What CoParenting Conflict is About Matters

The impact of destructive conflict between coparents on children differs in relation to what the conflicts are about.

Research studies have found that conflicts between coparents about finances and those about parenting time have the greatest negative impact on children.

Why does financial conflict have a disproportionally greater negative impact on children?

Divorce is, in many cases, extremely financially costly.

The cost of divorce forces many families to make financial readjustments. Some will experience serious financial consequences.  Parents may believe their financial well-being is threatened. The economic impacts of divorce may significantly increase stress and emotional distress of parents leading to high levels of conflict between parents of the kind that children are aware.

Children experience the parent's stress and conflict together with the concrete ways family economic circumstances are changing. Together, this kind of conflict tends to have greater negative impacts. 

Minimizing Children's Stress About Financial Conflicts

One healthy response on the part of parents to counter their child's stress about finances and the conflicts about finances, is to engage in gratitude exercises with your children. Focus on the abundance you have in other areas. The value of family and friends and time together.

Another way to combat the stress of financial conflict is creating rituals around meals or certain days of the week or activities which gives children a sense of stability and can help everyone in the family have positive activities, that aren't expensive, to look forward to.

One family I know does a make your own pizza night once a week. They challenge each other to come up with the most unique or delicious combinations of toppings. This helps them to feel more and more at home in their new home. Their home is much smaller than the home they lived in before the divorce but is filled, nonetheless, with tons of love and reminders of security. Friends love to hang out there just as they did in the old house and sometimes come for pizza night.

Conflicts About Parenting Time

With regard to conflict about parenting time, custody, and visiting arrangements, studies have pointed to the severe impact of this type of conflict on children: some even identify these conflicts as the most difficult to resolve and those generating the greatest anxiety to the entire family, but particularly in children.

CoParent conflict about parenting time is particulalry detrimental because it leads to children being positioned at the very heart of the dispute.

Children experience intense loyalty concerns and may feel they are betraying their parent just for spending or enjoying time with their other parent.  Children also blame themselves for causing the other parent pain.

To avoid the negative impacts of this form of conflict on children, you can do more than just not fight in front of your children. Try not to pressure children about the details of their visits when they return home to you. Trust that information sharing will occur in its own time as the child feels comfortable. Catch yourself if you are feeling competitive with the other parent about activities or living arrangements. Children also perceive that they are betraying you if they believe you feel you must compete with their other parent. 

Be particularly attuned to your children's awareness and perceptions about these two areas of conflict. Small changes here can make a big difference in children's well being after divorce.