Parenting Time and Co‐Parenting for Unmarried Parents

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12148
• Published date: 01 April 2015
• Date: 01 April 2015
• Author: Jessica Pearson

GUEST EDITOR’S NOTE

PARENTING TIME AND CO-PARENTING FOR UNMARRIED PARENTS

Jessica Pearson

This Special Issue focuses on parents who were not married at the time of their child(ren)’s birth.

Because their relationships are not covered by marital family law, they do not have the clearly

established rights and responsibilities that divorcing parents havefollowing their breakup. Nor do they

have clear pathways to the legalproceedings that for malize issues such as custody and parenting time

and structured access to the mediation, parent education, facilitation, and other services that are

essentially standard for divorcing parents to help them plan for the future of their families.

The articles in this issue examine the special challenges that unmarried parents face, why it is

important to address their parenting and co-parenting situation, and the approaches that child support

agencies, courts, and federally funded programs have developed to meet their needs.The issue begins

with an article by Cynthia Osborne and Nora Ankrum that provides an overview of the increased

prevalence of unmarried families, their relationships and parenting dynamics, the rapid disengage-

ment of many fathers, the effects on child well-being, and the importance of quality parental

relationships in keeping fathers engaged and reducing negative influences on children. Claire Hun-

tington’s article explores the legal status of unmarried parents with respect to their children and

focuses on how marital family law fails to address their situation or promote co-parenting. She

proposes a new legal framework that grants all parents, regardless of marital status, a legally signifi-

cant designation of co-parent at the birth of a child. My article provides an overview of the bifurcation

of child support and parenting time in the federal and state child support system, which is often called

the IV-D system because its authorization comes from Title IV-D of the Social SecurityAct. My article

also explores why and how the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) and some state

and local child support agencies have begun to address visitation rights and parenting time using

standard parenting time schedules, self-help resources, mediation and facilitation by a neutral third

party, and comprehensive services to address multiple barriers. Alicia Key’s article describes how

Texas establishes parenting time presumptively in all divorce and child support cases using standard

parenting time schedules and the additional parent education and safety measures that the state has

developed. Mary Marczak and her colleagues describe outcomes of a quasi-experimental study of the

Co-Parent Court, a comprehensive program for unmarried parents in the child support system in

Hennepin County, Minnesota, that includes parenting plan development along with education, case

management, and referral services. Nancy Ver Steegh and Gabrielle Davis discuss the need for strong

family violence safeguards and the importance of ensuring that unmarried parents in the child support

system are able to make informed and voluntary choices about parenting time. The article by Robin

Dion, Heather Zaveri, and Pamela Holcomb describes the Parents and Children Together (PACT)

Evaluation and selected characteristics of fathers who participate in the four fatherhood programs

being studied, the services that the programs provide, and the challenges that nonresident fathers face

in gaining access to their children. Jay Fagan and Rebecca Kaufman conclude the Special Issue with

a look at how unmarried nonresident fathers view parental engagement and co-parenting and the

implications of their views for future research on fatherhood and the development of effective

outcome measures.

The impetus for this Special Issue is the tremendous increase in nonmarital births, rising from

11 to 41% from 1970 to 2010 and standing at more than 60% among women between the ages of 20

and 24 (Hamilton, Martin, Osterman, & Curtin, 2014); the dramatic dropoff in unmarried father

FAMILY COURT REVIEW,Vol. 53 No. 2, April 2015 217–220

© 2015 Association of Familyand Conciliation Cour ts