Parents May Be Required to Undergo Counseling Before Divorcing

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:00:00 GMT

A Republican Congressman from Texas is hoping to reduce his state’s 50 percent divorce rate by making it mandatory for parents to undergo a marriage counseling course before filing for divorce. The 10-hour course in “conflict management, communication skills, and forgiveness skills" would cost $150 and could, according to Rep. Warren Chisum, spare “kids the anxiety and emotional stress that come with a divorce by their parents.”

Apparently, Mr. Chisum has never met a battered woman. As (almost) everyone knows, it takes a lot of courage and planning for the victims of domestic violence to file divorce papers. Requiring them to first take an expensive course in forgiveness could easily have disastrous consequences for both these women and their children.

Even for well-off, nonviolent couples, this legislation would be ineffective at best and harmful at worst. The fact is, it’s impossible to make a blanket judgment on whether divorce is right or wrong for every family. Research on the subject offers conflicting answers, with some psychologists finding kids always fare better with married parents and others finding that children are more balanced if their unhappily married parents divorce.

As the child of divorce, I am the first to see the validity in encouraging parents to commit to working through hard times. But I am also the first to see that a 10-hour forgiveness course is hardly enough of a remedy to keep couples together.

Interestingly, this same Congressman also recently sponsored a measure that supposedly encouraged marriages to last—by doubling marriage license fees while offering a discount to couples who took a counseling course. Apparently, Rep. Chisum believes that money is the only sure path to a happy union….

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Childcare Relationships and Bickering Parents Affect Kids' Stress Hormones

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:30:00 GMT

It seems self-evident that kids with poor childcare relationships or parents who frequently fight are more stressed than other kids. But now two new studies have established this common sense theory from a biological standpoint, by monitoring the levels of cortisol (the human stress hormone) in preschoolers and 6-year-olds. As parents across the country struggle to afford high quality childcare and to maintain a stable home environment, these studies are unfortunately quite applicable to these trying economic times.

In most people, cortisol levels decrease throughout the day. But for many children in full-time daycare, the stress hormone increases as the day progresses. Researchers found that class size clearly affected children’s moods, with preschoolers in classes of 10 or fewer children producing less cortisol than those in classrooms with closer to 20 other kids.

Children with poor relationships with their daycare providers became more stressed after one-on-one interactions with the teacher, while clingier kids had higher overall cortisol increases throughout the day.

Similarly, a study of 6-year-olds with bickering parents found that those who were very involved in and distressed about the fights produced more cortisol than other 6-year-olds. Since high levels of cortisol have been linked to health and psychological problems, this finding offers a biological understanding of why kids who get very upset by their parents’ arguments are more likely to have psychological problems later. (Whether higher levels of cortisol are a cause or an effect of psychological disorders is not clear.)

The study’s authors hope that understanding the biological basis of stress in young children will change the way kids in these common problematic situations are treated. For instance, monitoring kids’ levels of cortisol could help indicate whether a given intervention is working to relieve stress or not.

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Parents May Be Required to Undergo Counseling Before Divorcing

Childcare Relationships and Bickering Parents Affect Kids' Stress Hormones