Mark L. Goldstein
American College of Forensic Psychologists Symposium
March 2009
Custody evaluators, lawyers and judges have often utilized the “tender years” doctrine as a guideline for establishing visitation guidelines, particularly overnight visitation. This has been especially true for young children and infants. Kelly and Lamb (2000) reviewed the available literature on attachment and found that most infants form attachments to both parents at the same age. However, these attachments are consolidated by continued interactions, “ideally in a broad array of contexts, whether or not the parents live together.”
Lamb and Kelly (2001) also argued that many clinicians and custody evaluators continue to be wedded to Bowlby’s (1951) early idea of monotropy, the notion that infants form a single relationship with one parent, before all others. Furthermore, they argued that Bowl by’s theory of attachment has maintained popularity, despite a plethora of research that suggests that infants are capable of multiple, equal attachments.
The research does support Lamb and Kelly’s position in large part. The majority of infants develop attachments to both parents at approximately the same age, despite the fact that infants often spend less time with their fathers than with their mothers. During the first year of life, most infants develop preferential relationships with their primary care provider, most often the mother (but frequently with a day care provider rather than with either parent). However, research consistently shows that the amount of time that infants spend with their two parents does not affect the security of either relationship. In intact families, infants show evidence of attachment to fathers despite the fact that fathers often spend little time interacting with them. For example,
Ainsworth (1967) studied attachment in Uganda and observed that infants were attached to their fathers by age one, even though the fathers did not reside in same home as the mother and infant, and contact was irregular. A number of other researchers have focused on infants and young children growing up on a kibbutz in Israel and found that children were appropriately attached despite limited contact with parents.
More recent studies have shown that the time that the father spends with the infant is unrelated to the child’s attachment security with the father. Furthermore, the child’s attachment to the father is not affected by the amount of time that the father engages in changing diapers or clothes, feeding or putting to sleep. However, there is some evidence that the father’s sensitivity affects infant attachment indirectly (Belsky, 1996).
More importantly, the misunderstanding and/or distortion of attachment theory has led to rigid and at times, total exclusion of fathers from the lives of their young children. In addition, it has served to support the notion that mothering is synonymous with good parenting.
Kelly and Lamb (2000) and Lamb and Kelly (2001) have argued that the young child’s attachment relationships are consolidated by continued interactions, in many contexts, whether or not the parents live together. They also indicated that both parents should be actively involved in the child’s life, provided that both parents have adequate parenting skills or the capacity to learn parenting skills. Furthermore, they suggested that both parents should have a role in discipline and limit setting, childcare activities such as bathing, bedtime rituals, dressing and responding to nightmares or night terrors, as well as recreational activities. As a result, they argued that the developmental literature supports overnight visitation for even young infants in many cases, as long as there is no significant psychopathology in the parent and there is a capacity to parent or learn to parent.
This position was supported by a study by Pruett, Ebling and Insabella (2004), who investigated connections between the occurrence of overnights, schedule consistency, number of caretakers and young children’s adjustment to parental separation and divorce. Results indicated, “children in most families, even those who receive only moderately adequate nurturing, develop important and lasting attachments to their parents.” They also posited that consistency of overnight visitation with both parents gives children the best opportunity of adapting and adjusting to two homes.
Solomon and Biringen (2001) agreed with Lamb and Kelly that the attachment literature has been distorted or misunderstood, but disagreed with some of their recommendations for visitation. First, they commented that daily transitions for children younger than age two and/or alternating overnights was not supported by empirical evidence. This was particularly true when parental conflict was high and parent communication about the child was low (Solomon, 2005; Solomon, 2001; Solomon and George, 1999). They argued that when these dynamics were evident, overnight visits should be avoided until the child was three years old. However, they believed that a variety of visitation plans could work when parental conflict was low and communication about the child was good. Separations of more than one day from the primary caretaker were not problematic when the conditions were right.
Warshak (2000; 2002) posited that overnight visitation, even for very young children, was important because it provides opportunities for a wide range of involvement and contributes to the establishment and consolidation of the parent-child relationship. In turn, he argued that the child’s long-term adjustment was enhanced.
Gould and Stahl (2001) contended that evaluators and judges need to consider family dynamics, as well as the research in making decisions related to visitation plans for infants and young children. Specifically, they suggested that one need look at the parenting history of the child. If the child has a history of joint care taking when the family was intact, then it would be developmentally appropriate to continue to foster the child’s relationship between the child and both parents by having overnight visitation with each parent. By contrast, if one parent had provided most of the care giving, it would be more appropriate for the primary parent to continue in the primary role and gradually increase the other parent’s time with the child.
Gould and Stahl also suggested that it was essential to evaluate the attachment history between each parent and the child, the skills that each parent has in caring for the child, the parenting strengths and weaknesses in each parent, the temperament of the child, as well as the use of non-parent caregivers. In conclusion, they reflected the necessity of looking at each case individually, in light of research.
REFERNCES
Ainsworth, M. (1967) Infancy in Uganda: Infant care and the growth of love. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.
Belsky, J. (1996) Parent, infant and social-contextual antecedents of father-son attachment, Developmental Psychology, 32, 905-913.
Bowlby, J. (1951). Maternal care and mental health. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.
Gould, J. and Stahl, P. (2001). Never paint by the numbers, Family Court Review, 39, 372-375.
Kelly, J. and Lamb, M. (2000). Using child development research to make appropriate custody and access decisions for young children, Family and Conciliation Courts Review, 38, 297-311.
Lamb, M. and Kelly, J. (2001). Using the empirical literature to guide the development of parenting plans for young children, Family Court Review, 39, 365-371.
Pruett, M., Ebling, R. and Insabella, G (2004). Critical aspects of parenting plans for young children, Family Court Review, 42, 39-59.
Solomon, J. (2005). An attachment theory framework for planning infant and toddler visitation arrangements in never-married separated and divorced families. In Grunsberg and Hymowitz (Eds) A handbook of divorce and custody: forensic, developmental and clinical perspectives. New York: The Analytic Press.
Solomon, J. (2001). An attachment theory framework for planning infant and toddler visitation arrangements in never-married separated and divorced families. In Gunsburg and Hymowitz (Eds) Divorce and custody: contemporary developmental psychoanalytic perspectives.
Washington D.C.: APA.
Solomon, J. and Biringen, Z. (2001). Another look at the developmental research, Family Court Review, 39, 355-364.
Solomon, J. and George C. (1999). The development of attachment in separated and divorced families: effects of overnight visitation, parent and couple variables, Attachment and Human Development, 1, 2-33.
Warshak, R. (2000). Blanket restrictions: overnight contact between parents and young children, Family and Conciliation Courts Review, 38, 422-445.
Warshak, R. (2002). Who will be there when I cry in the night? Family Court Review, 40, 208-219.