PARENTAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Six-, 12-, and 15-month follow-up data are presented evaluating a program for high-conflict parents. Funded by a grant from Health and Human Services, the program's content reflects an extensive review of research literature, including the relevant literature on personality disorders. Introduced in Phoenix, Arizona in October 1999, the program has served more than 1,000 families in several jurisdictions. Whereas other programs for entrenched, high-conflict cases are typically time intensive, involving 2 to 6 months, this is a one-time 4-hour program. As such, the authors are heartened to report a suprisingly positive—and enduring—response from the parents.     

AGAINST JOINT CUSTODY: A DISSENT TO THE GENERAL BULLMOOSE THEORY

With the exception of the opening section, which is all my own, this article has been written in a kind of collaboration with authors from whose works and reports I have borrowed liberally, with permission. These include the majority report of the 1987–88 Executive Committee of the Child Custody Committee, Family Law Section of the American Bar Association, Professor Carol S. Bruch of the Martin Luther King, Jr. School of Law, University of California, Davis: Joanne Schulman, a gifted attorney who has researched, written and spoken extensively on the subject and the report of the Women's Legal Defense Fund on Joint Custody. Others are cited in footnotes.     

The Effects of Pregnancy Experience on Contraceptive Practice

Retrospective reports of contraceptive use on two occasions of intercourse (separated by 2 years on average) were used to examine change in contraceptive practice as a function of intervening pregnancy experience in a randomly selected biracial (Black, White) sample of 466 female adolescents. Although all groups of adolescents regardless of pregnancy experience improved their contraceptive use, adolescents experiencing an unplanned pregnancy or pregnancy scare appeared to improve relatively more. However, differences between groups could be explained by the differential passage of time, and this was true among both Black and White adolescents. Specifically, ever-pregnant adolescents had been sexually active the longest and showed the most improvement; never-pregnant adolescents who had never had a pregnancy scare had been sexually active the shortest period and showed the least improvement, while adolescents experiencing a pregnancy scare were intermediate on both variables. These findings suggest that prior research may have drawn faulty conclusions about the effects of pregnancy experience on subsequent contraceptive behavior, and that future research on these topics may need to pay greater attention to the passage of time as an important substantive and methodological factor in its own right.