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Introduction
Publications
Publications (131)
We conducted an evaluation of a court-initiated randomized controlled trial comparing outcomes for parents assigned to either a no-program control group or one of two online parenting programs-Two Families Now (TFN) or Children in Between (CIB)-among 221 parents in initial divorce or separation court cases. We gathered parent report measures of fam...
Family courts are increasingly interested in online parenting programs for divorcing and separating parents, particularly during the COVID‐19 pandemic. To our knowledge, no previous study has evaluated the barriers to and facilitators of parent participation in these programs for family law cases. We interviewed 61 parents in the midst of family la...
A majority of separating parents seeking family mediation report intimate partner violence (IPV). Whether mediation is appropriate for such parties is controversial. Modified mediation approaches may enhance party safety by keeping them physically separated (e.g., shuttle and videoconferencing mediation). Unfortunately, little research exists regar...
Prior research demonstrates an association between parental divorce and separation and a range of negative child outcomes, including sleep difficulties. We used the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing longitudinal dataset to examine whether associations between parents ending a romantic relationship (i.e., parental relationship dissolution) and ch...
This article addresses the training of mediators participating in a randomized controlled trial (“RCT”) that examined the outcomes of family law cases with children in which parents reported high or concerning levels of intimate partner violence (“cases reporting high IPV”). In the RCT, we studied two specialized forms of mediation designed to prot...
Many divorcing/separating parties seeking mediation to resolve family-related issues report intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization from the other party in the case. It is imperative that mediation staff screen parties for IPV so they can make informed decisions regarding how to proceed with mediation. Existing IPV screens for mediation have...
Objective: When separated parents are in dispute, safety risks escalate for both parents and their children. Risk screening in family law services is typically rare or limited to a unidimensional appraisal of domestic violence victimization risk for women. Systematic attention to proximal and contextual patterns has been largely neglected to date....
Attachment status in early childhood is a key yet modifiable contributor to the development of social–emotional competence. The security and organization of the infant–mother attachment bond is particularly susceptible to stressors in the caregiving environment. While the impacts of normative interparental conflict on infant attachment are increasi...
We utilized the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing longitudinal dataset to evaluate associations among a maternal relationship dissolution, childhood sleep, and child development, specifically externalizing and internalizing symptoms, attention and social difficulties, as well as cognitive ability, when children were ages 5 (n=3590) and 9 (n=3062...
We utilized the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing longitudinal dataset to evaluate associations among a maternal relationship dissolution, childhood sleep, and child development, specifically externalizing and internalizing symptoms, attention and social difficulties, as well as cognitive ability, when children were ages 5 (n=3590) and 9 (n=3062...
Saint-Eloi Cadely et al. found longitudinal patterns for the perpetration of both psychological and physical intimate partner violence (IPV), including actively and minimally aggressive patterns. The current study builds on these findings by examining four theory-derived variables (interparental aggression, social-information processing [SIP] biase...
Background: Attachment security in the early years plays an important role in a range of psychosocial outcomes in later life, and continues to be an important focus of prevention and intervention research. The couple relationship has long been argued to play a seminal role in offspring attachment1. The literature has established longitudinal associ...
Background: Attachment security in the early years plays an important role in a range of psychosocial outcomes in later life, and continues to be an important focus of prevention and intervention research. The couple relationship has long been argued to play a seminal role in offspring attachment1. The literature has established longitudinal associ...
Objective:
From a developmental systems perspective, the origins of maladjusted behavior are multifaceted, interdependent, and may differ at different points in development. Personality traits influence developmental outcomes, as do socialization environments, but the influence of personality depends on the socialization environment, and the influ...
Whether family law cases with a history of severe intimate partner violence and/or abuse (IPV/A cases) should have the option of settling family-related issues using mediation is the subject of significant debate. Recommendations for potentially safer ways to mediate IPV/A cases have been developed, including shuttle and online mediation. Given the...
Researchers do not agree on how intimate partner violence (IPV) emerges and changes from adolescence to young adulthood. This may be because change in these behaviors varies across individuals. The present study uses a longitudinal, person-centered approach to examine whether there are multiple classes or patterns of change in the perpetration of I...
Introduction
The current study evaluates whether an indirect effect exists from a parental relationship dissolution to child development through the child’s sleep quality.
