High-conflict divorce involving children: parents’ meaning-making and agency

ABSTRACT

Most research, policy discussion and intervention is based on outsider-expert understandings that categorise divorces as well as parents enmeshed in ‘high-conflict’ disputes in polarised and individualised terms. Little, however, is known about parents’ experiences of these disputes, or how they fare in the longer term. This article draws on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 25 mothers and fathers in British Columbia, Canada, who experienced a high-conflict divorce and later came to see the experience as having been transformative despite the many difficulties they faced. Overall, the research found that positive change occurs over time when parents are supported with resources that address their particular needs and challenges. Parents change, make meaning and respond to their circumstances across the life course, thereby exercising agency. This process also occurs in a social, political and legal context that changes over time and across generations.

KEYWORDS:

• High-conflict divorce
• family justice system
• parents’ experiences
• meaning-making
• agency
• life course

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Susan Boyd and the reviewers for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Neoliberalism is a social, economic and political framework, based on a philosophy of liberal individualism, which relies on a free market and state withdrawal from social provision.

2. During prescreening by telephone, participants were provided with Johnson and Roseby’s (1997) definition of high-conflict divorce and identified their divorce process as fitting the definition. While all participants used legal services at some stage post-separation, not all engaged in repeated litigation that ended in court (despite significant and ongoing conflict).

3. Most participants separated prior to this requirement.

4. An example of this pathologisation was provided by Louise, whose former spouse had significant medical and mental health issues that began after they had started a family. Nevertheless, she left no stone unturned in attempting to resolve her child-related issues out of court, despite significant obstacles and considerable expense. Louise later attended a ‘public education’ event about Collaborative Family Law (CFL) and was infuriated by the way CFL and the ‘good divorce’ were set in opposition to high-conflict divorce, ‘they kept talking about “oh, those high-conflict families, they’ll fight about anything!”…and I wanted to throw my water at them.’

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Doctoral Fellowship) and the Law Foundation of British Columbia (Graduate Fellowship).

Notes on contributors

Rachel Treloar

Rachel Treloar recently completed an Interdisciplinary PhD (Sociology, Public Policy and Law) at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her research interests include family law and policy, post-separation parenting and conflict, access to justice, care, and gender relations in family life.