccupied withthe limitations of the relationship with the contactparent. The loss of daily interaction meant that thecontact parent could not be fully involved in theyoung person’s life, certainly in comparison withresident parents:

He talks for ages like he keeps asking us questions.It’s like he really wants to talk to us and be close tous, but he can’t, you know. But, if he was living withus, he wouldn’t have to do that, he wouldn’t have tosay, what are you doing or how are you?(Child, 13–15, tensely committed)

It then became like a friendship and I didn’t want afriend, I did want a father and I think that’s what wasdifficult and I think he found it difficult too, trying tofind a medium between not being overly fatherly andnot being just a friend.(Child, 16–18, competitively enmeshed)

The response of children was variable. In somecases the relationship was allowed to drift, inothers children also actively attempted to make therelationship work:

Well, I wrote dad a letter actually saying, you know, Ilook forward to seeing him and I love him and likespending time with him and stuff, but I don’t want tohurt you, but sometimes it’s boring, you know, triedto explain it in a letter to him … and we did talk aboutit.(Child, 16–18, tensely committed)

Harsh or insensitive parenting

Not all parenting was ideal, however. One of thedifficulties for younger children particularly wasmanaging being away from home, and being with asecond parent they did not know so well and didnot see very regularly. Not all contact parentsacknowledged that children might miss theirresident parent whilst on contact, or encourage orenable them to phone the other parent. Nor did allcontact parents seem tuned into children’s needs:

I didn’t feel like eating really ’cos like, I miss my mum.

Interviewer: Did he notice that you were not eating?

I don’t really know really, I didn’t say anything really.

(Child, 10–12, tensely committed)

For some children this meant that they were notparticularly committed to regular contact,particularly in the ambivalently erratic grouping.However, for some children, their experience withboth parents was far from ideal:

He [contact father] always smacks me.

Interviewer: Does he?

When my sister does bad things, I get the blame. Idon’t really like it. Mum doesn’t smack us like daddoes. She just like kicks us and sends us to bed.

(Child, 7–9, ambivalently erratic)

Direct determinants: summary

The three critical determinants of how muchcontact occurs and what the experience is like arecommitment to contact, role clarity and relationship

31


quality between all participants in contact. Thequestion then arises as to why commitment, roleclarity and relationship quality themselves vary.Why are some parents far more committed tocontact than others, why does relationship qualityvary so much? Part of the explanation lies in therelationship between these three factors. Althoughwe have considered these three factors separately, itis important to recognise that they are related anddo interact in complex ways with, for example, alack of clarity about roles or role competitionassociated with deteriorating or poorer qualityrelationships which may weaken, or furtherweaken, resident parent commitment to contact.However, although commitment, roles andrelationship quality are ongoing (and interactive)processes in their own right, they are also thedifferential ‘outcomes’ of other processes, that is,challenges, mediating factors and time.

Challenges

Families are faced with a variety of possiblechallenges that can impact on contact. None ofthese challenges alone solely determines the natureof contact. Instead, whether and how challenges doimpinge on the quality and quantity of contact isrelated to the saliency of any challenge, as well asto how it is perceived and how it is handled via themediating factors of relationship skills, beliefs andexternal involvement. We will consider each of thechallenges in turn, that is, the nature of theseparation, new partners, logistics, parentingquality and risk.

Nature of the break-up

One of the inherent difficulties or ironies of contactis that it is founded on the assumption of aworkable parental relationship following the failureof the spousal relationship. The relationship, andthe nature of its ending, cast some form of ashadow over all contact arrangements, particularlythrough its impact on the quality of relationshipsbetween parents. By itself, though, the nature of theseparation has limited explanatory power. As Table4 indicates, there is no clear linkage between thereason for the separation and grouping. Instead,the reason for separation is a classic example of achallenge that could be managed in different waysdepending upon other factors. For example,separations involving a sudden abandonment for anew relationship were highly traumatic for theparent who was left and the children. In suchsituations in the tensely committed grouping otherfactors, including commitment to contact and therelationship skills of both parents, could makecontact manageable whilst, in some of the ‘ongoingbattling’ cases, the aftermath of such a painfulrejection continued to impact on contactarrangements.

New partners

At the point of interview, the majority of familiescontained at least one parent who had repartnered.In eight families (13 per cent) the residential parenthad a new partner, in 21 families (34 per cent) thenon-resident parent had a new partner and in 18families (30 per cent) both parents had a newpartner, with only 23 per cent of families whereneither parent had repartnered.

Table 4 Reason for the separation, by umbrella grouping

Grouping Adultery/third party ‘Irretrievable breakdown’ Violence/abuse

Consensual committed 16 9 2Faltering 4 3 1Conflicted 10 10 6

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Making contact

New partners shaped contact in a number ofways. In some cases new partners could be helpfulin mediating between the two biological parents,possibly putting across alternative perspectives ororganising handovers. More commonly, newpartners posed a challenge for both parents andchildren to work around, although again there wereother critical factors in terms of how this challengewas handled. In the conflicted groupings, thepresence of new partners appeared to fuel parentalconflict. Resident parents might feel that the newpartner was encroaching on family boundaries:

This woman obviously had fantasies about herselfand my children … that she would be a better motherto them than I was. She was all over them theywould say.(Resident mother, competitively enmeshed)

Contact parents could feel usurped andexcluded by a new resident ‘step-parent’:

As soon as Steve [new partner] comes along, hemesses it all up stopping me from talking to the kids.It’s got to the stage now where OK if he comes onthe street I’ll knock him off his foundation, I’ll hurt himbadly, because he’s messing up my life by not lettingme see the kids.(Contact father, contingent contact)

In the ongoing battling grouping the continuingpresence of third parties on contact erupted insome violent scenes as conflict between the parentswas displaced onto the new partners.

In the consensual committed groupings the newpartner seen as responsible for the break-up, less sosubsequent partnerships, could also be difficult forsome parents to negotiate. Resident parentstypically asked the contact parent not to have theirnew partner present at contact in the early stages.Some contact parents ignored the request orcomplied for a certain period. The criticaldistinction from the conflicted groupings in dealingwith this situation was that resident parents let thismatter go rather than escalating the dispute:

The agreement was for the first month, they werenot to come in contact with her. Well he did breakthat, he took them back there which I did have a bit ofa go, but they’ve seen her now … they’ve got to getused to her. They don’t like her.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

The presence of new partners also had an impacton children’s commitment to contact and the qualityof their relationship with the non-resident parent.Very few children felt particularly close to theirparents’ new partners, but children had particulardifficulties relating to the new non-resident ‘step-parent’ (and see Dunn and Deater-Deckard, 2001).Teenagers in recent separations could initially refusecontact or insist on contact without the new partnerbeing present. Where the separation was moredistant, and even where the new partner had notbeen implicated in the separation, both children andolder teenagers had strained relationships with thenew partner. In some cases this was simply becausethey did not like the new partner or the new partnerdid not like them, in other cases the new partner wasseen as explicitly encroaching upon the boundariesof the ‘first family’:

I think the difficult thing has been in a way beingforced to take another person into the family.(Child, 16–18, competitively enmeshed)

Alternatively, it meant that the young peoplehad too little time alone with their parent:

I can understand, because he’s got a lot of things todo. But it is a bit annoying sometimes, because youjust want to go out with him … she is like um holdingus back from being together a bit and I just wish thatmaybe we could go out on our own.(Child, 13–15, tensely committed)

The difficulties of the relationship with thecontact ‘step-parent’ placed some strain on therelationship with the non-resident parent, whichmight in turn mean a reduction in contact initiatedby the young person:

33


I think I can’t say anything, there’s a barrier there, thatI can’t say anything to my dad because it goesstraight back to [new partner].(Child, 13–15, tensely committed)

I just remember going less and less, as they got moreand more involved, I don’t know, it kind of becameless important to go up there.(Child, 16–18, tensely committed)

Money

Financial settlements and child support were afurther challenge with a possible impact on contact.Whether or not finances do impact on contact,primarily through the quality of the parentalrelationship and commitment to contact, wascontingent upon whether or not finances were indispute, parent’s expectations about appropriatefinancial support and the extent to which parentssaw contact and money as linked or separateissues, again linking to wider factors. Therelationship between money and contact appearedin different combinations across the sample:

• Agreed financial settlement including child

support, with no linkage with contact: foundonly within the consensual committed andcompetitively enmeshed groupings.

• Resolved financial dispute with no linkage with

contact: typical of some tensely committedarrangements:

For a while [he] was only paying half of what heshould … he quite often just didn’t give me it,withheld it. Eventually I did a really rotten thing,but I told him beforehand that I had to get itreassessed, to get it legally done and needless tosay that caused a little bit of a, he was cross.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Unresolved financial dispute with no linkage

with contact: found in the tensely committedand ambivalently erratic groups:

By this time I had completely given up any idea ofmaintenance at all. [New partner] and I had hadlong discussions about it. He said ‘look there isjust no point, you are not going to get anything,you don’t want to go back to court, we’resurviving quite happily, just leave it, just forgetabout it, stop it being an issue’.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Ongoing financial dispute linked to escalation of

parental conflict: financial disputes werecommon in the conflicted groupings andcontributed to further conflict betweenparents, although no explicit linkage wasmade with contact.

• Ongoing financial dispute with direct linkage

with contact: in some of the ongoing battlingcases there was an explicit linkage betweenmaintenance and the amount of contact:

I was paying £93 a week CSA [Child SupportAgency] money. Now she’s getting £10 a weekoff me ’cos I’m off work sick. And she’s telling meI’ve got to go back to work before I can see thechildren during the week again. And that’s why,now, I’ve got to go to court.(Contact parent, ongoing battling)

Logistics

For most families contact poses logistical challengesadditional to those where all family members areco-resident. Contact involves travel between twohouseholds, involving travelling time, additionalexpenses and possibly the question of suitableaccommodation. A number of surveys have foundthat contact is more likely to be sustained and bemore frequent when non-resident parents livenearby (e.g. Maclean and Eekelaar, 1997; Smyth et

al., 2001).In our sample the most frequent contact also

occurred where parents lived closest together, thatis, the reconfigured continuing families andcompetitively enmeshed groupings (Table 5).

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Making contact

Again, this logistical challenge alone cannotaccount for the pattern of contact. Distance was amajor challenge in several groupings, most notablythe ambivalently erratic, flexible bridgers andtensely committed groupings. In the latter groups,however, the commitment of both parents tocontact resulted in ongoing regular contact, whilstin the ambivalently erratic grouping thecommitment of both parents to contact was weaker,including use of indirect contact (see also Macleanand Eekelaar, 1997; Cooksey and Craig, 1998).

The greatest logistical challenges occurredfollowing a relocation. The following two casestudies where the resident parent had relocatedwithin Europe illustrate the linkage betweencommitment to contact and distance.

Case study A: flexible bridger

Contact parent phones every two to three days.Contact occurs every few months with parentstaking turns to travel. During contact the residentparent moved to her new partner’s house to enablethe contact parent to stay with the child:

If Marco didn’t see his father, he would feel that hisfather had abandoned him, or that I was somehow to

blame and prevented it, and it might turn intoresentment against me. He would have the wholegap in his knowledge and his self-identity, he is halfSpanish and I want him to be aware of what Spain islike, and his Spanish relatives. I do think it is importantfor Marco to spend time in Spain with his father tosee where he comes from.(Resident mother)

Case study B: competitively enmeshed

Contact was disputed prior to relocation, with thecontact parent wanting more contact. The residentparent relocated overseas following a court case.There were continuing disputes about the contactarrangements specified in the court order, but noreturn to court:

Those statements [to the court] were not adhered to interms of contact, so the whole of the summer holidayssuddenly that wasn’t quite what the statement meant,you know, so all the rules were changed … [it’s] thesevery, very far-reaching assurances that they wouldcertainly encourage the children to phone at least oncea week, write regularly all that kind of stuff, it’s all inthere, none of it’s happened.(Contact father)

Table 5 Mean distance between households (in minutes, by usual form of transport) for UK contact,a by grouping

Grouping Mean distance Number of families Std deviation

Consensual committedReconfigured continuing families 15.00 3 0.00Flexible bridgers 180.00 1 0.00Tensely committed 60.00 22 78.12FalteringAmbivalently erratic 112.50 8 79.37ConflictedCompetitively enmeshed 12.50 4 5.00Conflicted separate worlds 25.00 2 28.28Rejected retreaters 67.50 2 74.25Ongoing battling 20.00 6 11.40Contingent contact 45.00 9 61.75Total 59.40 57 75.20

aFour cases are excluded from the table where the contact parent was based overseas (one flexible bridger,one competitively enmeshed, one ongoing battling, one contingent contact).

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Parenting styles and quality

Whilst differences in parenting style and qualitycan be problematic in intact families, the issue canbecome even more salient in post-divorce families.As with other potential challenges, the extent towhich parenting style was an issue was variableacross groupings, as also was the issue about howconflicts were addressed.

• No, or relatively minor, differences over parenting

styles: in the consensual committedgroupings both parents considered the otherto be a competent parent, or at least one withgood intentions. Conflicts over parentingwere relatively minor and concerned issuesabout, for example, bedtimes and what wereor were not appropriate activities. Thesedifferences were accepted as legitimatedifferences in style or alternatively would betackled without undermining the parentalrelationship, or contact:

I just wanted him to be who he needed to be withthem and they could be who they needed to bewith him. So they would sort that out, I didn’tneed to know about that or to be in that.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

He lets the [children] watch 18 videos. He letsthem stay up very late … I object to the latenights because I get back on Sunday bad-tempered, tired and whatever. So I have hadarguments about that. But he is a good dad tothem.(Resident mother, reconfigured continuingfamilies)

• Significant or major differences over parenting

style: in contrast, in the erratic, and especiallythe conflicted, groupings, there were a rangeof parenting matters that could be disputed,including religious upbringing, leavingchildren unsupervised, being too lax or toostrict about discipline. Underpinning these

conflicts was a perception that the otherparent was less competent than oneself:

I think it is an all or nothing parenting. I think it isumm, I think it is a very unpredictable one, I think[child] is never quite sure where he is at, there islots of treading on egg shells, and always was andis.(Contact father, competitively enmeshed)

He is quite a short-tempered person and he doesshout at them and he parents very differentlyfrom me … he is more disciplined and they will doas they are told and they will sit at the table andeat their meal whether they like it or not. I don’tthink he sees a child as a child. It is characterbuilding, they will do this, if they don’t like it theywill get used to it.(Resident mother, ongoing battling)

Why parents had different perceptions of eachother’s abilities as parents is impossible todetermine. We did not measure the ‘quality’ ofparenting to identify whether or not parents in theconflicted groupings were dealing with moreserious parenting problems than in the consensualcommitted groupings. As a consequence we cannotknow whether levels of conflict led to heightenedawareness of parenting differences, or whether, onthe contrary, perceptions of poor parenting werethe reasons for disputes. Whatever the reason, andwe suspect that both processes were in operation,there was a stark difference between the consensualcommitted and the other groupings in perceptionsof parenting ability with consequences for contact.

Risk/safety issues

There was a wide range of risks that impacted oncontact, including domestic violence, abduction,and child abuse and neglect as well as concernsabout possible accidents to children throughinadequate supervision.

Precisely how risk impacted upon contact wasfiltered through a range of other factors. One factor

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Making contact

was the perception of current risk. In a number ofconsensual committed families there had beenviolent incidents in the past, precipitating orsurrounding the separation, but there was nocurrent perception of risk. Where at least oneparent was concerned about current or future risk,precisely how this did shape contact was againlinked to a range of other factors, most notably, inthe contingent contact grouping, to commitment tocontact and the availability of services.

