ALLOCATING CUSTODIAL RESPONSIBILITIES AT DIVORCE |
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| Authors: | Robert F. Kelly Shawn L. Ward |
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| Affiliation: | Robert F. Kelly (Ph.D., Rutgers) is a professor of sociology at Le Moyne College, where he codirects the Le Moyne/Zogby International Contemporary Catholic Trends national survey project and teaches courses in family, demography, law and social science, and methodology. His research focuses on changing legal definitions of families, family preservation and reunification programs, the proposed American Law Institute child custody determination standards, and the development of predictive models of the legal outcomes of divorce. Kelly's articles have appeared in journals such as the Family Law Quarterly, the Journal of Marriage and the Family, and the Rutgers Law Review. He has held visiting teaching and research appointments at the University of Rochester, Duke University's Institute of Policy Sciences, and Child Trends, Inc. (Washington, D.C.).;Shawn L. Ward, Ph.D., is vice president for student development and associate professor of psychology at Le Moyne College. He received a master of science in educational psychology from Fordham University in 1981 and earned a doctorate in developmental psychology from Temple University in 1987. He has been chosen the Rev. Msgr. A. Robert Casey Teacher of the Year and also received the Rev. Robert E. O'Brien S.J. Service Award at Le Moyne. His research interests are in the field of social cognitive development and individual differences. |
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| Abstract: | The American Law Institute's Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations contains a set of detailed reform proposals for the allocation of custodial responsibility for children among parents, including the approximation rule . This article examines two bodies of social science evidence that explicitly or implicitly were used to justify the approximation rule, attachment theory and research and research on the impact on children of shared parenting arrangements subsequent to divorce . These two bodies of evidence used to justify the approximation rule are reviewed and evaluated to provide an assessment of its social-based rationales. |
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