Methods
Fragile Families Study data (FFS; Teitler et al., 2001) were used. When child participants were age 5, mothers reported on their relationship dissolutions in the previou...
We examined potential predictors of initial court agreement and 1-year relitigation in a sample of contested paternity cases involving unmarried parents coming to court to establish paternity, child support, and other issues. Cases participated in an RCT of a parent program and of a waiting period between establishment of paternity and court hearin...
This article reviews the current research literature on divorce and the separation of unmarried parents. More specifically, we review the demographics of separation, including how common it is and who is at greatest risk to experience it, the consequences of separation for adults and children, and the possible interventions both to prevent separati...
Despite a lack of research on parent programs for separating unmarried parents, many judicial officers
mandate participation. Rudd, Holtzworth-Munroe, Reyome, Applegate, and D’Onofrio (2015) conducted
the only randomized controlled trial of any online parent program for separating parents, ProudToParent.
org (PTP), and related court processes (e.g....
There are a number of salient public policy issues in the family law field that have invoked impassioned policy debates on a recurrent basis. In the absence of a body of research to address these critical concerns, advocates under the guise of social science scholarship have exacerbated the confusion and controversy by construing the scant availabl...
This is the second of two articles on the risks of advocacy bias in the reporting of research findings when boundaries are blurred between social science research and advocacy in the pursuit of public policy. In the first article we identify common ways in which social science researchers and reviewers of research—wittingly or unwittingly—can becom...
Given controversy about whether mediation is a safe option for parties with a history of intimate partner violence (IPV), there is agreement that staffshould conduct systematic IPV screening prior to conducting family mediation sessions; yet, measures to do so are limited and new. The present study is a randomized controlled trial comparing use of...
Despite a lack of research on parent education programs for unmarried parents, many judicial officers mandate participation. We recruited an understudied sample likely at high risk for negative outcomes-182 court cases involving unmarried parents on government assistance in which paternity was contested and then established via genetic testing orde...
With the ultimate goal of improving child outcomes, child-informed mediation approaches were developed for divorcing and separating parents. To test the initial outcomes of these approaches, Ballard, Holtzworth-Munroe, Applegate, D'Onofrio, and Bates (2013) randomly assigned divorcing parents seeking mediation to either mediation as usual (MAU) or...
In the United States, 42% of children are born to unmarried mothers (Martin et al., 2013). Unmarried parents and their children are at risk for a number of negative outcomes. However, there are hypothesized variables that may affect the risk level for such families (e.g., inter-parental relationship quality, parenting), suggesting possible domains...
This study investigated whether reported levels of intimate partner violence (IPV) and/or abuse (IPV/A) victimization are related to reaching agreement and to the content of mediation agreements of parties seeking to resolve family- and child-related issues. Whether or not parties reached agreement was analyzed for 105 cases at a law school mediati...
We investigated reliability and validity of the Mediator's Assessment of Safety Issues and Concerns (MASIC), a screening interview for intimate partner violence and abuse (IPV/A) in family mediation settings. Clients at three family mediation clinics in the United States and Australia (N = 391) provided reports of the other parent's IPV/A. Internal...
Approximately 41% of children in the US are born to never married parents (NMPs; Martin, 2011); such children are more likely than children of married couples to experience parental separation, putting them at higher risk for a variety of negative outcomes. Yet, little research has been conducted on such families. One potential place for interventi...
With over 1 million children in the United States affected by parental divorce or separation each year, there is interest in interventions to mitigate the potential negative consequences of divorce on children. Family mediation has been widely heralded as a better solution than litigation; however, mediation does not work for all families. One prop...
There is growing interest in interdisciplinary training programs for law students. The goal of these programs is to prepare law students for the real world interdisciplinary settings they will face in their careers. However, there exists little research to provide evidence of the utility of such training. This study examined the effectiveness of an...
Measures of head injury, executive functioning, and intelligence were given to a community sample composed of 102 male perpetrators of intimate partner aggression (IPA) and 62 nonaggressive men. A history of head injury and lower mean score on a measure of verbal intelligence were associated with the frequency of male-perpetrated physical IPA as re...