Mediators

The previous section outlined a range of challengesthat families face over contact. The pattern ofchallenges differed across the sample, with somefamilies facing more significant challenges thanothers. To a considerable extent, how individualsperceived and responded to these challenges wasrelated to another layer of mediating factors, that is,beliefs and discourses, relationship skills andexternal involvement. These mediating factors inturn were linked to the direct determinantsprocesses discussed above.

Beliefs and discourses

Parental beliefs about contact were important inshaping how parents responded to challenges, and,in turn, were related to commitment to contact androle clarity.

There were three ‘belief/discourses packages’about contact expressed by parents, distributedunevenly across the sample:

1 dominant child welfare2 alternative child welfare3 parental and child welfare.

Dominant child welfare

This set of ideas almost exactly mirrored theprovisions of the Children Act 1989. The key ideawas the principle of ‘putting children first’, whichwas associated with a belief in the importance ofongoing contact with the non-resident parent as a

means to meet child rather than adult needs. It alsoincluded the idea of separating child and adultissues, with an injunction, so far as possible, to notargue in front of the children or denigrate the otherparent whilst continuing to make joint parentaldecisions:

Well I really do think the cliché of not using yourchildren as part of your armoury either in terms ofmoney or access if you can possibly avoid it,whatever may have happened between the two ofyou, they don’t deserve any of it and if you do have tosplit up it needs to be as good as you can make it forthem.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

In addition, although the role of new partners/step-parents might be extensive, it had clear limitsand was not a replacement for the contact parent:

He doesn’t try to pretend to be a dad, he is Jim …and he has been the one that is around, he has takenher to school, done all the sorts of things a dad doesreally, but a very clearly defined role, he is not herfather.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

Alternative child welfare

The second set of ideas relates to a pre-Children Act1989 conception of child welfare consistent with thewell-known work of Goldstein et al. (1979). Againparents expressed ideas of putting children first butthis was based on the concept that children wouldfare best by building their relationship with theresident parent (and possibly his/her new parent)and letting go of the past relationship with the non-resident parent:

I’m taking her out once a week, we’re going out foran hour or two hours, on this part-time basis, youknow. And I thought well this is just fucking ridiculousyou know, this is just not worth it you know, and Ithought you’re just better off with you mum, Lisa,you know you really are.(Contact father, ambivalently erratic)

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Step-parents were conceived as a possiblereplacement for the absent biological parent:

From the time we got married they called [newhusband] dad and they called him dad all the waythrough and to me they saw him more as a dad thantheir original dad.(Resident mother, ambivalently erratic)

She applied to have the children adopted with her newbloke, and you can imagine getting this letter saying‘our clients have thought about this very carefully and itis clear they are a family unit, we are thereforeenclosing the forms of consent for adoption’.(Contact father, ongoing battling)

Parental and child welfare

The third set of ideas also emphasised the needs ofparents after separation. Parental needs could begiven equal prominence with children’s needs, orthe articulation of the needs of parents might meanthat children’s needs gained limited recognition:

You cannot say the contact is important for thechildren, but should not have any importance to theabsent parent, and the absent parent is just theperson who should sign the cheque. You are fullyentitled to see them, as much as the children areentitled to see the parent.(Contact father, ongoing battling)

And now I know [laughs] they are getting fed up, wellthey have been fed up for some time … But Isuppose it is better than me seeing them for aweekend once a fortnight.(Contact father, conflicted separate worlds)

Ideas about child welfare, or ‘putting childrenfirst’ were widely adopted by parents in this study,although the interpretations of what this meant inpractice were very different, underpinning differentlevels of commitment to contact and how parentstalked about their response to challenges. Parentsin the consensual committed groupings referredonly (and continuously) to dominant child welfareprinciples and used these ideas to explain how they

were trying to conduct contact. These beliefs werealso shared by parents in the contingent contactgrouping, although resident parents also addedtwo riders, that contact should occur only if it wereas safe as possible and as long as it were consistentwith children’s expressed wishes. Resident andcontact parents in the competitively enmeshedgrouping also subscribed to these principles, buttheir perception that the other parent was notreciprocating was a source of further parentalconflict.

The alternative child welfare principles wereadopted, in some cases reluctantly, by parents, bothresident and contact parents in the ambivalentlyerratic grouping, whilst the parental and childwelfare principles were articulated mostconsistently by contact parents in the ongoingbattling group. The only group without a consistentbelief system were resident parents in the ongoingbattling group who made reference to elements ofall three packages without wholly adopting any.This may reflect the difficulty of finding a sociallysanctioned explanation of their approach to contactin the context of what appear to be strong socialnorms in support of contact.

This raises the question about why differentbeliefs are adopted and why they are retained orrejected. Are beliefs unshakeable and do theydetermine other responses, or are they essentiallychangeable given what happens with contact? Ourstudy suggests that both are possibilities. Someparents stuck to their beliefs despite significantchallenges to them. Resident parents in thecontingent contact grouping used dominant childwelfare beliefs to explain their continuingcommitment to contact, despite ongoing concernsabout risk and the behaviour of the other parent. Incontrast, in the ambivalently erratic grouping, someof the resident parents were in the process ofswitching to alternative child welfare principles inresponse to the inability to establish regularcontact, although they may of course have beeninitially ambivalent about these beliefs anyway.

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Relationship skills

Relationship breakdown, and the variouschallenges identified above, can generate a widerange of emotions for parents, including feelings ofloss, betrayal, rejection, anger, guilt, failure andfear. How these emotions were managed wasstrongly associated with the quality and quantity ofcontact, particularly in terms of the quality ofrelationships and commitment to contact. To aconsiderable extent this was dependent uponindividual characteristics or attributes, particularlythe capacity to think through problems, empathyand insight, and an ability to compromise. Theseindividual characteristics were, however, exercisedin the context of a relationship with the otherparent. There were, for example, parents in theconsensual groupings who had been in highlyconflicted arrangements in previous relationships,highlighting the importance of thinking aboutrelationship skills within a relational context.

Empathy and insight

Few, if any, of the adults in the sample behavedperfectly to each other. There were conflicts anddifficulties in the consensual groupings, and, mostobviously, in the contingent contact grouping. Inthese groups at least one of the adults generallyhad a greater degree of insight into their own, andtheir former partner’s, feelings and emotions, andgreater empathy for the needs of all participants.

The elements of this included the following:

• Acknowledging one’s feelings:

She said she felt a bit put out that I was seeingsomeone else … And it’s just, I suppose, a naturalfeeling to see somebody you’ve been with for, youknow, x years or whatever suddenly withsomebody else. And that’s how she felt. And I’dfeel the same if she sees anyone now. And I foundout she’d been out with a couple of guys and thatmade me feel a bit … I know how I felt, veryjealous, very … upset me quite a bit. It’s inevitable.(Contact father, flexible bridgers)

• Disaggregating one’s own and children’s needs:

And he’s still their dad and he’s not changed inthat respect. It’s me he’s fallen out with not them.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Acknowledgement of former partner’s needs and

relationship with the child:

As far as I’m concerned he’s their father, he lovesthem and I know it hurt him to leave them. No,he’s their father and they’ve got every right andhe’s got every right to see his children.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Understanding the former partner’s perspective:

When I had had an argument with [ex] orwhatever over the phone, [new partner] actuallyputs her perspective over for me and makes mesee sense because you are too emotionallyinvolved at that time and you are hurt and you areangry and you are feeling powerless.(Contact father, tensely committed)

• Sensitivity to others’ feelings:

My ex-husband’s father has just died and I thinkhe, it would be nice for Daniel to be there now,the, my ex-mother-in-law, is a widow now, itwould be nice for her I think to have her, heryoung grandson around at this time if I canarrange it.(Resident mother, flexible bridgers)

• Balanced appraisal of the other, recognisingtheir strengths as well as weaknesses:

