Building and Enhancing Efficacious Coparenting in Parenting Coordination

• Author: Barbara Jo Fidler,James McHale
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12510
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Published date: 01 July 2020

BUILDING AND ENHANCING EFFICACIOUS COPARENTING IN

PARENTING COORDINATION

Barbara Jo Fidler and James McHale

Parenting coordination is a dispute resolution process to assist the subset of separating/divorcing parents who remain

entrenched in high conflict coparenting post-separation/divorce. Based on factors known to impact positive child out-

comes, its goals include assisting parents to protect children from their conflict and implementing a framework that

will assist the child to have a good relationship with both parents. Despite significant efforts, parenting coordination

often falls short of achieving its intended goals, which include not only healthy child adjustment but also efficacious

coparenting, which is itself an important mediator and moderator of child outcomes. This article raises questions and

concerns about the extent to which child outcomes may be limited if the goals of parenting coordination are limited to

establishing and implementing a disengaged, parallel model of coparenting, while avoiding or giving up on efforts to

build and enhance cooperative coparenting. Given preliminary findings indicating some parents note cha nge here

express dissatisfaction with the process and outcomes, it is necessary to consider whether the seemingly intractable

subset of parents referred for parenting coordination might benefit from something more or different. We discuss two

innovations: One aims to strengthen individual parent readiness and responsiveness and the other brings parents

together in a child-centered team-building approach. Though cooperative coparenting is a challenging and unrealistic

goal for some parents, further research is necessary to understand more fully which interventions help which families,

when and in what manner.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Though parenting coordination, a dispute resolution process appropriate in cases of high conflict coparenting, aspires

to promote parenting, coparenting, and child outcomes, reports from parents and parenting coordinators indicate that

parenting coordination as practiced may be ineffective for a subset of participating families.

Coparenting solidarity, a catalyst for children’s healthy outcomes, goes beyond the absence of conflict, disparagement

and undermining; it is an active process reflecting a functional child-focused partnership that can meet the child’s

emotional and social needs.

For some families, a disengaged model of coparenting may be the only realistically attainable goal, protecting

children from conflict, but because disengagement itself is not the ideal coparenting frame for healthy child

adjustment additional exploration of whether other interventions might best meet children’s and families’needs is

called for.

Emerging innovations to enhance collaborative coparenting for some suitable families include a “Parallel CPO

Model”(Boyan & Termini, Parenting coordination reference manual, 2016, A hybrid approach to parenting

coordination, 2017)—a pre-intervention to increase readiness and responsiveness for the parenting coordina-

tion process –and “Through the Eyes of the Child”, a variant of Focused Coparenting Consultation

(McHale & Carter, Independent Practitioner, 2012; 32, 106–110, Anuario de Psicología, 2019; 49, 156–163)

focused on coparental team-building to heighten consciousness, build communication skills and resolve

differences.

Keywords: Child Adjustment; Cooperative; Coparenting;Disengaged; Parallel; ParentalConflict; Parenting Coordination.

Corresponding: drbarbarafidler@sympatico.ca

Invited paper prepared for special edition of the Family Court Reviewto appear in July 2020.

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 58 No. 3, July 2020 747–759

© 2020 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts