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Eight Common Misconceptions about Child Custody and Visitation
Linda Anderson, Ph.D. and Larry A. Cohen, Ph.D.
Web Exclusive

All cultures offer those who are bereaved a process for grieving the loss of a loved one. This is a time-out lasting a week to a year (or longer) during which time those who are left behind are permitted the opportunity to act in a compensatory way for what they have experienced. They are sometimes made to dress in a distinctive way, and even to act irrationally, within the shelter of mourning.

This is not the case when marriages die and there are children involved, a common circumstance in the United States. 1,163,000 American marriages ended in divorce in 1997, affecting two million children at minimum. Psychologists and other mental health professionals conservatively estimate that at least 10% of these divorces are contested, meaning difficult and contentious custody battles for all involved, including the children, who are surely the most affected.

In acrimonious endings to the marriage contract, the "custom" known as the divorce proceeding does not offer much shelter to former partners now opponents. The same person who may have helped to anchor them in the past now often becomes an antagonist, or someone who is perceived as an antagonist. For good reason, the disposition of the children, not the disposition of the divorcing parties, is the primary negotiation the parents must undertake, and they must undertake to negotiate fairly and in the children's best interest at the same time they are bleeding emotionally.

Custody fights preclude a time-out: the children must live somewhere. Mom and Dad have barely begun to lick their wounds, let alone heal them. One partner may have left the other for a new relationship, so while one former partner is striding into the future, the other is still stuck dealing with the past. Or years-long battles have left feelings of revenge. Almost by default, the parents' most precious possessions, the children, become the battleground, if not the very weapons, as the two parties try to settle scores by waging a custody war.

Both grieving parties are called upon to act rationally in the best interests of the children. How can they do this if they hate each other? But they must if they are to find the best solution for all concerned, and if they are to begin the process of their own healing.

In our combined forty years of professional experience - as psychotherapists, as psychological testers, and as court-appointed, forensic examiners who evaluate the fitness of mothers and fathers to gain custody of their children, and as psychologists who are also parents - we have seen a great deal of energy and money misspent to further aims that have nothing to do with the welfare of the children. Many times we are asked to Solomonically award the children to one side or the other when we believe that neither side offers proper and loving parenting, in part because neither is willing to place the children above their own near-term goals of revenge or vindication.

Forensic examiners are constantly evaluating the quality and frequency of parental communication patterns. Daily routines, including the scheduling of extracurricular activities like lessons, clubs and vacations, can become a nightmare for children whose parents are always at odds with each other. Some parents are so enraged with each other that they actually withhold their financial contribution to fund school and camp fees in order to pressure the other parent for payment, which is clearly punishing the victim (the child). Children old enough to understand such things will complain to the court-appointed psychological examiner about the humiliation of being turned away from lessons or receiving letters from their private school because "Mommy or Daddy stopped paying the bill," which is the type of evidence we use to make decisions about fitness. In one recent case, a high-schooler lamented that even though both parents could afford to send him to the private college of his choice, neither could agree about their respective levels of financial responsibility. By default, he attended a local community college.

Fewer passages in life are as painful as the dissolution of a marriage. Even the best of situations may offer only partial solutions. We offer the following eight misconceptions about the child custody process as a step toward considering alternatives to the bloodying and wearying combat we see on a daily basis. If parents could take two steps away from the fracas to think coolly about what is at stake and how the rules of the game are really drawn, everyone would come out ahead, especially the children.

Misconception #1: A parent can actually "win" a custody battle.

In custody visitation matters, there are no winners. Parents often identify with a winner/loser mentality, which is not surprising given the psychological issues of competition and rivalry between "war weary" parents. The court climate is contentious by nature, reinforcing not only the sense of warfare but also the child as property to be divided.

Parents understandably think that the court is going to see a "good guy" and a "bad guy," and of course they want to be the good guy. Yet when both parents are reasonably available, committed and interested in their children, the court is not interested in good guys and bad guys. The court's aim is to understand what arrangements have to be made for the children so they can receive the best from both parents. Obviously, that is not enough to deter people who are emotionally intent on seeing the other party as evil.

When one party can talk about the other parent as a competent individual and not as unidimensionally "bad," this often reflects the level of maturity and capacity for insight the court is looking for in a good parent. In the eyes of the court, a good parent is one who can acknowledge both his own weaknesses and the other parent's strengths.

Neither parent can win because the children psychologically can never win, except in documented cases of abuse. That there are no winners should be understood before the decision to actually pursue a case in court. Parents would do well to turn to custody mediation as one path to circumventing the frequently endless and painful legal process. Custody mediation is a dispute-resolution process provided by certified practitioneers that imparts essential information about custody matters to both parties as well as facilitates more cooperative co-parenting across both households.