He’s harmless, it’s not, you know, he’s nothorrible, he’s good with Paul, but he’s odd.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Recognising the burdens and constraints on the

other parent:

The hard slog is the week and I think that meansthe mother has to sort of rule the roost so tospeak, and then I come along, oh they can doanything they like, we’ll go out and sort of stay

39


out. Whereas [mother] can’t afford to take themto McDonald’s every day.(Contact father, tensely committed)

I have to give him his due, he would walk … tocome see the children and he would walk back,even to see them for a couple of hours. He hasstruggled and he has fought with his newgirlfriend to carry on seeing them … and I have torespect the guy for it.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Acknowledgement of facilitation of contact:

Very little difficulty [with contact]. She wanted herkids to keep the contact and I have to take my hatoff to her, it really goes against the grain the wayour relationship deteriorated and frankly brokedown, it’s quite open-minded of her.(Contact father, tensely committed)

Parents drew upon a number of ideas andstrategies to do this, including child welfareprinciples and their children’s wishes. Quite a fewdrew upon their own childhood experience offather absence or conflicted divorce, or witnessingfriends and families fighting over contact. Othersused a process of behavioural rationalisation,attributing the behaviour of the other person to anexternal (and understandable) cause rather thaninherent and fixed characteristics:

He had a bad time with his dad when he wasyounger, you know he was in and out of homes and Isuppose in a way he didn’t really know how to be adad properly because he hadn’t had anybody to sortof show him the way.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

In contrast, in the erratic and conflictedgroupings, the other parent was generallyportrayed in black-and-white terms with few if anyredeeming features. Nor could either parentunderstand the behaviour of the other. In theabsence of any understanding of the conflict, thebehaviour of the other was interpreted as being

uncaring, manipulative or punitive:

It’s just her, it’s just her, she is punishing me becauseof the arguments I don’t know what the reason is.(Contact father, contingent contact)

I always felt that he was playing a game that I didn’tknow he was playing so that, if I said anything, therewould always be an ulterior motive while he waslistening and some reason for him, and his perceptionof me is so different to how I feel I am that, if I saidanything, it would drop into another universe almostand then I would be totally astonished by theresponse.(Resident mother, competitively enmeshed)

Compromise and non-escalation

The other critical component of working contactwas that one or both parents managed tocompromise over issues and deal with conflict in away that did not escalate a dispute. There was arange of ways of doing this:

• Letting go and moving on:

You can’t go through life harbouring resentment,you only get one shot at it, so you’ve just got togo on. I know girls that are stuck in the past,deeply resentful of their husbands and whatthey’ve done and the kids are pulled backwardsand forwards and I can’t see the point, you know,because it’s not going to change what’shappened.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Developing alternative investments, e.g. in anew social life/relationships, education orjobs, etc.

• Period of time-out: where there is no directcontact between parents, for example gettinganother person to accompany children onhandovers.

• Diverting anger, most frequently towards the‘other woman/man’ though with noimplementation:

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You do get angry because you can’t help it andsometimes letting the anger out is, you have tojoin a gym or bang something, because it is verydifficult not to let that anger out onto the personthat has made you angry even if it makes nodifference. I am going to let it out somehow, she[new partner] is a possibility, if she comes acrossme. Yes, it is ridiculous, I mean I am not a violentperson in any way.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Accepting differences in parenting style:

He’s very sort of into computers and stuff like thatso they do quite a lot of that which I don’t kind offully approve of, but I just have to step backbecause it’s not my time with [child], you know,it’s [father’s].(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Non-accusatory approach to conflict, dealingwith disciplinary conflicts in a calm way, notjumping to conclusions:

[Son] was saying something to do with [newpartner] being nasty to him and I thought well thatdoesn’t sound very good and I thought wellinstead of like phoning up and going ‘grrrr’ downthe phone at her, I spoke to [father] I said ‘lookyou know, [son] probably interpreted it all wrongyou know because he got told off for somethingbut can you tell me what happened?’ And he toldme and I said ‘oh right’ you know because what[son] said was different to what actuallyhappened.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

• Ability to talk through issues, in establishingand renegotiating arrangements andboundaries:

I didn’t have a problem with him coming in andhaving a cup of tea. But we found that it did upsetthe children, it confused them. And we talkedabout it and we decided that it would be better ifin future, not because of any ill-feeling, that he

took them at the door rather than coming into thehouse.(Resident mother, tensely committed)

Nonetheless, dealing with the other partner wasdifficult, even in the consensual committed group.Ideally, both parents should demonstrate the samelevel of insight and relationship skills. This did notoccur often. More typically, instead of alwaysworking through anger and hurt throughnegotiation and discussion, one or both parentssuppressed or deflected their anger or hurt withresidential parents experiencing a ‘child welfareburden’ and contact parents feeling insecure abouttheir role.

Restrained honesty

The ability of parents and children to communicatewas also vital for high quality contact, particularlygiven that different children in the sample wanteddifferent amounts and types of contact at differenttimes. The ideal, identified by children, was openand honest communication about contact:

Talk to your parents. Let them know how you feeland, if you don’t like something, tell them, becausethat’s the only way it’s going to get changed. If theydon’t have a choice, they’re just being cartedbackwards and forwards without choice.

Interviewer: And is that something you feel that youhave been able to do, more or less or …?

Yeah. I can talk to my parents about things like that.


However, the message about openness wastempered by a belief that not everything had to bealways fully disclosed. Children did not want tohear all the details of their parents’ arguments,although in some of the conflicted cases they weredrawn into them. Equally, children appreciatedbeing able to talk freely about what they did withthe other parent, but again this was a question ofbalance, with children having a choice about what

41


they confided with whom:

Now when I come back I go, ‘Yeah, had a good time.Yeah, that was good.’ And then just walk up to myroom, listen to some music, go back down and watchTV. Just let the dust settle a bit. Make sure she’s notthinking about it and then come back downstairs. Sothen I know I won’t be asked about it again [laughs].(Child, 13–15, tensely committed)

If I have an argument with someone, mum’ll alwayssay, ‘Can’t you see their point of view?’ Whereas dadwould be, ‘Oh I can’t believe they didn’t agree withyou’. So talking to dad about things, especially thingsabout mum, is quite difficult. I mean, you never likehearing horrible things about your parents, so I justdon’t talk to him about mum.(Child, 16–18, tensely committed)

It was clear, however, that the ideals of restrainedhonesty were not often met. Many parents had greatdifficulty in talking to children about sensitiveissues, including arrangements for contact (and seeWalker, 2001, Chapter 24, where few parents passedon specially designed leaflets about divorce tochildren). In its most extreme form this meantcontinuing uncertainty for children in theambivalently erratic grouping where contact hadceased without explanation. However, there werealso children in the consensual groupings,particularly younger children, who felt that they hadnot been consulted about contact (and see Dunn andDeater-Deckard, 2001; Butler et al., forthcoming):

No one has ever asked me to decide what I want.

Interviewer: If they did, how would you decide?

Spend a lot of time thinking on it.


Interviewer: Did anyone ask you about how you feltabout going then?

Sometimes [pause]. No, not really.


The dominant child welfare principlesarticulated by parents in the consensual groupingstended to emphasise continuing parentalresponsibility and amicability, with less explicitemphasis on always consulting pre-teenagechildren directly about specific arrangements. Incontrast, in the conflicted groupings where parentscould not agree, and in the contingent contactwhere the presumption of contact was moreproblematic, there tended to be (although notalways) more direct emphasis on what childrenwanted. Finding an appropriate balance betweenconsulting children and burdening them withresolving adult conflicts, as in some of thecompetitively enmeshed cases, was difficult.

