The findings of the study, by ASU Psychology Professors Sanford Braver and Bill Fabricius and Law Professor Ira Ellman, appeared in the June issue of the Journal of Family Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.
Courts throughout the country have struggled with conflicts between divorced parents when the custodial parent seeks to move with the child to a distant city. While each state deals with the issue differently, the researchers say a recent trend, beginning with cases such as the 1996 "Burgess" decision by the California Supreme Court, has favored the custodial parent seeking to move. The decision said the custodial mother was entitled to move for whatever reason she wished as long as the move was not expressly to limit the father's access.
The legal conclusion was based in part on the assumption that the child was usually better off if the custodial parent was allowed to live where she wished, even if the move reduced the child's contact with the other parent.
"There is an assumption that essentially what is good for the custodial parent is good for the child," says Braver. "The assumption in part says that if something improves the parent's life then it will trickle down to the child. Based on our results, that doesn't appear to be the case."
"Relocation cases are difficult," Ellman says, "because often both parents have valid but conflicting concerns. In such cases especially, the child's interests are paramount, and it is therefore a particular problem if courts make unsupported and possibly erroneous assumptions about the child's interests."
For the study, the researchers used a survey of students, primarily freshman and sophomores, in an introductory psychology class at Arizona State University. The researchers asked students if their parents had been divorced, if there had been any moves and a series of questions regarding the respondents emotional response to the move, general life satisfaction, current health status, relationship to parents and perceptions of having had "a hard life."
Of the students surveyed, 602 had divorced parents. That group was then broken into two subgroups - students who had either parent move after a divorce and those whose parents had not relocated.
The results showed the group who had experienced a move had significantly higher negative impacts in general health, concern over parental financial support and more distress over the divorce. The results also showed the parental move group thought their parents had a worse relationship and perceived their parents to be less of a source of emotional support than those who had not moved.
The research showed similar negative results for the students regardless of which parent had moved.
Fabricius says that while the study is correlational and does not claim to prove a direct connection between moves and the negative consequences, "It definitely appears to be associated with these problems."
The issue is again before the California Supreme Court, which recently accepted a new case in which the father asked to court to reconsider the Burgess precedent. The ASU study has been cited in briefs filed with the court. Dates have not been set for oral arguments, but a decision should come sometime in the fall.
"We will certainly be interested to see what the court does with these new findings," says Ellman.
The full study can be found on the Web at: www.apa.org/journals/fam/press_releases/june_2003/fam172206.html
Sources: Sanford Braver, psychology professor, 480-965-5405, sanford.braver@asu.edu
Bill Fabricius, associate professor of psychology, 480-965-9372, william.fabricius@asu.edu
Ira Ellman, law professor, 480-965-2125, ira.ellman@asu.edu
Journal
Journal of Family Psychology