Misconception #2: I know best what my child's needs are.

Parents who experience themselves as the injured party often project the same role onto the children, and the adversary nature of the court system often reinforces this. To put it another way, "I will now protect my child from the same cruelties, wrongs, and burdens that I myself had to ensure for so long."

This attitude does not help the child enter the complex world of a two-household reality. She is often challenged with the task of forging and maintaining intimate relationships with stepparents, new sibling and extended family networks. Even if the other party's parenting skills are somewhat questionable, the notion that she is not good enough ends up being problematic for everyone, especially for the child, who is going to have a regular and consistent relationship with the other parent regardless of how the first one feels.

Parents who feel their role has been minimized and devalued by the other parent sometimes go to extremes in trying to correct the balance. In one case, a parent had his preschool children memorize a nursery rhyme that contained his telephone numbers even though they weren't of age to use a telephone. We have known others so insecure about their noncustodial role that they have called their children upwards of ten times a day. One school-age girl became so resentful of this pressure that she refused to speak to her father over the telephone at all.

Parents need to understand that, regardless of who has made mistakes in the past, their child psychologically represents the unity of both parents. In many ways, the denigration of one parent by the other becomes a statement that can foster the child to consciously or unconsciously denigrate himself or herself. Hopefully, each child eventually will come to understand the balance between each of his/her parent's strengths and weaknesses.

Misconception #3: Children understand things the same way we do.

As parents and guardians, we are not technical experts about our child's development. We learn as we go on, through hard-won experience. Nevertheless, some basic information about how children see the world can help ground a common sense understanding of the building blocks of their psychological foundation

Children's sense of time is not the same as adults. In fact, for the first few years of life, a child has practically no sense of time. This becomes important in visitation matters, where arrangements have to be made for frequency and duration of visits. You cannot tell a child of two that you'll see him in a week and expect him to have any conception of what you are talking about.

This issue manifests in the young children's need for a consistent rhythm regarding meals, sleep, toilet training, and medication schedules. A parent's desire for equity and fairness in the visitation schedule may conflict with accomodating the developmental needs for consistency if a child is sick and refusing to leave the primary caregiver. So when a child is sick, the visitation schedule may have to be temporarily changed to take into consideration the need for the child's comfort and familiarity with his environment during illness and other periods of stress.

Because children understand things differently depending on their cognitive developmental stages, we must constantly adjust arrangements for them, and even how we talk about separation, visitation, and divorce. As children mature and become members of athletic, social and religious groups, both parents need to become increasingly flexible about visitation arrangemnts to accomodate their participation in extracurricular activities. Sadly, we often see parents asking children to choose between spending time with them and participating in a desireable activity.

Misconception #4: If my child complains about visiting the other parent, that parent must be doing something wrong.

A child will always protest when the time comes to leave for the other parent's home. The parent who hears this often takes it at face-value, partially out of protectiveness, partially because it reinforces that parent's own negative feelings about the former spouse or partner.

In the process of separation and divorce, the fact is that the child is often under unspoken pressure to take sides. Depending on the child's cognitive stage, he may consciously take sides, or simply prefer the presence of the parent he is with. He may also be acting out of loyalty to the parent whose household he is leaving (oftentimes the very house or apartment he grew up in), or trying to invoke the loyalty of that parent, who now needs to show she loves the child by taking sides herself.

Let us note that one cannot automatically assume that nothing is wrong in the other party's home. There may be something wrong, and the child may be trying to tell that to the parent. It is a mistake, however, to make this assumption and act on it without substantiation.

Misconception #5: If a parent is not paying child support, he or she should not be allowed to spend time with the child.

Canceling visitation because a parent is not paying child support not only reinforces the idea of the child as property to be divided and distributed according to the payment plan, but it ignores the feelings and wishes of the child. An eight-year-old in a case from several years ago described waiting for the mail with bated breath every first of the month to check if her dad had sent the support payment. She "hated it" when her parents fought about the lateness of the check and whether or not she would be allowed to visit her father for the weekend because the check hadn't arrived yet.

In many cases, children are all too aware of the anticipated child support check and often internalize the parent's anxiety about whether or not the check will arrive, or whether it will be in the amount stated by the court. Children have told us in confidence that they know the exact fee of child support because they have intercepted the mail and read the checks through the envelope. The value and worth of the child is sometimes experienced as contingent upon the timeliness or amount of the check, especially if this is the attitude held either by the parent who receives the check or who is resistant to making payments. Sometimes, of course, is not possible for the latter parent to make payments, no matter how necessary they are nor how much he would like to make them.