Equally, children found it hard at times tobalance articulating their own needs with wantingto protect the feelings of their parents (and seeSmart et al., 2001):

Obviously protect the children from things, but don’thide things from them, because me and my brotherknew a lot more than my mum and dad thought weknew. We knew a lot of what was going on, youknow, and we felt as if we were kind of being pushedout of it and that sort of thing and children see andhear a lot more than what is realised. You know,instead of hiding things, be open about it and just say,‘All right me and dad don’t like each other, we don’tget on’, that sort of thing, rather than trying to protectit all from them and saying ‘no everything’s fine’. Andbe open about their feelings and not try and pleasethe parents, you know, be themselves, you know,don’t try to do things just to please the parents. Iremember when dad couldn’t afford to take us outand he’d feel guilty and that would make us feel guiltyand we’d feel as if we shouldn’t even be complainingor thinking of, you know, and just be sitting there. Itstarted to become uncomfortable, because we didn’twant to hurt him or upset him, that was like our mainaim, not to upset dad this weekend. Or, if the parentssay, ‘Are you unhappy about this?’, then say if youare, because a lot of the time we used to say, ‘No, it’s

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Making contact

fine, it’s fine’. I mean I remember mum saying to me‘Me and daddy are going to split up. Are you OK withthat?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it’s fine’. And I rememberthinking, you know, well, OK I’m upset. I wasn’t thataffected by it, but at the same time I did want to talkabout it and say, well I am unhappy, but I just said,‘No, that’s fine’, you know, trying to be grown up andthat sort of thing. So I would say definitely to talkabout it and you can overcome a lot of walls andboundaries by talking about things.(Child, 16–18, tensely committed)

The consequences of the difficulties withcommunicating were that some children did nothave the contact that they would have preferred.Some children who wanted to make changes toarrangements were concerned that one parentmight feel rejected or that they might not be takenseriously:

Just say to your mum and dad that ‘this isn’t workingcan we arrange something else to fit more fair andequal see’.

Interviewer: Right. Do you think that would be a hardthing to say or quite easy?

No it would be very hard ’cos it is hard to speak toyour mum and dad about this. Because you don’tknow if you are going to put this in a way that yourmum and dad are going to take it seriously and thatyou want to see the other person more. She doesn’tmean for one not to see her.


Other young people felt unable to tell theirparent that they did not like their new partner.Some scaled down contact as a result, but this, inturn, could result in some feelings of ‘non-attendance guilt’:

I did feel bad. For a bit I did feel bad about not goingup and not seeing dad so much, but in the end, Idon’t know, I think it was kind of easier for them in away, if I didn’t come up, because I know that my

step-mum did find it quite hard when I was there.(Child, 16–18, tensely committed)

In some cases parents encouraged children toopenly express their feelings, for example givingchildren explicit permission to alter contact to suittheir needs, but this was a rare occurrence:

I’ve said to him if there’s something that hedesperately wants to do on a day when he’ssupposed to be seeing me, I don’t mind. All I ask isthat he phones up and tells me. I just said to him, youknow I don’t mind what you do, just be open with itabout it with me and I won’t be upset because I candeal with the fact that you’re growing up and that youare being individual, just talk to me.(Contact father, tensely committed)

External agencies and networks

The last mediating factor to consider is the role ofexternal agencies. We look first at how externalagencies are used before considering their impacton contact.

Solicitors were by far the most commonlyutilised form of professional support for parents,although the extent of involvement was highlyvariable (Table 6). In six families neither parent hadconsulted a solicitor. In 24 families at least one, butgenerally both, parents consulted a solicitor tomake arrangements for the divorce and financialsettlement. However, in these families, whereneither parent had any particular problems withcontact, the consultations centred on the divorceprocess and financial settlement. Parents eithercould not recall any discussion of contact orreported that solicitors had encouraged parents tomake their own arrangements if possible. None ofthese parents had anticipated being advised aboutcontact or were surprised or disappointed by theprivate ordering message (and see Eekelaar et al.,

2000). In five other families at least one parentelicited the help of a solicitor with sorting out aspecific problem with contact. In none of thesecases was further legal action taken. It is

43


noteworthy that the highest level of legalinvolvement in the consensual committedgroupings was two families where there was anearly exchange of solicitors’ letters. Otherwise theconsensual committed arrangements were entirelyprivately ordered. Solicitors and the courts weremore extensively used in the erratic and conflictedgroupings.

The impact of the legal system on contact ishighly variable therefore. In almost half of the casesin the sample there was barely any direct influenceof either lawyers or the court system on the natureof contact arrangements. However, in the erraticand conflicted groupings where families had moreextensive involvement with the legal system, therewas little evidence that this enhanced the quality ofcontact, and in some cases it appeared positivelyunhelpful in helping families deal with challenges.

In terms of the quantity of contact, residentparents in the ambivalently erratic groupingexpressed considerable frustration with theinability of lawyers and the courts to encourage orforce non-resident parents to establish a contactregime. In the conflicted groupings, courtinvolvement for the rejected retreaters wasfollowed by no contact and, whilst a tightly definedcontact schedule was laid down by the court in theongoing battling group, it itself became a source offurther conflict. Nor was there much more successin enhancing the quality of contact in the conflictedgroupings, with court involvement followed bycontact without parental communication in theconflicted separate worlds group or furtherentrenched positions in the ongoing battling group.

The one positive aspect of court involvementwas with the contingent contact group, at least forresident parents who found both lawyers andjudges to be supportive of their concerns. However,even here, the lack of supervised contact isworrying, as are cases where the non-residentparent refuses to use a contact centre or where theresident parent has had no legal advice.

Apart from solicitors and courts there was littleuse of other agencies. The exception was theongoing battling grouping who typically had awide range of agencies involved, including lawyersand CAFCASS, police, mediation, social services,psychiatrists and contact centres. A small numberof parents from different groupings had soughtsupport from a therapist or counsellor. Consistentwith Davis et al. (2001, p. 264), there was a very lowlevel of awareness or understanding of mediation,with many confusing mediation with marriagecounselling or Relate:

We didn’t go for mediation at all because we bothknew that it was irretrievable.(Contact father, competitively enmeshed)

Only five families had attended out-of-courtmediation. An agreement was reached in only twocases, neither of which endured or enabled parentsto negotiate effectively themselves.

Few children received any professional supportin dealing with the divorce or managing contact.Instead, children’s confidants were their parents,siblings, extended family members (particularly theresidential grandmother) and friends. Threechildren had seen either a school counsellor or

Table 6 Highest levels of legal involvement per family, by umbrella grouping

No General Specific Solicitors’ In/out of Courtlegal divorce contact letters court mediation welfare

Umbrella grouping contact advice advice re contact or agreement report

Consensual committed 4 19 2 2 – –Erratic 1 3 1 1 1 1Conflicted 1 2 2 1 8 12Total 6 24 5 4 9 13

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counsellor attached to a GP surgery, and all hadfound it helpful. Children’s experiences of the courtwelfare process were less positive, with aperception that they had not been listened to or hadinsufficient influence (see Chapter 2 of this reportand Buchanan et al., 2001).

What emerges strongly from our data is thelimited capacity of the legal system to repair orfacilitate human relationships. Families using thecourts were facing significant challenges and thecapacity of the courts to help families deal with thechallenges that they faced was extremely limited.This was a small sample and there will be manycases where the involvement of solicitors and thecourt system will facilitate contact. However, theinability of the courts to improve parentalrelationships, and the potential to increase stressand conflict, does echo the findings of other recentstudies (e.g. Pearce et al., 1999; Buchanan et al.,2001).

Time

Having examined the direct determinants ofcontact, challenges and mediating factors we finallyhave to look at how these operate over time. Wewill look first at how contact changes in relation tochildren’s age and stage, and then take a broaderlook at how contact develops over time.

