What the #@!* are they Fighting About?!?: Reflections on Fairness, Identity, Social Capital, and Peacemaking in Family Conflicts

• Date: 01 October 2015
• Author: David A. Hoffman
• Published date: 01 October 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12171

RESPONSES TO JULY ISSUES

WHAT THE #@!* ARE THEY FIGHTING ABOUT?!?:

REFLECTIONS ON FAIRNESS, IDENTITY, SOCIAL CAPITAL,

AND PEACEMAKING IN FAMILY CONFLICTS

David A. Hoffman

Peacemaking is particularly challenging in family conflicts. Deeply held feelings about identity, fair treatment, moral issues,

and protecting social capital often cause people in conflict to make self-defeating decisions. There are, however, techniques

that enable mediators, Collaborative Practice professionals, and other peacemakers to overcome the settlement barriers created

by these strongly held views. These techniques include those pioneered by psychotherapists using the Internal Family Systems

model, which enables parties to see that their strongly held views comprise only part of the constellation of feelings that they

have about the conflict.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Parents who feel that their role as father or mother is in danger often find it difficult to focus on the children’s best

interests.

The “rule of reciprocity” causes people who feel wronged to exact even harsher punishment on those who harmed

them.

The concept of “social capital” explains why people care so passionately about whether they are treated fairly and

about their reputation for fairness.

The Internal Family Systems model helps peacemakers to understand how to work with the parties’ ambivalence about

settlement versus courtroom vindication.

Keywords: Divorce; Fairness; Identity; Internal Family Systems; Peacemaking; Social Capital; and Social Psychology.

INTRODUCTION

I appreciate the invitation to add a brief commentary to the tremendously useful discussion of

peacemaking in Family Court Review’s Special Issue on that subject published in July 2015. The edi-

tor of that Special Issue, Woody Mosten, did a commendable job of assembling cutting-edge reports

from key players in the field of family practice. Each of those reports examines the work of peace-

making from a different procedural vantage point—for example, lawyer, parenting coordinator, thera-

pist, custody evaluator, judge, to name only a few—and describes some of the most promising

techniques that are emerging in our field, such as unbundling, Collaborative Practice, and multidisci-

plinary clinics.

My commentary focuses on two things. First, why is family warfare so intense? We all know the

joke about conflict in the academic arena: the reason it is so bitter is because the stakes are so small.

In family conflicts, however, the opposite is true: the stakes could not be higher. Family conflicts

involve sex, money, parenting, career, and, for some participants, the very meaning of their lives.

This article suggests that there are some consistent underlying concerns involving fairness, identity,

and social capital that run through these conflicts.

Correspondence: DHoffman@BostonLawCollaborative.com

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 53 No. 4, October 2015 509–516

V

C2015 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts