“Irresponsible, incompetent, inadequate?” Narratives and Practices of Parenting in High-Conflict Divorces in Croatia
Keywords:
high-conflict divorces, Croatia, ethnography of parentingAbstract
Approximately one-third of all the divorces (Turkat 1994, Whiteside 1998, Visser et al. 2017), the number of which is rising in most European countries, are defined as high-conflict divorces. Even though divorce conflicts are multidimensional, and several types should be distinguished (Johnston 1994), high-conflict divorces are generally characterized by prolonged lack of communication between partners, by child visitation interference and by different ways of emotional and psychological manipulation of children (Warshak 2008). According to the findings of several years’ long qualitative research of conflict divorces in Croatia, there is little institutional and political support for parents caught up in high-conflict divorces. Institution representatives too frequently claim that the parents themselves are to blame, because they are ‘irresponsible’, ‘incompetent’, or inadequate parents. On the other hand, the parents, who report being the victims of high-conflict divorces, feel disempowered, helpless, bitter, and betrayed. This paper analyses those juxtaposed and conflicted narratives and practices in high-conflict divorces in order to reveal their context and potential rationale and tackles the question whether and in what way the pandemic of COVID-19 influenced post-divorce child visitation practices.
References
AbuLughod, Lila. 1986. Veiled Sentiments. Honour and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
AbuLughod, Lila. 1991. Writing Against Culture. In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, edited by Richard J. Fox. Santa Fe: School of American Research: 137–162.
Ackerman, Marc J., and Melissa C. Ackerman. 1997. Custody Evaluation Practices: A Survey of Experienced Professionals (revisited). Professional Psychology 28: 137–145.
Ayoub, C. Catherine, Robin M. Deutsch, and Maraganore Andronicki. 1999. Emotional Distress of Children in Highconflict Divorce. Family and Conciliation Courts Review 37 (3): 297–314.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
GalatzerLevy, Rober, Louis Kraus, and Jeanne GalatzerLevy. 2009. The Scientific Basis of Child Custody Decisions. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Garrity, Carla, and Mitchell A. Baris. 1997. Caught in the Middle. Protecting the Children of High-Conflict Divorce. San Francisco: JosseyBass, Inc.
Grima, Benedicte. 2005. The Performance of Emotion among Paxtun Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hopper, Joseph. 1993. The Rhetoric of Motives in Divorce. Journal of Marriage and Family 55 (4): 801–813.
Illich, Ivan. 1975. Medical Nemesis. The Expropriation of Health. London: Calder & Boyars. Johnston, Janet R. 1994. HighConflict Divorce. The Future of Children 4 (1): 165–182.
Kleinman, Arthur. 1980. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kohler Riessman, Catherine. 1990. Divorce Talk. Women and Men Make Sense of Personal Relationships. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.
Lebow, Jay and Kathleen Newcomb Rekart. 2006. Integrative Family Therapy for HighConflict Divorce with Disputes over Child Custody and Visitation. Family Process 46 (1): 79–91.
Morrison, Donna Ruane, and Mary Jo Coiro. 1999. Parental Conflict and Marital Disruption: Do Children Benefit when HighConflict Marriages are Dissolved? Journal of Marriage and Family 61 (3): 626–637.
Pelikan, Egon. 2014. The Catholic Church and Politics in Slovenia. In Religion and Politics in Post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. Challenges since 1989, edited by Sabrina P. Ramet. Houndmills UK: Palgrave Macmillan: 115–130.
Ramet, Sabrina P. 2014. The Catholic Church in PostCommunist Poland: Polarization, Privatization, and Decline in Influence. In Religion and Politics in Post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. Challenges since 1989, edited by Sabrina P. Ramet. Houndmills UK: Palgrave Macmillan: 25–52.
Reban, Milan. 2014. The Catholic Church in the Post–1989 Czech Republic and Slovakia. In Religion and Politics in Post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. Challenges since 1989, edited by Sabrina P. Ramet. Houndmills UK: Palgrave Macmillan: 53–85.
Rosaldo, Michele Zimbalist. 1980. Knowledge and Passion: Ilongot Notions of Self and Social Life.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosaldo, Michele Zimbalist. 1984. Toward an Anthropology of Self and Feeling. In Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion, edited by Richard Schweder, and Robert A. LeVine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 137–157.
Sclater, Shelley Day, and Christine Piper. 2001. Social Exclusion and the Welfare of the Child. Journal of Law and Society 28 (3): 409–429.
Sekulić, Duško. 2016. Ljevica i desnica u Hrvatskoj. In Vrijednosti u hrvatskom društvu, edited by Duško Sekulić. Zagreb: Sveučilišna tiskara, Centar za demokraciju i pravo Miko Tripalo: 137–168.
Simpson, Bob. 1998. Changing Families. An Ethnographic Approach to Divorce and Separation. Oxford: Berg.
SpillaneGrieco, Eileen. 2000. CognitiveBehavioral Family Therapy with a Family in HighConflict Divorce. Clinical Social Work Journal 28 (1): 105–119.
Turkat, Ira D. 1994. Child Visitation Interference in Divorce. Clinical Psychology Review 14(8): 737–742.
Turkat, Ira D. 2002. Child Visitation Interference in Family Law Litigation. Marietta, GA: Future 1st Global, Inc.
Visser, Margreet, Catrin Finkenauer, Kim Schoemaker, Esther Kluwer, Rachel van der Rijken, Justine van Lawick, Hans Bom, J. Clasien de Schipper, & Francien LamersWinkelman. 2017. I’ll Never Forgive You: High Conflict Divorce, Social Network, and CoParenting Conflicts.” Journal of child and family studies 26(11): 3055–3066.
Warshak, Richard A. 2008. Otrov razvoda. Zagreb: Algoritam.
Zola, Irving Kenneth. 1972. Medicine as an Institution of Social Control. Sociological Review 20: 487–504.
Whiteside, Mary F. 1998. The parental alliance following divorce: An overview. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 24(1): 3–24.
