Dividing the Child

An important book for those concerned with family policy: it clarifies the connections among various factors involved in the dissolution process with care and concern...[It] should...assist in refocusing divorce from reform efforts toward the difficult issues of enhancing cooperation and easing adjustments to lives after divorce. -- Alice Hearst * Law and Politics Book Review * Maccoby and Mnookin have provided the first look at what the sweeping legal changes in custody arrangements since the 1970s mean for the daily lives of divorced parents and their children today. Authoritative, rich in insight, it is a report from the postdivorce front that everyone concerned about the future of the American family should read. -- Andrew J. Cherlin, Johns Hopkins University Adds significantly to current knowledge about the roles of law, culture, and psychology in shaping the economic and parenting systems in postdivorce families...Gives a fascinating picture of divorce in process and the interplay between formal legal and informal practical arrangements. -- Barbara Bennett Woodhouse * Contemporary Sociology *

Eleanor E. Maccoby is Barbara Kimball Browning Professor of Psychology, Emerita, at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University. Robert H. Mnookin is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the Director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project. Before joining the Harvard faculty, he was the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation. He has served as a consultant to governments and international agencies and is the author of Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate and When to Fight.

Preface 1. Introduction 2. Understanding the Processes of Divorce 3. Characteristics of the Families Studied 4. Initial Residence and Visitation 5. Child Custody: What Parents Want and Get 6. The Economic Provisions of the Divorce Decree 7. Conflict over the Terms of the Divorce Decree 8. Continuity and Change in Children's Residence and Visitation 9. Parenting and Co-parenting Apart 10. Economic Changes over Time 11. Facing the Dilemmas of Child Custody Appendix A Supplementary Tables Appendix B Methods Notes References Index