Predictors of Parental Communication and Cooperation Among Divorcing Spouses

The present study seeks to identify parental communication and cooperation as predictors of successful co-parenting in Israel during the divorce process. Self-report questionnaires assessing three types of predictors (parent personality characteristics, social and contextual factors and child characteristics) were completed by 123 divorcing mothers and 94 divorcing fathers. Two stepwise hierarchical regressions, one for parental communication and one for cooperation, showed that gender (female) and use of negotiation to resolve conflicts were the major predictors of both. These variables affected co-parenting both independently and in interaction with the personality characteristics of defense mechanism use and optimism. The differential contributions support the hypothesis of communication and cooperation as separate components of successful co-parenting, and the value of studying both. Clinically, these findings may be used to help improve co-parenting during divorce.     

#Me Too,I Was Interpellated

The #MeToo movement aims to dislodge events that occur on the sex/gender/power line from the “obviousness” of malignant supremacist patriarchy. Perhaps “what happened?” is not so obvious after all. Yet how does one FIX the meaning of a sexual event, inherently pregnant with enigma? The author borrows from textual analysis – translation, afterlife, sur-vival - to better understand the unstable nature of meaning, as it slides between different ideological structures. A few short cases, each undoing its former, demonstrate the problematic nature of attempting to FIX “What Happened?”.