Overturning The “Ban” on Overnight Stays for Alienated Toddlers

Two exciting articles written by Bettina Arndt are published online on The Age website today bringing vital news for divorced fathers.

Here is the link to the main article – Empty days, lonely nights

There is also a news story – Movement on father’s overnight access – The Age (article has been removed)

Please circulate this notices as widely as possible using social media, twitter and face book. We want the main story to be more prominently displayed on the website and this requires more reader response – clicks and likes and tweets. I strongly encourage you to write comments to the newspaper and online websites and also to call local talk-back radio.

As a matter of urgency please do this today because such stories only have a short news cycle and it is critical that as many divorced fathers as possible as well as family lawyers and others working in the family law system are reached.

You can help achieve real change for fathers and their young children by making sure this story makes a very big splash.

Here is a brief summary of the main issues:

Key family law organizations across Australia are revising their policies on care of infants and toddlers that stop most divorced fathers from having their children stay overnight.

This follows the publication in February of an academic paper (attached) endorsed by 110 leading international experts that challenges these policies.

The report, “Social Science and Parenting Plans for Young Children: A consensus report” is highly critical of the research underpinning current policy, including an Australian study that concluded any regular overnight care by fathers was damaging to infants and toddlers.

The experts criticize the 2010 study – led by child psychologist Jennifer McIntosh – for the way data in the study was collected and analysed, saying the study’s findings should not have been used as a platform for developing public policy in this area.

The expert paper concludes infants commonly develop attachment relationships with more than one caregiver and that in normal circumstances children are likely to do better if they have some overnight contact with both parents.

It says depriving young children the opportunity to stay overnight with their fathers could compromise the development of father-child relationships.

Further criticisms of the McIntosh study and the way it has been used are laid out in another recently published paper written by psychology professor Linda Nielsen. (attached)

There are signs the new consensus paper could affect current policies. Diana Bryant, the Chief Justice of the Family Court, says she expects her Court’s personnel, including judges, family consultants and experts to be familiar with current research, including recent developments regarding overnight care.

Key organizations such as the Australian Association for Infant Mental Health are revising their policies regarding overnight care of infants, as are many of the Family Relationship Centres (FRCs) offering the compulsory mediation required prior to Family Court proceedings. (If you know any psychologists please ask them to contact The Australian Psychology Society and ask them why they are refusing to revise their policies. Jennifer McIntosh is still the lead author of their published policies on overnight care of infants after divorce.)

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yuriYuriyuriYuriYuYYuri says

February 3, 2015 at 12:38 am

Enlightening comment by Professor Linda Nielsen that sheds much needed light on the smoke and mirrors in the conversation on infants and overnight stays.

Perhaps, the most disturbing thing in Professor Nielsen’s “Woozles” paper pertains to the shabby standards of results-orientated social science research. Lawmakers and courts take this research that forms the picture of society on which government policy is based, not to mention the general public, as being simply objective truth. She documents in devastating detail the degree to which sloppy research standards have opened the door to dogma and misguided social policy.

http://family-studies.org/how-woozling-deprives-babies-of-fathering-time/

How “Woozling” Deprives Babies of Fathering Time

By Linda Nielsen

23 June 2014

Have you heard that children under the age of four should live primarily, or exclusively, with their mothers after their parents separate because too much “overnighting” in their father’s care creates a host of problems—especially for infants? Have you read that babies and toddlers who frequently spend the night at their father’s house are less securely attached to their mothers and are more irritable, anxious, and stressed than those who only spend time with their non-residential fathers during the day?

If so, then you—along with many lawyers, judges, and policy makers—have been misled. You are unlikely to know that 110 international experts agree with the conclusion reached by psychologist Richard Warshak in his recent research paper: there is no scientific evidence that justifies limiting or postponing overnighting until children of separated parents reach the age of four.

You’re also probably unaware that only six studies have compared overnighting to non-overnighting infants and toddlers—three of which found more positive outcomes for the overnighters, and only one of which found negative effects. That one study has received the most publicity and has also been the most highly criticized for its flaws and questionable conclusions. Unfortunately, the mistaken belief that overnighting is “bad” lives on, too often resulting in custody decisions and custody laws that deprive these very young children of overnight care from their fathers.

So I wanted to find out how and why so many people—including well-educated professionals involved in making custody decisions and reforming custody laws—came to believe that overnighting had been “proven” to be so damaging. As I explain in a recently published article, the answer involves a process I call woozling.