Children’s age and stage

The ability of children to influence arrangementsand the type of contact that they wanted waslinked to some extent to their age and stage. Acommon pattern was for teenagers to assumegreater control of the frequency of contact thantheir younger siblings or, in longer-termarrangements, to take more control as they grew upthan they had formerly done so, often scaling downcontact to some extent (see also Smart et al., 2001).The reduction in contact could be a response todifficulties with relationships, particularly therelationship with the contact ‘step-parent’. In other

cases it was about wanting to see a parent whenthey wanted to rather than when it was scheduledor simply because contact could clash with otherthings that young people wanted to do, particularlybeing with friends:

Yeah I like going out and stuff, but sometimes it is abit annoying. I have to go out with my dad whensometimes I’d prefer just to hang around with myfriends and stuff.(Child, 13–15, tensely committed)

This gradual shift towards peer relationshipsand away from family relationships is typical ofintact families. However, not all young people wereable to assume control of arrangements. The levelof parental conflict in some families meant thatsome teenagers were stuck in rigid arrangementsset by parents.

Time post-separation

In 34 per cent of families in the sample theseparation had occurred within the last two years, in33 per cent three to five years previously and in 33per cent six to 15 years previously. The families inour sample were therefore at different stages incontact arrangements. Nonetheless, one of the moststriking aspects of the data was the presence of twocommon trajectories of either a virtuous or a viciouscircle over time established early in the contactprocess. Where parents had a workable relationshipin the beginning, the parental relationship continuedto improve with the exercise of contact (and seeMaclean and Eekelaar, 1997). This was reflected inthe amount of contact, with consensual committedarrangements stable over time, althoughappropriately tapering off for teenagers. Conversely,in the erratic and conflicted groupings, wherecontact was problematic to begin with, parentalrelationships did not improve and, in the ongoingbattling cases, continued to decline, as did theamount of contact. In the ambivalently erraticgrouping both the parental relationship and amountof contact continued to decline from a low base.

45


Once contact had become problematic it wasextremely difficult to get it back on track, whilstconversely, once contact was established in arelatively conflict-free manner, then the reasonablygood relationships between participants reinforcedeach other and enabled families to ride outchallenges such as the arrival of new partners.Some families in the tensely committed group didhave problems with contact in the early stages withsome non-resident parents finding it difficult tocommit to contact or with, in one case, a refusal ofcontact by the resident parent in the early stages.Persistent facilitation of contact by the residentparent in the former cases did result in stablecommitted arrangements being established, whilstin the latter a change of heart by the resident parentprompted by the children meant that the parentspulled back from the brink of court action andcontact was resumed and started to work well.

Otherwise the operation of the virtuous/viciouscircle meant that there was very little movementbetween groupings. The exceptions were some ofthe contingent contact cases where the threat ofviolence/abuse had diminished or disappearedand the parental relationship went on to resemblethose in the tensely committed grouping. Inaddition one family that initially shared most, butnot all, of the characteristics of the reconfiguredcontinuing families grouping moved clearly intotensely committed type arrangements following arenegotiation of boundaries between the parents.

Summary

In this chapter we have outlined the factors thatshape the amount and experience of contact. Ouranalysis highlights the multiplicity of factors thatdetermine contact. The critical or directdeterminants are joint commitment to contact, roleand relationship quality. However, we have alsoemphasised the interaction between these threeprocesses over time, as well as the influence ofchallenges and the role of mediating factors. Aboveall what is apparent is the degree of circularityabout making contact, with family members actingand reacting to the behaviour of others within thecontext of a network of relationships, the ongoinginteraction between different processes (within andbetween direct determinants, challenges andmediating factors) and the pattern of contact overtime in the form of vicious and virtuous circles.What this highlights are the limitations of analysesof contact that blame, or praise, the actions of asingle individual for making contact work or notwork, whether it is a mother or a father. It alsohighlights the need for effective early interventionwhere contact is not working. One of the worryingaspects of the study is how ineffective thepotentially positive mediating factor of externalintervention was in many cases in managing tobreak a vicious circle of deteriorating relationships.We consider the implications of this in thefollowing chapter.

46

This study has implications for policy-makers,practitioners and parents. We discuss each of thesegroups in turn.

Implications for policy-makers

The findings of this study provide both good andbad news for policy-makers. The intention of theChildren Act 1989 was that parents should, wherepossible, make their own decisions about contact.The evidence from this study is that this is thecorrect approach, enabling parents who have thecapacity to do so to make workable contactarrangements without external intervention thatare consistent with the child welfare principles ofthe Act. Solicitors appear to be supportive of thisapproach, acting as a resource to be drawn uponwhere parents raise contact problems, butotherwise encouraging parental decision-making.

The major problem is where contact is notworking. The findings from this study suggest thatexisting interventions have limited capacity to shift‘not working’ into ‘working’ contact, or to preventa continuing downward spiral in relationships. Theevidence from the faltering and conflicted cases isthat the courts are not the places to makerelationships work. Where conflict between parentsis intense, as in the ongoing battling group,prolonged court engagement was not only failingto provide a solution but was also exacerbating theconflict and the distress of both children andparents. As a consequence we would concur withSturge and Glaser’s (2000, p. 625) call for ‘greatercreativity’ in addressing contact difficulties and therecent report on Making Contact Work by theChildren Act Sub-committee (CASC) of the LordChancellor’s Advisory Board on Family Law(Advisory Board on Family Law, 2002) thereforerepresents a welcome rethinking for supportservices. The report recommends an expanded rolefor CAFCASS in working with families rather thanmerely reporting, and a wider range of otherservices including in-court conciliation, counselling

and parenting programmes. There will always be arole for courts in making decisions about contact(or no contact) and in framing contact scheduleswhere necessary. However, our study suggests thatresources should be redirected towards work that isfocused on helping parents to find some resolutionof relationship difficulties rather than merelyimposing a solution. CAFCASS is the agency that isbest placed to undertake this work.

We would also strongly endorse the CASCreport recommendation for additional funding forboth supported and supervised contact centres(Advisory Board on Family Law, 2002, para. 8.35).The data from the contingent contact groupingprovided some evidence that families are beingreferred to contact centres that offered a lower levelof supervision than resident parents perceived wasnecessary.

The faltering cases, where contact was irregularor had ceased, posed a particular problem that doesrequire further research and debate about possiblesolutions. Neither of the CASC reports (AdvisoryBoard on Family Law, 1999, 2002) has addressedthis issue and yet we know that substantialnumbers of children lose contact, and from ourstudy it was clear that this can be a major source offrustration for some resident parents and asignificant loss for some children. The reasons forthe lack of commitment are complex. Kruk (1992)found that the fathers who disengaged were morelikely to be those who had been most involved inparenting prior to the divorce. This was not thecase in our ambivalently erratic group, although itwas apparent that non-resident parents foundcontact with children and the former partnerpainful. We would like to see some form ofvoluntary intervention, of joint or individualcounselling, that might engage both parents. Wewould also welcome a debate on the merits orotherwise of the introduction of a statutory duty onnon-resident parents to maintain regular contactwhere this is consistent with children’s welfaresimilar to s.1 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995.

4 Implications

47

Implications

Even where contact was working well, it couldbe a long-term struggle for both parents andchildren. The CASC report (Advisory Board onFamily Law, 2002) recommends that a range ofinformation about divorce and contact should bemade more widely available to parents. This is ahelpful suggestion. However it is theimplementation, rather than awareness, of childwelfare principles that generates most difficulties.We would recommend that information goesbeyond statements of principles and includesstrategies for making contact relationships workincluding those identified by parents in this study.

Contact is not always going to work well or atall, nor will all parents be able to fully support theirchildren. We would like to see a wider range ofservices available to support children. We wouldlike more information for children about divorce/separation and contact to be available in school andwe would strongly recommend the greateravailability of counselling services for children. Wewould particularly like to see the disproportionateexpenditure on investigation and enforcement inhigh conflict cases being diverted to enableCAFCASS officers to offer greater support tochildren caught in intense conflict.

Implications for practitioners

All the parents in our study were attempting to dothe right thing as they saw it, although theirperspectives about what the right thing was couldbe highly divergent. We strongly endorse the CASCreport (2002) that envisages a wider role forCAFCASS in working on relationship issues. Ourmajor reservation with the report is that it impliesthat it is the behaviour of resident parents alonethat blocks enforcement of contact orders (e.g.Advisory Board on Family Law, 2002, para. 14.53).Our analysis of the ongoing battling groupsuggests that the picture is more complex, withboth parents needing help in working moreeffectively together. We would recommend that

CAFCASS considers piloting the therapeuticmediation approach to working with high conflictcases that has been developed in the US (e.g.Johnston and Campbell, 1988; Kelly and Johnston,2001).

This study provides some evidence thatsolicitors and courts are taking domestic violenceseriously. We would recommend, however, thatassessment procedures need to be tighter toprevent inappropriate referrals of families wherethe degree of risk (of domestic violence, but alsochild abuse and neglect, and abduction) exceedsthe level of supervision offered by a contact centre.We would also recommend that for some familieslong-term use of contact centres should be possible,rather than aiming to ‘move families on’ as soon aspossible. We are also concerned about the numberof cases where resident parents attempt to managerisk by arranging ‘informal supervision’ throughfriends and relatives. One possibility in thesecircumstances is for the development of contactcentre ‘outreach services’ or, at least, for residentparents to have the opportunity to discuss riskreduction strategies with professionals.

Nonetheless, we would concur with Sturge andGlaser’s (2000) opinion that contact is not alwaysconsistent with child welfare, or indeed the welfareof adults. It is essential to have a wider range ofinterventions aimed at reducing conflict and/orrisk. However, where a range of solutions havebeen tried and exhausted, as with some of theongoing battling families, then there comes a pointwhen enforcement of contact should cease on childwelfare grounds, at least for a defined period. Atthis point it might be helpful to have on record thedesire of the non-residential parent to have hadcontact. In such cases there should be arequirement that schools should provide copies ofschool photographs and school reports to bothparents unless contra-indicated on child protectiongrounds.

Just as difficult is the question of how torespond to contact parents who have dropped out

48

Making contact

or are in the process of dropping out of contact. Wewould recommend that all practitioners encouragenon-resident parents to stay in contact as much aspossible as well as supporting resident parents inengaging contact parents. Where parents find directcontact too painful practitioners should emphasiseto non-resident parents the importance of indirectcontact, including cards and photographs, as wellas the need to give children a reason why contact isnot possible rather than simply disappearing.

A number of studies, including this one, haveidentified that children and young people feelinsufficiently consulted by parents and bypractitioners about the contact arrangements thatdirectly involve them. We recommend thatinformation-providers and other practitionersemphasise to parents the importance of consultingwith children about contact arrangements, and onan ongoing rather than one-off basis. It would beparticularly helpful if parents could be given ideasabout how to do this without leaving children withthe burden of making decisions where parents arenot able to agree contact themselves.

Implications for parents

The greatest burden of making contact work doesfall on parents. Making contact work is difficult.Contact works best when the kinds of problemsidentified above are absent or less salient. But highquality contact requires more than the absence ofproblems, it requires ongoing proactive efforts tomake it work. The recipe for good contact requiresof parents that:

• both are committed to contact

• the contact parent accepts their non-residential status and the resident parentproactively facilitates contact and includesthe contact parent in decision-making

• both support the children to have arelationship with the other parent, andespecially do not denigrate or verbally orphysically threaten the other parent

• they adopt a realistic appraisal of the otherparent, recognising both strengths andweaknesses

• they recognise that some conflict ordisagreement is inevitable, but find a way tomanage conflict without escalation

• they consult children about contactarrangements

• they find time to be alone with childrenwithout new partners always being present.

This is a tall order where emotions are raw andwhere the other parent may be less than ideal. It isimportant, however, to have realistic expectationsabout contact. Contact itself and parent–parentrelationships do not have to be perfect, merely‘good enough’. Nor does the list of ingredients of‘good (enough) contact’ form a prescription foreach family about how contact should beorganised. Each of the ingredients listed above isimportant, but they can be put together in differentways with different amounts of contact to suit theparticular circumstances of each family, as in thethree different types of consensual committedcontact (reconfigured continuing families, flexiblebridgers, tensely committed) and some of thecontingent contact cases.

Making contact work is a difficult anddemanding process for all family members.However, the evidence from our study clearlyindicates that getting contact wrong places evengreater burdens on children and on adults and few,if any, rewards.

49

Advisory Board on Family Law: Children Act Sub-committee (1999) Contact between Children and

Violent Parents. London: Lord Chancellor’sDepartment

Advisory Board on Family Law: Children Act Sub-committee (2002) Making Contact Work: A Report to

the Lord Chancellor. London: Lord Chancellor’sDepartment

Amato, P. and Gilbreth, J. (1999) ‘Nonresidentfathers and children’s well-being: a meta-analysis’,Journal of Marriage & The Family, Vol. 61, No. 3,pp. 557–73

Buchanan, A., Hunt, J., Bretherton, H. and Bream,V. (2001) Families in Conflict: The Family Court

Welfare Service: The Perspectives of Children and

Parents. Bristol: The Policy Press

Butler, I., Scanlan, L., Robinson, M., Douglas, G.and Murch, M. (forthcoming) ‘Children’sinvolvement in their parents’ divorce: implicationsfor practice, Children and Society

Cooksey, E. and Craig, P. (1998) ‘Parenting from adistance’, Demography, Vol. 35, pp. 187–200

Davis, G. et al. (2001) Monitoring Publicly Funded

Family Mediation. London: Legal ServicesCommission

Davis, G. and Pearce, J. (1998) ‘Privatising thefamily?’, Family Law, Vol. 28, October, pp. 614–17

Dunn, J. and Deater-Deckard, K. (2001) Children’s

Views of Their Changing Families. York: YPS for theJoseph Rowntree Foundation

Eekelaar, J., Maclean, M. and Beinart, S. (2000)Family Lawyers. Oxford: Hart Publishing

Emery, R. (1994) Renegotiating Family Relationships.London: Guildford

Furniss, C. (2000) ‘The process of referral to afamily contact centre: policies and practices’, Child

and Family Law Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 255–81

Goldstein, J., Freud, A. and Solnit, A (1979) Beyond

the Best Interests of the Child. New York: Free Press

Hester, M. and Radford, L. (1996) Domestic Violence

and Child Contact Arrangements in England and

Denmark. Bristol: The Policy Press

Johnston, J. and Campbell, L. (1988) Impasses of

Divorce. New York: Free Press

Kelly, J. and Johnston, J. (2001) ‘The alienated child.A reformulation of Parental Alienation Syndrome’,Family Court Review, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 249–65

Kruk, E. (1992) ‘Psychological and structural factorscontributing to the disengagement of noncustodialfathers after divorce’, Family and Conciliation Courts

Review, Vol. 30, pp. 81–101

Maclean, M. and Eekelaar, J. (1997) The Parental

Obligation. Oxford: Hart

Manning, W. and Smock, P. ‘New families andnonresident father–child visitation’, Social Forces,Vol. 78, No. 1, pp. 87–116

Pearce, J., Davis, G. and Barron, J. (1999) ‘Love in acold climate – Section 8 applications under theChildren Act 1989’, Family Law, Vol. 29, January,pp. 22–8

Seery, B. and Crowley, S. (2000) ‘Women’s emotionwork in the family’, Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 21,No. 1, pp. 100–28

Smart, C., Neale, B. and Wade, A. (2001) The

Changing Experience of Childhood. Cambridge: Polity

Smyth, B., Sheehan, G. and Fehlberg, B. (2001)‘Patterns of parenting after divorce’, Australian

Journal of Family Law, Vol. 15, pp. 1–36

Stephens, L. (1996) ‘Will Johnny see daddy thisweek?’ Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 17, pp. 466–94

Strauss, A. (1987) Qualitative Analysis for Social

Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

References

50

Making contact

Sturge, C. and Glaser, D. (2000) ‘Contact anddomestic violence – the experts’ court report’,Family Law, Vol. 30, pp. 615–29

Walker, J. (2001) Information Meetings and Associated

Provisions within the Family Law Act 1996. London:Lord Chancellor’s Department

Wolchik, S. and Fenaughty, A. (1996) ‘Residentialand nonresidential parents’ perspectives onvisitation problems’, Family Relations, Vol. 45, No. 2,pp. 230–8

51

We used a wide range of sources to incorporate asmany different types of arrangements into thesample as possible. Our main sources weresnowballing (using our personal contacts and thoseof interviewees) and a court service mailout todivorce petitioners (Table A1.1).