We coded the content of mediation agreements reached by families receiving parenting‐related mediation services at a law school community clinic. We compared agreements reached by families identified as having or not having a history of intimate partner violence (IPV) on a variety of issues hypothesized to be related to risk of future interparental...
Whereas cognitive variables are hypothesized to play an important role in intimate partner violence (IPV) etiology and intervention, cognitive assessment methods have largely targeted offenders' explicit, controlled cognitive processing using paper-and-pencil questionnaires prone to social desirability biases. Using an implicit measure of attitudes...
Low concordance of reports across partners has consistently been observed when partners report the frequency of intimate partner violence (IPV) and psychological aggression (PA) in their relationship. Researchers have been unsuccessful in the quest to discover systematic biases across reporters, perhaps due to examining constructs that are not the...
Guidelines for Evidence-Based Treatments in Family Therapy are intended to help guide clinicians, researchers, and policy makers in identifying specific clinical interventions and treatment programs for couples and families that have scientifically based evidence to support their efficacy. In contrast to criteria, which simply identify treatments t...
Intimate partner violence (IPV) and parental separation are two related and serious potential problems faced by children; both are associated with increased risks for children. Proponents of mediation for separating parents believe that, relative to traditional adversarial court proceedings, mediation may lead to better outcomes for children by dec...
Handling mediation cases with a history of intimate partner violence (IPV) is one of the most controversial issues in the field of divorce mediation. Before deciding whether and how to mediate cases with IPV, mediators must first detect violence. Using random assignment of cases to an enhanced screening condition (n = 30) and to a standard screenin...
The way couples communicate during conflict discussions has been found to be a reliable predictor of marital satisfaction. However, in previous research, there has been little experimental control over the selection of topics. The present study examined, in a sample of 15 newlywed couples, whether affective displays during the discussion of a sexua...
Divorce mediation, an alternative to litigation when resolving disputes raised by the dissolution of a marriage or the separation of unmarried parents, has gained popularity over the past few decades. Yet, research is needed to better understand what processes make family mediation successful and for whom family mediation is successful. To study pr...
A large number of litigants in family court are proceeding without legal representation and placing a significant burden on court personnel and judges. It is unclear whether this trend toward self-representation is also true for litigants in family mediation and whether these clients also place a significant burden on mediation programs. Given conc...
Screening for intimate partner violence and/or abuse (IPV/A) in family mediation is important, perhaps particularly among cases without attorney representation. While most mediators agree that it is ideal to consider IPV/A in case planning, there is less agreement regarding the need to universally and systematically screen for IPV/A among all cases...
While other authors have regarded both the presence and the absence of attorneys in family law mediation as cause for concern, little attention has been given to the questions raised when one party is represented and the other is pro se. This article presents data on mediating parties' premediation concerns, fears, and feelings of preparedness, as...
Children experiencing parental separation may benefit from forms of mediation that systematically help parents consider the needs and best interests of their children. Child Focused (CF) and Child Inclusive (CI) mediation approaches were designed to meet this need and thus may offer effective means to improve the impact of mediation on families. An...
Among a community sample of 88 couples, husbands' emotion recognition skills were examined as a mechanism accounting for the relationships between two dimensions of psychopathology that commonly describe violent husbands (i.e., borderline/dysphoric and psychopathic personality characteristics) and their perpetration of intimate partner violence (IP...
Abstract It was hypothesized that couples experiencing husband violence are more likely than nonviolent couples to have “anarchic” power outcomes, that is, the failure to reach agreement or make a decision when discussing relationship problems. Three groups of U.S. couples in committed relationships participated in the current study: 41 experiencin...
Background: Few cohort studies have been conducted to estimate incidence of physical partner violence perpetration or predictors of increased risk.
Objective: To explore dimensions of psychopathology as predictors of beginning to use severe physical aggression against a partner.
Methods: From August 2006 to December 2007, investigators conducte...
The present study compared impact of participating in laboratory research assessments on couples experiencing partner violence
and nonviolent couples. Across two studies, 192 couples participated in a variety of potentially distressing laboratory procedures,
including discussing relationship problems, viewing videotapes of their discussions, and co...
This article describes a developing interdisciplinary approach to training legal students and psychology students at Indiana University–Bloomington (IU) to work at the intersection of their disciplines. The approach provides strong clinical training while emphasizing the necessity to scientifically evaluate interventions with separating couples. Th...