Regardless of the value of the check, the child wants both Mommy and Daddy. As expressed earlier, the child is an expression of the unity of both parents. The child needs both in order to develop into a healthy adult, and withholding the free opportunity to enjoy the presence and love of either parent is to deny the child something of great importance.

Misconception #6: The other parent is "the same person" he or she was when the two were together in a close relationship.

Often the frozen perception of one parents towards the other can exist over a period of many years. In spite of the fact that younger parents often change in terms of their personalities, lifestyles, and attitudes, the other parent may neither understand nor wish to understand these changes. In turn, they may continue to convey their older, outdated vision of who that person once was, a perception that may have been distorted to start with.

Anything that works against the children having a full and complete experience of either of the parents work against the children's welfare. When children grow up, as they always will (sometimes to Mommy's and Daddy's surprise), they come to realize that Mommy is not like Daddy said, and vice versa. Now able to have their own feelings and perceptions, they may be upset that one parent has been unfairly demonized the other, and may compensate accordingly.

Misconception #7: Things quickly come back to "normal" after parents separate.

Parents going through the process of divorce and custody are not familiar with the literature on the effects of separation and divorce on children. But it is a given to psychologists and the court that for children to return to an emotional baseline after a separation, a substantial period of time is required. It takes at least two years for things to come back to "normal" under the best of circumstances.

Parents who are separating or divorcing want to get on with their own lives as quickly as possible, and often expect their children to proceed on the same timetable. But, as we have noted, children's sense of time is often quite different from that of their parents, so on that basis alone it may be impossible to move ahead at the same speed.

By the same token, what does "normal" mean to parents and children? On the surface, it may mean that parents have new spouses or partners, and that the children have readjusted to school, are doing their homework, and are playing with their new or siblings or stepsiblings. But for the parents who reasonably feel some guilt about the effects of the divorce on their children, "normal" may mean simply that they can see their children as less affected by the divorce, lessening the guilt they feel.

The problem is in assuming that things are back to normal before they actually are, which means the children now carry the burden. It may also deprive the children of an open ear, which they desperately need at this point. Children may continue to need to talk about their distress for a substantial period.

In one particularly dramatic example, in an ongoing case, an eight-year-old boy witnessed his father kill his mother. When the father was incarcerated the paternal grandmother filed for custody, against a maternal cousin with whom the boy had spent most of his time since his mother's death. The boy's maternal grandmother asserted that this child did not need therapy because "children forget." All the other data indicated that the boy did not forget but was in a difficult battle to push away this experience of loss. He has become more disruptive in school and is having problems with his academics. "Normal," to the grandmother, means that he can embrace his father's family as easily as he did before the murder, but "normal" to the child is the current peace and security he is enjoying with his maternal cousin, who represents the mother he has lost (not to overlook whatever else she provides emotionally and materially). The grandmother is displacing her own wish to forget about what actually happened.

Misconception #8: Forensic examiners want to hear "what's wrong" with the other parent, and will see things your way.

An important factor in a forensic evaluation is the extent to which each parent will foster a positive relationship with the other. Still arguing about other aspects of the settlement, or bitter about betrayal, many parents forget how reasonable they appear if they do not sing a litany of complaints about someone who is still a partner in parenting. Words of praise for your former spouse will give you credibility. A balanced view of your child's other parent that takes into account strengths as well as weaknesses indicates to the examiner that you are not being vindictive and that you do not have a distorted and unfairly negative view of your former spouse.

Your openness to receive new information (for instance, that your former spouse may have made positive changes in his or her life, and can now be a better parent) is evidence not only of your own balance but also says that you will not try to unduly influence your child's view of his other parent.

In cases where there is a clear danger to the child, the courts are interested in creating arrangement in which the child can get the most positive element from each of her parents, and this has to do with how each parent presents the other to the child. In most cases, there is no evidence of a clear danger. All of the outside observers - judges, court officers, forensic examiners, and probably also the attorneys, all of whom witnesses to scores or even hundreds of case, and as such well familiar with the animosities involved - know that the truth on both sides actually reflect more balance than either party sometimes allows, even if the precise facts are beyond their knowledge. Parents who bring to the table a balanced view of the table will be far more credible than someone who can only remember what is monolithically horrible and awful.

This brings us again to an essential truth about parents who are leaving each other and the children who are of necessity left in the middle. Children need both parents, because parents reside inside the child in the same way that parents live through their children: children reflect the unity, now sundered, of both parents. Separating and divorcing parents who attempt to act out through their children the hurt and anger they are feeling will interfere with their children's most fundamental nourishment: free, easy and unconstrained access to each parent's love. Courts will approve and applaud any arrangement that promotes the child's welfare through recognition of this simple fact.