Ex-spouses fight less when they focus on kids

U. MISSOURI (US) — Hostile relationships can improve when divorced parents set aside their differences and focus on their children’s needs.

“Most people falsely believe that, when people get divorced, they’ll continue to fight, to be hostile,” says Marilyn Coleman, professor of human development and family studies at the University of Missouri. “We found in our study that’s not always true.
“Some couples get along from the very beginning, and, for about half of the women we interviewed, the couples whose relationships started badly improved over time.”

Coleman and colleague interviewed 20 women who shared physical custody of their children with ex- partners. Details of their findings will be published in the upcoming issue of Family Relations.
Nearly half of the women interviewed said they had contentious relationships with their former significant others and the other half reported amicable relationships.
Of the women reporting cordial relationships with their ex-spouses, a few had always gotten along; the rest of the relationships had gone from combative to cordial.
“To me, it’s almost as if the parents in the bad-to-better relationships matured,” Coleman says. “Mostly, it’s because the parents began focusing on their children. The parents saw how upset their arguments made their kids, so they decided to put their differences aside and focus on what was best for the children.”
The women in amicable relationships reported that their ex-partners were responsible parents and that money was not a source of conflict. In addition, the women said they communicated with their ex-partners frequently and in multiple ways, via text, phone and email.
Cordial parents also dealt with differences in parenting styles more efficiently by communicating issues that arose.
In addition, the women who had better relationships with their former spouses did not try to limit their children’s interaction with their fathers and, instead, found ways to conveniently transition the children between two homes.

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