The term comes from the children’s story where Winnie the Pooh and his friends become obsessed with the idea that they are being stalked by a frightful beast they call a woozle. In reality, there is nothing to fear because there are no woozle “footprints”; the footprints they see are their own as they keep circling the tree. They were deceived by faulty “data.” Using Winnie’s imaginary woozle as an analogy, the sociologist Richard Gelles coined the word “woozle” to refer to a belief that takes hold in the general public but that is based on inaccurate, partial, or seriously flawed data. But because the faulty conclusion is repeated so often, most people embrace it as the truth.

So how are woozles depriving the youngest children of overnight fathering time? In large part, the answer has to do with a single Australian study that has frequently been cited as “scientific evidence” against overnighting. The message that arose from this 2010 study was this: Babies who overnight more than three times a month and toddlers who overnight more than nine times a month are more irritable, inattentive, physically stressed, anxious, insecure, and wary than other children. They are also “severely distressed” with their mothers, and they wheeze more often due to stress. Overlooking the fact that on four of the six measures the overnighters were no different from the non-overnighters and never mentioning the study’s flaws, many journalists reported on the study under such alarming headlines as “Infants struggle in shared care” and “Shared custody a mistake for under-2’s.”

I set out to peel back the layers of the many woozles arising from this study. For example, the “wheezing woozle” claimed that overnighting caused babies to be so stressed that they wheezed more often. But as most pediatricians and parents know, infant wheezing can be caused by many factors having nothing to do with stress, like mold, pets, cigarette smoke, and carpets in the home. Add to that another medical fact: infant wheezing is often difficult to detect even for doctors, let alone for mothers who were asked to answer only one question (“Does your child wheeze more than four nights a week?”). And even for diehards who insist that the wheezing was measured accurately and was caused by stress, the woozle ignores the fact that toddlers who frequently overnighted wheezed the least.

Then there was the “whining woozle,” claiming that overnighting made babies more irritable and more “severely distressed”—which was interpreted to mean they were not securely attached to their moms. The reality? The overnighting babies had exactly the same mean score on irritability as babies from intact families. Then, too, the babies who frequently overnighted were no more irritable than those who never overnighted.

As for “severe distress,” the overnighters’ scores on the behavioral problems test were well within normal range. And those behaviors that were considered signs of a toddler’s “severe distress”—kicking, biting, or getting angry at their mom, gagging on food or refusing to eat, being clingy and crying when mothers were leaving—turned out to be behaviors reported by nearly 50 percent of Australian moms of toddlers in a separate nationwide survey. In short, the severe distress and whining woozles rest on shaky ground.

Especially in matters as important as depriving children of fathering time, we need to ask ourselves: Am I being woozled in this report about the “scientific evidence”? Fortunately, there are journalists who are not so easily bamboozled and whose investigative reporting raises public awareness about woozled data. Indeed, this has happened in Australia, where the journalist Bettina Arndt investigated the study that I had written about in my woozling paper. By revealing the woozles that the study had created, Arndt’s reporting led several organizations to reexamine their recommendations against overnighting.

But even without the help of journalists, we have a responsibility to examine more carefully the studies that receive the most media attention. Otherwise, we can end up like Winnie the Pooh: woozled into being afraid of something that should never have aroused our fear at all.

Readers who have not read the Nielsen & Warshak papers can access the studies at the following links:

http://www.bettinaarndt.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Nielsen-Woozles-2014.pdf

http://www.bettinaarndt.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Warshak-Social-Science-and-Parenting-Plans-for-Young-Children.pdf

Comments

yuriYuriyuriYuriYuYYuri says

February 3, 2015 at 12:38 am

Enlightening comment by Professor Linda Nielsen that sheds much needed light on the smoke and mirrors in the conversation on infants and overnight stays.

Perhaps, the most disturbing thing in Professor Nielsen’s “Woozles” paper pertains to the shabby standards of results-orientated social science research. Lawmakers and courts take this research that forms the picture of society on which government policy is based, not to mention the general public, as being simply objective truth. She documents in devastating detail the degree to which sloppy research standards have opened the door to dogma and misguided social policy.

http://family-studies.org/how-woozling-deprives-babies-of-fathering-time/

How “Woozling” Deprives Babies of Fathering Time

By Linda Nielsen

23 June 2014

Have you heard that children under the age of four should live primarily, or exclusively, with their mothers after their parents separate because too much “overnighting” in their father’s care creates a host of problems—especially for infants? Have you read that babies and toddlers who frequently spend the night at their father’s house are less securely attached to their mothers and are more irritable, anxious, and stressed than those who only spend time with their non-residential fathers during the day?

