Never shut up, give up or go away!

Who Is Robert Bauserman?

If Robert Bauserman's name sounds familiar, it is likely not due to his shoddy "analysis" of joint custody. Since 1998, Bauserman had received a great deal of unwanted attention from the mainstream press, child welfare groups, and Christian right pundits for another "analysis" he had co-written with Bruce Rind and Philip Tromovitch: "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples," Psychological Bulletin, July 1998 [http://www.ipce. info/library_ 3/rbt/metaana. htm]]

The general public may have heard of this "analysis" by its popular name: The Rind Study.

The authors claimed that "the assumptions of most mental health professionals, legislators, law enforcement personnel, media workers, and the lay public that sexual relations defined as CSA (child sexual abuse) cause intense harm pervasively for both boys and girls are vastly exaggerated. "

Think that's bad? It gets worse.

They also wrote the following: "One possible approach to a scientific definition, consistent with findings in the current review and with suggestions offered by Constantine (1981) , is to focus on the young person's perception of his or her willingness to participate and his or her reactions to the experience. A willing encounter with positive reactions would be labeled simply adult-child sex, a value-neutral term. If a young person felt that he or she did not freely participate in the encounter and if he or she experienced negative reactions to it, then child sexual abuse, a term that implies harm to the individual, would be valid. Moreover, the term childshould be restricted to nonadolescent children ( Ames & Houston, 1990 ). Adolescents are different from children in that they are more likely to have sexual interests, to know whether they want a particular sexual encounter, and to resist an encounter that they do not want. Furthermore, unlike adult-child sex, adult-adolescent sex has been commonplace cross-culturally and historically, often in socially sanctioned forms, and may fall within the "normal" range of human sexual behaviors ( Bullough, 1990 ; Greenberg, 1988 ; Okami, 1994 ). A willing encounter between an adolescent and an adult with positive reactions on the part of the adolescent would then be labeled scientifically as adult-adolescent sex, while an unwanted encounter with negative reactions would be labeled adolescent sexual abuse."

For a defense of their study in a location where adult sexual abuse of adolescents is more "commonplace cross-culturally and historically, " read this paper presented to the symposium sponsored by the Paulus Kerk, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on the 18th of December 1998.

Fathers' rights advocates should have looked into Bauserman's previous "research" about children before they loudly touted and promoted his joint custody "analysis." That way, they could have saved themselves loads of embarrassment.

The Rind Study caused so much embarrassment for the APA that the APA had publicly apologized for publishing it.

Moral outrage aside, the Rind Study had been criticized by Stephanie Dallam et al. in Psychological Bulletin, 2001, Vol. 127, No. 6 for numerous problems "that minimized CSA-adjustment relations, including use of a healthy sample, an inclusive definition of CSA, failure to correct for statistical attenuation, and misreporting of original data. Rind et al.'s study's main conclusions were not supported by the original data. As such, attempts to use their study to argue that an individual has not been harmed by sexual abuse constitute a serious misapplication of its findings." [http://www.apa. org/journals/ bul/1101ab. html]

These are exact same errors he made with his joint custody "analysis."

Garbage in, garbage out.

Robert Bauserman's opinions about children are not to be trusted.

The following are comments about some of the studies that were included in his meta-analysis. These studies did not favor joint custody over sole custody, yet Bauserman presents them as if they do. Studies that were part of his selected 33 are preceded by an asterisk.

Amato, P. R., & Keith, B. (1991b). Parental divorce and the well-being of children: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 26Ð46.

This study did not support joint custody. It found that "children in intact families with high levels of conflict should have the same well-being problems as children of divorce, and the data supported this hypothesis." More findings by Paul Amato are on this page.

*Bredefeld, G. M. (1985). Joint custody and remarriage: Its effects on marital adjustment and children. Dissertation Abstracts International, 46, 952-953.

This study does not support joint custody. Both sole and joint custody children adjusted well to the remarriage of their parent. No significant difference found between the groups. In joint custody situations for parents who had remarried, those parents indicated that they appreciated the time alone with their new spouse.

