October 2017

• Author: Barbara A. Babb,Robert E. Emery
• Published date: 01 October 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12297
• Date: 01 October 2017

EDITORIAL NOTE

OCTOBER 2017

The current issue of Family Court Review (FCR) is the first of several Special Issues that we

have commissioned. Like many past issues of FCR, each is guest edited by a noted expert and con-

tains a series of articles on a focused topic of broad interest and importance to our readers.

For this Special Issue, we were extremely fortunate to convince Bruce Smyth, a world-class

Australian demographer, to assemble a collection of articles on shared parenting in key countries

(and one state) throughout the world: Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, United Kingdom,

Australia, and Wisconsin.

FCR readers are well aware that shared parenting (i.e., joint physical custody) can be a very con-

troversial topic. As Smyth notes, advocates and academics cannot even agree on the definition of

shared parenting. Is 25% time enough to pass the threshold? Is 50–50 the only true form of joint

physical custody? Does anything in between qualify? A precise definition is a necessary starting

point for research or debate, yet many are still wrangling about the meaning of shared parenting.

We expect that the articles in this Special Issue will be used, and perhaps misused, in debates

about joint physical custody. But the goal of these articles is to offer evidence, not to spark contro-

versy. One basic empirical question is: Do laws that encourage shared parenting actually increase

shared parenting? The answer seems to be: Yes, but only to a point, as suggested by several articles

in this issue analyzing jurisdictions where joint physical custody is explicitly encouraged by law.

We leave it to Smyth to introduce his outstanding collection of authors and summarize their

research findings. And we leave it to you to interpret the evidence for yourself. However, we do

want to offer this observation: We need more and better research, especially in the United States, the

United Kingdom, and Canada. In these three countries, we lack even basic national data on the prev-

alence of joint physical custody.

In the United States, the limited research on joint custody, and the limited funding to support

such research, is shocking and embarrassing. We have been conducting a grand social experiment

with families and children for decades, yet we do not even know how many people the experiment

affects or clearly understand how it affects them. Fortunately, Smyth and his colleagues bring us their

best findings from a handful of places that have encouraged both social change and research on those

changes. We hope that this evidence can improve understanding, raise the level of debate, and

encourage more and better research—and the support needed to conduct it.

This issue of FCR also contains one regular article and two student Notes. In their article,

Michael Saini, Judy Newman, and Maribeth Christensen discuss their mixed quantitative and qualita-

tive study of supervised visitation, asking the essential question: What happens over time? Their

answer is that while some families use supervised visitation only temporarily—consistent with the

rationale for such programs—many maintain the arrangement for a year or longer. In these authors’

words, supervised visitation becomes the “only plan.” They call for more regular review and more

carefully detailed court orders in an attempt to avoid this dead end. In the first student Note, Domi-

nique Chin discusses the prevalence of youth in the juvenile justice system who have learning dis-

abilities. Despite the fact that the goal of this system is rehabilitation, she finds that rarely do states

take any action to address the special needs of these youths. She argues for the adoption nationwide

of a problem-solving court to implement processes and procedures to assist this population. Alexan-

dra Faver, in the second student Note, writes about how to protect the rights of divorcing couples to

decide the fate of any frozen embryos they have created. After addressing the many problems

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 55 No. 4, October 2017 491–492

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C2017 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts