Conference Theme:

Shared Parenting Research: A Watershed in Understanding Children’s Best Interest?

organized by the National Parents Organization and the International Council on Shared Parenting.

May 29 – 30, 2017 | Westin Copley Place Hotel | Boston, MA, USA

There is now intense interest in the apparently powerful effects of family structure on children’s outcomes. This timely and sharply focused conference will explore 40 years of research on how children fare in different post-divorce parenting arrangements.

Research suggests that fully half of troubled children and adolescents derive from conflicted, separated and divorced families. The faculty will delve into the relationship between different types of post-divorce parenting arrangements and children’s subjective and objective outcomes, their attachment to parental figures, and specific issues such as age and developmental level, high conflict, domestic violence, and parental alienation. The conference offers the rare opportunity to interact with leading legal and mental health scholars from around the world on this important topic. The program will include plenary sessions, panel discussions, question and answer sessions, and break-out workshops.

In addition, the conference offers a major bonus opportunity: One trip to Boston, two great conferences! The International Conference on Shared Parenting 2017 concludes on Tuesday evening, May 30. The annual conference of AFCC begins the next morning, a pleasant 10 minute walk from our venue!

Given the high prevalence of conflicted, separated and divorced families, this conference will be of great benefit to all varieties of child and family practitioners and scholars, including any who deal with family policy, family law, psychology, child mental and physical health, alienation, domestic violence or family dynamics This is an unusual opportunity to learn from so many distinguished scholars from Australia to Europe to North America, any of whom would qualify as a keynote speaker, all at one conference – followed by the opportunity for immediate further offerings at AFCC. Information on continuing education can be found in the Program.

Faculty Highlights:

The distinguished faculty will be headlined by Prof. Michael Lamb, formerly head of the Section on Social and Emotional Development of the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for 17 years, and now Professor of Psychology at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Prof. Lamb is the author of over 500 professional articles and the recipient of the American Psychological Association’s 2015 Award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology.

Dr. Richard Warshak is the author of the widely known “Consensus Report” of 2014. The conclusions of this comprehensive literature review of children’s outcomes as related to post-divorce parenting plans were signed by 110 eminent authorities from around the world.

The research of Profs Malin Bergström of Sweden and Patrick Parkinson of Australia reflects the fact that shared parenting has been very common in both countries for almost a decade, thus reducing the research problem of selection bias.

Other distinguished faculty include Sanford Braver (U.S.), William Fabricius, (U.S.), Edward Kruk (Canada), Linda Nielsen (U.S.), Irwin Sandler (U.S.), Jean Zermatten  (Switzerland, UN Commission on the Rights of the Child), Pamela Ludolph (U.S.), and about 35 other scholars from 18 countries ranging from China to the Middle East to Europe to North America.