Our goal was to interview ‘family sets’ wherepossible. Not surprisingly, it was easier to gather allperspectives in the consensual groupings (TableA1.2).

Analytical approach

The analysis was conducted using groundedtheory. Transcripts were open coded line-by-lineand a researcher-generated (rather than pre-developed) code assigned to the relevant text. Forexample, the code ‘performance anxiety’ wasgenerated from the following data:

I did do some planning for the weekends as well totry and make sure they were enjoying it enough tokeep them coming.

All further data expressing the same conceptwere assigned the same code. Codes werecontinually reorganised within a tree hierarchy (e.g.groups of ‘child welfare discourses’, ‘flexibility/reliability issues’, ‘problems’, ‘benefits’).

From the first few interviews conducted it wasapparent that contact took very different forms.After a dozen or so interviews had been coded webegan to develop groupings of contactarrangements. Two families were identified wherethe parent interviews had produced very similarlists of codes. A ‘memo’ was then writtensummarising the key characteristics of what wassubsequently called the ‘Reconfigured continuingfamilies’ grouping. Further groupings were thendefined and further refined in relation to eachother. This process also helped in identifyingimportant phenomena across the sample, each withdifferent dimensions, e.g. facilitation could vary onthe dimension of high/low (later proactive, neutral,reactive, blocking). A table of the corecharacteristics of each grouping can be found inTable A1.3.

Appendix: Further sample details

Table A1.1 Sample source by umbrella grouping

Consensual Conflicted/First point of contact committed Faltering Competitive Total

Court service 7 3 6 16Local media (newspapers,

newsletters, radio) 5 1 8 14Posters (surgeries, refuges, etc.) 2 2 5 9Snowballing 13 2 4 19Contact centre – – 3 3

Table A1.2 ‘Fullness’ of interviewing by umbrella grouping

Consensual committed Faltering Conflicted/Competitive

Triad 10 3 6Parental dyad 3 – 1Parent–child dyad 7 4 4Contact parent 1 – 10Resident parent 6 1 5

52

Making contactTa

ble

A1

.3C

ore

ch

ara

cte

rist

ics

of

gr o

up

ing

s

Con

sen

sual

com

mit

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onfl

icte

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red

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lyA

mb

ival

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etit

ivel

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ate

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ing

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ies

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lds

retr

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tact

Ove

rall

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ount

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Form

Reg

ular

ity

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amily

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eser

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ular

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fam

ily. J

oint

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brat

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trai

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elfa

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sepa

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ing

fam

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ate

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eral

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tion

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cont

act t

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near

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ly

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egul

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by

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over

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ular

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rent

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lega

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Nil

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Stay

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(reg

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ns

53

Appendix: Further sample details

Exp

erie

nce

ofco

ntac

t of

child

ren

Impo

rtan

ce o

fco

ntac

t to

resi

den

tpa

rent

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tpa

rent

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wit

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lvem

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to c

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Hig

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No

dat

a

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Hig

h

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me,

mon

ey)

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h

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ly,

late

rd

iffi

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(und

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s

Posi

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Low

Low

(ove

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e

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t

Low

Mid

Hig

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Non

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No

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Mid

–hig

h

Mix

ed

Hig

h

Som

e(d

ista

nce,

mon

ey)

Low

Tab

le A

1.3

Co

re c

ha

ract

eri

stic

s o

f g

r ou

pin

gs

(co

nti

nu

ed

)

Con

sen

sual

com

mit

ted

Falt

erin

gC

onfl

icte

dR

econ

figu

red

Con

flic

ted

con

tin

uin

gFl

exib

leTe

nse

lyA

mb

ival

entl

yC

omp

etit

ivel

yse

par

ate

Rej

ecte

dO

ngo

ing

Con

tin

gen

tfa

mil

ies

bri

dge

rsco

mm

itte

der

rati

cen

mes

hed

wor

lds

retr

eate

rsb

attl

ing

con

tact

54

Making contactTa

ble

A1

.3C

ore

ch

ara

cte

rist

ics

of

gr o

up

ing

s (c

on

tin

ue

d)

Con

sen

sual

com

mit

ted

Falt

erin

gC

onfl

icte

dR

econ

figu

red

Con

flic

ted

con

tin

uin

gFl

exib

leTe

nse

lyA

mb

ival

entl

yC

omp

etit

ivel

yse

par

ate

Rej

ecte

dO

ngo

ing

Con

tin

gen

tfa

mil

ies

bri

dge

rsco

mm

itte

der

rati

cen

mes

hed

wor

lds

retr

eate

rsb

attl

ing

con

tact

Con

tact

pare

ntac

cept

ance

of

role

/st

atus

Inte

rpar

enta

lre

lati

onsh

ips

Pare

ntal

allia

nce,

dec

isio

n-m

akin

g

Safe

tyco

ncer

ns a

ndal

lega

tion

s

Ext

erna

lin

volv

emen

t

Rel

atio

nshi

ple

ngth

, mea

nye

ars

Tim

e si

nce

sepa

rati

on,

mea

n ye

ars

Hig

h

Frie

ndly

Hig

h

Ad

equa

tesu

perv

isio

n

Act

ivel

yav

oid

ed

11 2

Hig

h

Frie

ndly

Hig

h (b

utlo

gist

ical

cons

trai

nts)

Ad

equa

tesu

perv

isio

n

Act

ivel

yav

oid

ed

7.50

2

Mid

–hig

h

Fair

ly fr

iend

ly,

occa

sion

alro

ws

Mid

–hig

h

Ad

equa

tesu

perv

isio

n,co

ntac

tabi

lity

Fina

ncia

lm

atte

rs o

nly

11.5

5

6.68

Hig

h

Am

biva

lent

or

brok

en d

own

Low

.R

esid

enti

ald

ecis

ion-

mak

ing

Phys

ical

chas

tise

men

t

Som

e, b

utun

help

ful

5.38

3.75

Low

Tens

e,co

nflic

tual

,co

mpe

titi

ve

Mid

but

stra

ined

Em

otio

nal

abus

e –

self

and

chi

ldre

n

Non

e,po

tent

ially

des

ired

13.6

0

4.00

Low

Non

-exi

sten

t

Abs

ent

Em

otio

nal

abus

e –

self

and

chi

ldre

n

Ear

lym

edia

tion

14.5

0

4.50

Unc

lear

Non

-exi

sten

t

Abs

ent

Insu

ffic

ient

dat

a

Cou

rt h

eari

ngpr

ompt

sw

ithd

raw

al

14.5

0

5.50

Low

Hig

hly

conf

lictu

al

Ind

epen

den

td

ecis

ion-

mak

ing

Em

otio

nal,

phys

ical

and

sexu

al a

buse

Ext

ensi

ve(a

ndun

help

ful)

10.1

4

3.43

Mid

Tens

e

Res

iden

tial

dec

isio

n-m

akin

g

Abd

ucti

on,

dom

esti

cvi

olen

ce,

phys

ical

and

sexu

al a

buse

Mos

tly

exte

nsiv

e(s

uppo

rtiv

ela

wye

rs),

supe

rvis

ion

prob

lem

s

6.80

4.40

making contact: how parents and children negotiate and ... · how parents and children negotiate...

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