Recent discussions between social science researchers, advocates, judges, lawyers, and family court personnel highlight the strong commitment of professionals across disciplines to work together to assess critically important issues in family law. The difficulty has been bridging the gap between the professions to create true understanding and coll...
This article summarizes ideas for future directions in the field of family dispute resolution, as discussed by legal experts, social scientists, and other participants at the Indiana University–Bloomington conference on family dispute resolution. Five major categories of future directions were discussed: (1) clarifying differing goals for work in t...
In this study, the authors examined the interrelations among family-of-origin maltreatment variables, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, social information processing deficits, and male-to-female psychological and physical intimate relationship abuse perpetration in adulthood among a community sample of 164 men and their partners. In bi...
This study explored the K. A. Dodge (1986) model of social information processing as a mediator of the association between interparental relationship conflict and subsequent offspring romantic relationship conflict in young adulthood. The authors tested 4 social information processing stages (encoding, hostile attributions, generation of aggressive...
This study extends previous research on the relationship between aggressive cognition and intimate partner violence (IPV)
perpetration by comparing the aggressive cognitions of both husbands and wives (not just husbands) in an actual (not hypothetical)
relationship problem discussions across three groups of couples—bi-directionally violent (V), non...
We conducted two studies to test the utility of a new strategy for recruiting couples experiencing intimate partner violence.
This new strategy, Targeted Neighborhood Sampling, involves utilizing police reports of family fight calls to target particular areas within a city for recruitment efforts.
Study I compared the efficacy of using this method...
Men court-mandated to attend a batterer's intervention program (BIP) were evaluated to determine whether pre-BIP readiness to change and the presence of partner violence subtypes predicted BIP completion, criminal recidivism, and postadjudication partner violence 6 months post-BIP. Of the 199 subject sample, 40% did not complete BIP. Four readiness...
Numerous studies have examined the communication behaviors of Western, primarily North American, couples and have demonstrated a robust and reliable association between marital satisfaction and couple communication. However, there has been relatively less attention given to the generalizability of these findings to non-Western couples. To address t...
Despite the methodological advantages of representative sampling, few researchers in the field of marital violence have employed random samples for laboratory assessments of couples. The current study tests the feasibility and sampling success of three recruitment methods: (a) random digit dialing, (b) directory-assisted recruitment, and (c) a hybr...
This study compared the empathic accuracy of men and women who had perpetrated physical intimate partner violence with that of partners in nonviolent but distressed and nonviolent and nondistressed relationships. Examined was the empathic accuracy (a) of partners for one another’s thoughts and feelings during a relationship problem discussion in th...
The present study provides 2-year follow-up data for a comparison between a complete behavioral marital therapy treatment package (CO) and two of its major components, behavior exchange (BE) andcommunication/problem-solving training (CPT). Data are reported for 34 couples who were randomly assigned to one of these three treatments, completed the tr...
The authors used cross-cultural methodology to examine the demand-withdraw pattern of marital communication. In Western countries, women usually make more demands, whereas men are more likely to withdraw. But the recently advanced marital structure hypothesis suggests that this pattern can be altered by gender roles and beliefs, particularly in tra...
Experiences in the family and peer group play important roles in the development of interpersonal competencies across the childhood and adolescent years. Toward the end of adolescence, stable and supportive romantic relationships increasingly serve adaptive functions in promoting individual well-being and in fostering a sense of connection and secu...
The article "Partner Violence and Mental Health Outcomes in a New Zealand Birth Cohort" is an empirically sound study that raises interesting questions for the field of domestic violence research. As noted by its authors, the study's strengths include the large representative sample, the prospective nature of the research, and the consideration of...
The present study involved a multimethod assessment of impulsivity among 86 men. Using two questionnaires and four performance-based
measures of impulsivity, the factor structure of the impulsivity data was examined. Four constructs that theoretically mediate
the relationship between impulsivity and husband violence (i.e., substance abuse, anger/ho...
Varying levels and types of husband violence may be conceptualized as typologies of maritally violent men. Across studies, batterer subtypes resembling those proposed by Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (1994) have been identified and generally found to differ in predicted ways. Longitudinal data from this study suggests that the subgroups continued to...