If so, then you—along with many lawyers, judges, and policy makers—have been misled. You are unlikely to know that 110 international experts agree with the conclusion reached by psychologist Richard Warshak in his recent research paper: there is no scientific evidence that justifies limiting or postponing overnighting until children of separated parents reach the age of four.

You’re also probably unaware that only six studies have compared overnighting to non-overnighting infants and toddlers—three of which found more positive outcomes for the overnighters, and only one of which found negative effects. That one study has received the most publicity and has also been the most highly criticized for its flaws and questionable conclusions. Unfortunately, the mistaken belief that overnighting is “bad” lives on, too often resulting in custody decisions and custody laws that deprive these very young children of overnight care from their fathers.

So I wanted to find out how and why so many people—including well-educated professionals involved in making custody decisions and reforming custody laws—came to believe that overnighting had been “proven” to be so damaging. As I explain in a recently published article, the answer involves a process I call woozling.

The term comes from the children’s story where Winnie the Pooh and his friends become obsessed with the idea that they are being stalked by a frightful beast they call a woozle. In reality, there is nothing to fear because there are no woozle “footprints”; the footprints they see are their own as they keep circling the tree. They were deceived by faulty “data.” Using Winnie’s imaginary woozle as an analogy, the sociologist Richard Gelles coined the word “woozle” to refer to a belief that takes hold in the general public but that is based on inaccurate, partial, or seriously flawed data. But because the faulty conclusion is repeated so often, most people embrace it as the truth.

So how are woozles depriving the youngest children of overnight fathering time? In large part, the answer has to do with a single Australian study that has frequently been cited as “scientific evidence” against overnighting. The message that arose from this 2010 study was this: Babies who overnight more than three times a month and toddlers who overnight more than nine times a month are more irritable, inattentive, physically stressed, anxious, insecure, and wary than other children. They are also “severely distressed” with their mothers, and they wheeze more often due to stress. Overlooking the fact that on four of the six measures the overnighters were no different from the non-overnighters and never mentioning the study’s flaws, many journalists reported on the study under such alarming headlines as “Infants struggle in shared care” and “Shared custody a mistake for under-2’s.”

I set out to peel back the layers of the many woozles arising from this study. For example, the “wheezing woozle” claimed that overnighting caused babies to be so stressed that they wheezed more often. But as most pediatricians and parents know, infant wheezing can be caused by many factors having nothing to do with stress, like mold, pets, cigarette smoke, and carpets in the home. Add to that another medical fact: infant wheezing is often difficult to detect even for doctors, let alone for mothers who were asked to answer only one question (“Does your child wheeze more than four nights a week?”). And even for diehards who insist that the wheezing was measured accurately and was caused by stress, the woozle ignores the fact that toddlers who frequently overnighted wheezed the least.

Then there was the “whining woozle,” claiming that overnighting made babies more irritable and more “severely distressed”—which was interpreted to mean they were not securely attached to their moms. The reality? The overnighting babies had exactly the same mean score on irritability as babies from intact families. Then, too, the babies who frequently overnighted were no more irritable than those who never overnighted.

As for “severe distress,” the overnighters’ scores on the behavioral problems test were well within normal range. And those behaviors that were considered signs of a toddler’s “severe distress”—kicking, biting, or getting angry at their mom, gagging on food or refusing to eat, being clingy and crying when mothers were leaving—turned out to be behaviors reported by nearly 50 percent of Australian moms of toddlers in a separate nationwide survey. In short, the severe distress and whining woozles rest on shaky ground.

Especially in matters as important as depriving children of fathering time, we need to ask ourselves: Am I being woozled in this report about the “scientific evidence”? Fortunately, there are journalists who are not so easily bamboozled and whose investigative reporting raises public awareness about woozled data. Indeed, this has happened in Australia, where the journalist Bettina Arndt investigated the study that I had written about in my woozling paper. By revealing the woozles that the study had created, Arndt’s reporting led several organizations to reexamine their recommendations against overnighting.

But even without the help of journalists, we have a responsibility to examine more carefully the studies that receive the most media attention. Otherwise, we can end up like Winnie the Pooh: woozled into being afraid of something that should never have aroused our fear at all.

Readers who have not read the Nielsen & Warshak papers can access the studies at the following links:

http://www.bettinaarndt.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Nielsen-Woozles-2014.pdf

http://www.bettinaarndt.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Warshak-Social-Science-and-Parenting-Plans-for-Young-Children.pdf

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