*Cowan, D. B. (1982). Mother custody versus joint custody: Children's parental relationships and adjustment. Dissertation Abstracts International, 43, 726.

Insufficient Sample Size Cowan compared 20 joint custody and 20 sole (maternal) custody families.

*Glover, R. J. & Steele, C. (1989). comparing th eeffects on the child of post-divorce parenting arrangements. Journal of divorce, 12 (2-3), 185-201.

This study does not support joint custody. It only suggests that joint custody may convey to children that their parents are committed to them.

*Granite, B. H. (1985). an investigation ofthe relationship among self-concept, parental behaviors, and the adjustment of children in different custodial living arrangements following a marital separation and/or divorce. Dissertation Abstracts Internationsl, 46, 2232.

Insufficient Sample Size. 15 joint, 15 maternal sole, 15 paternal sole. No difference in self-concept was detectable among the different homes. The study found that children in intact homes were the most well-adjusted, and that joint custody either damages or otherwise is associated with damaged children's relationships with their mothers. That relationship, and the wellbeing of the primary residential mother, have been shown by numerous later studies to be the most important factors affecting overall child well-being and achievement post-divorce.

*Isaacs, M. B., Leon, G. H., & Kline, M. (1987). When is a parent out of the picture? Different custody, different perceptions. Family Process, 25, 101-110.

This study does not support joint custody. It found that in non-conflicted joint and sole custody families there is little measurable difference between a child"s behavior in sole or joint custody.

*Lerman, I. A. (1989). Adjustment of latency age children in joint and single custody arrangements. Dissertation Abstracts International, 50, 3704.

This study did not control for amicable self-selection of joint custody families, or for pre-existing higher conflict resulting in sole custody families. Because of that, its findings on child adjustment have not been replicated by later studies with appropriate controls. And in light of that, this study does not support the imposition of joint custody. The study found conflict to be a significant problem, and subsequent studies have found that imposed joint custody exacerbates that conflict. In addition, the study's assumptions regarding the benefits of father-child contact have not been supported by the findings of subsequent, large-scale studies.

*Mann, D. J. (1984). Children's adjustment to divorce as related to sole and joint custody. Dissertation Abstracts International, 46, 948.

This study does not support joint custody. It found that conflict negatively impacts children.

A later study by B. J. Mann noted the effects of conflict, rejection (in particular paternal rejection), and inept discipline on boys. Mann, B. J., & MacKenzie, E. P. (1996). Pathways among marital functioning, parental behaviors, and child behavior problems in school-age boys. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 25, 183-191. Examined two marital variables (marital dissatisfaction and overt marital conflict) and two parenting variables (rejection and inept discipline) as predictors of oppositional behavior problems in 50 school-age boys. It was hypothesized that the combination of these marital and parenting variables would provide an effective prediction of child oppositional behavior. The results revealed that the effects of marital dissatisfaction on child oppositional behavior were mediated by paternal rejection. Similarly, overt marital conflict had an effect on child oppositional through disruptive effects on discipline practices by mothers. The findings are discussed in relation to various etiological models that have attempted to explain the link between marital variables, parenting characteristics, and children's adjustment.

*Noonan, P. L. (1985). Effects of long-term parental conflict on personality functioning of children of divorce. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology, Berkeley, CA.

Insufficient sample size. Nunan compared 20 joint custody children (ages 7-11) with 20 age-matched children in sole maternal custody.

Rockwell-Evans, K. E. (1991). Parental and children"s experiences and adjustment in maternal vs. joint custody families. Dissertation Abstracts International, 52, 1910.

Insufficient sample size. A study compared 21 joint custody and 21 maternal custody families, with children between the ages of 4 and 15.

Wallerstein, Judith, Unexpected Legacy (A Twenty-Five Year Landmark Study, Hyperion 2000, p 181-2.

"The children... whose lives were governed by court orders or mediated parental arrangements all told me that they felt like second-class citizens who had lost the freedoms their peers took for granted. They say that as they grew older and craved independence, they had even less say, less control over their schedules and less power to determine when and where they could spend their time -- especially precious vacation time."