In previous batterer typology studies, only 1 study gathered longitudinal data and no research examined whether subtypes continue to differ from one another over time. The present study did so. We predicted that, at 1.5- and 3-year follow-ups, the subtypes identified at Time 1 (A. Holtzworth-Munroe, J. C. Meehan. K. Herron, U. Rehman, G. L. Stuart,...
The relationships between two forms of husband sexual aggression (coercion and threatened/forced sex) and husband physical and psychological aggression were examined among a community sample of 164 couples. A stronger relationship between physical and sexual aggression was obtained than in previous research. Husbands' physical and psychological agg...
The relationships between two forms of husband sexual aggression (coercion and threatened/forced sex) and husband physical and psychological aggression were examined among a community sample of 164 couples. A stronger relationship between physical and sexual aggression was obtained than in previous research. Husbands' physical and psychological agg...
The potential role of personality disorders in understanding husband violence is a controversial issue. Although researchers consistently find high rates of personality disorders, particularly antisocial and borderline characteristics, among samples of male batterers, feminist theorists worry that such research will divert attention from the broade...
Researchers have demonstrated an overlap between husband-to-wife violence and child abuse, but we know little about which maritally violent men are at greatest risk for engaging in child abuse. This study examined child abuse potential across 4 subtypes of maritally violent men (i.e., family only, low level antisocial, borderline/dysphoric, and gen...
In an attempt to replicate the J. M. Gottman et al. (1995) batterer typology, 58 men who had engaged in moderate-to-severe marital violence in the past year were studied. The sample was split into Gottman et al.'s Type 1 men (i.e., whose heart rates decreased, from baseline, during a marital conflict task) and Type 2 men (i.e., whose heart rates in...
Together, the results of 3 studies examining heart rate reactivity (HRR) in male batterers do not provide strong support for the J. M. Gottman et al. (1995) batterer typology. All research groups found similar proportions of severely violent male batterers who show heart rate increases or decreases during a marital conflict discussion, but there wa...
The development of batterer treatment program standards was a well-intentioned and reasonable step, given the increasing number of batterers being court-referred to treatment, the poor quality of some treatment programs, and the move toward a coordinated community response to domestic violence. While treatment standards were derived from the unders...
In an attempt to replicate the J. M. Gottman et al. (1995) batterer typology, 58 men who had engaged in moderate-to-severe marital violence in the past year were studied. The sample was split into Gottman et al.'s Type 1 men (i.e., whose heart rates decreased, from baseline, during a marital conflict task) and Type 2 men (i.e., whose heart rates in...
A. Holtzworth-Munroe and G. L. Stuart (1994) proposed that 3 subtypes (family only [FO], borderline-dysphoric [BD], and generally violent-antisocial [GVA]) would be identified using 3 descriptive dimensions (i.e., severity of marital violence, generality of violence, psychopathology) and would differ on distal and proximal correlates of violence. M...
The present study compared anger and hostility across subtypes of physically aggressive husbands (i.e., family only, FO; low-level antisocial, LLA; borderline/dysphoric, BD; generally violent/antisocial, GVA) and nonviolent comparison groups (i.e., maritally distressed, NVD; and nondistressed, NVND). Men completed self-report questionnaires of gene...
Although much research on men who are violent toward their wives has involved comparisons of groups of violent and nonviolent men, there is increasing evidence that maritally violent men are not a homogeneous group. Several recent studies support a batterer typology that distinguishes maritally violent subgroups. In an effort to identify different...
One of Neil Jacobson's major contributions to the field of husband violence research has been the publication of several empirical articles in major psychological journals, including the article entitled
Affect, verbal content, and psychophysiology in the arguments of couples with a violent husband (see record
1995-09810-001). At the time, few ar...
Posted 06/02/2000. This reprinted article originally appeared in (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1994, Vol 62[5], 982–988). (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1995-09810-001.) Studied the affect, psychophysiology, and verbal content of arguments in couples with a violent husband. On the basis of self-...
Posted 06/02/2000. This reprinted article originally appeared in (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1994, Vol 62[5], 982–988). (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1995-09810-001.) Studied the affect, psychophysiology, and verbal content of arguments in couples with a violent husband. On the basis of self-...