Promoting Parallel Parenting: Putting Children First during High-Conflict Divorce and Separation (PCF)

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Parental divorce and separation constitute an adverse childhood experience and a risk factor for a number of childhood behavioral, psychological, and academic problems. The act of parental divorce or separation does not in itself cause adverse outcomes in children. Rather, co-occurring negative family processes, particularly high inter-parental conflict (HIC), explain most of the variance. Although many families experience conflict in the first year after divorce, it typically decreases over time. In contrast to normal conflict, for 10%-25% of couples, HIC endures and puts children at risk for negative outcomes. The literature broadly defines HIC following divorce and separation to include anger, an extreme lack of trust, unresolved grief, hostile contempt, uncooperative co-parenting, verbal and physical fighting, and legal conflict between the parents. Courts are moving towards triaged approaches to manage family law cases. Aligned with this model, almost every state or local jurisdiction requires parents to complete a brief (3- to 4-hour), universal parenting education course before finalizing a divorce. Unfortunately, existing court-mandated universal parent education interventions fail to address the unique parenting challenges presented by HIC separation. There is a critical need to develop interventions to ameliorate negative consequences for children of divorcing and separating parents with HIC. To meet this need, we propose to develop and evaluate Putting Children First (PCF), an affordable and highly scalable online intervention featuring digitally adapted motivational interviewing strategies paired with evidence-based parent training resources. In contrast to most universal parenting interventions provided by family courts that promote co-parenting, PCF emphasizes parallel parenting, a strategy that we hypothesize to be more effective for families experiencing HIC. The proposed PCF intervention will be based on Parent Management Program-Oregon (PMTO), a well- established, in-person parenting intervention shown to improve child, parent, and family outcomes. Although PMTO is effective when adapted for divorcing parents, it has not been adapted nor systematically evaluated for couples experiencing HIC during separation. The PCF intervention will identify and overcome barriers to engagement with this population by incorporating brief motivational interviewing, a strategy that increases an individual's motivation to make behavioral changes by focusing on their need for and reasons for change. The project incorporates three aims in two phases. In Phase I, we aim to complete four tasks: (1) interview judicial stakeholders to tailor the implementation framework and approach to meet the needs of the court system administration; (2) conduct design research to adapt the instructional and motivational approach to parents with HIC involved in a separation or divorce; (3) develop content for four training modules and a high-fidelity prototype of the course site; (4) assess usability of the prototype using a think-aloud protocol and follow-up semi-structured interviews with parents with HIC. In Phase II, Aim 1, the project team will engage in design research to complete content development for the PCF intervention. In Aim 2, a randomized controlled trial will be conducted with 250 dyads (i.e., divorcing/divorced/separated parents with HIC) to evaluate the PCF intervention. Dyads will be recruited through a partnership with the Indiana Supreme Court and will be randomized to business as usual (BAU) or to BAU+PCF. We hypothesize that: 1. Compared to BAU, BAU+PCF will (a) increase parent self‐efficacy, (b) decrease parental stress, (c) increase parental knowledge, (d) increase parental motivation to engage with the intervention, (f) improve the quality of parent-child relationships, and (g) improve parent-reported child stress and prosocial behaviors. 2. Parents with higher levels of conflict will be more responsive to parallel parenting, and increased parallel parenting among HIC dyads will reduce child adjustment problems.