Parental Inequality: A State-By-State Analysis
December 30, 2014
Hosted by Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
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Guest Information
Episode Description
In cases of separation and divorce, is shared parenting, defined as joint legal custody and shared physical custody, best for children? State courts often deprive children of the opportunity to spend ample amounts of time with each parent. The National Parents Organization has issued the nation’s first comprehensive review of child custody statutes as they relate to shared parenting in separation and divorce cases. It found that family courts award sole custody, usually to the mother, in over 80% of child custody cases. “In 2014, three separate, highly regarded reviews of decades of child development research have concluded that shared parenting is best for children,” says Dr. Holstein, Chair of the National Parents Organization. Which states are embracing this knowledge? Which states are continuing to rely on precedents set in the 1950s? What consequences do these rulings have for America’s children?
Family Matters
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Our goal is to share good ideas about helping all kinds of families handle the challenges and problems that are common in today’s world. We seek to help people heal, grow, and thrive in a culture in which marriage, parenting, and other family relationships are under great stress.
We will feature experts on a variety of family matters. Topics may include building and maintaining healthy relationships, family mediation, divorcing with minimal damage, strengthening marriages, LGBT families, forming and maintaining stepfamilies, single parents, creating constructive separation agreements, addiction, preventing or ending abuse, and other Family Matters.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D.
Virginia L. Colin, Ph.D is an author, speaker, professional family mediator, Director of Colin Family Mediation Group, and a Founding Member of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM).
Having survived a nightmarish divorce, Dr. Colin actively supports divorce reform efforts, teaching people how to take a lot of the pain, financial cost, acrimony, and trauma out of divorce. She also loves learning and teaching about building healthy relationships and solving family problems long before anyone has a reason to consider divorce. She has been a foster parent, a married parent, a divorced single parent, and a remarried stepparent.
Formerly a research psychologist studying attachment and other aspects of human development, Dr. Colin has been providing family mediation services since 1999. She specializes in helping couples and ex-couples develop co-parenting plans and financial agreements that support their children’s security, self-confidence, and healthy development as well as their own adult well-being.
Dr. Colin has published two books, “Human Attachment" and "The Guide to Low-Cost Divorce in Virginia: How to Do It Yourself.” She has also written a variety of articles published in journals and on the Internet.
