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November 2001

In order to perform their various functions, families have to stay together over a sustained period of time. To do this, they need to develop strategies for living together and for adjusting successfully to change. Research in the Family and Marriage Program looks at how this is achieved. The focus is on couples and families as functioning units. Projects seek to understand how stable relationships and families come to be formed, how they succeed in managing problems and in adapting to change, and how the break-up of families can best be managed when they can no longer function successfully.

To date, research in the program has focused on two sets of concerns: factors promoting positive family relationships and issues pertaining to family law. Research that integrates such areas of relevance to the Family and Marriage program is planned for the future.

The focus here is on how stable and well-functioning families come to be formed, and how they succeed in managing problems and in adapting to change. Most recently, attention has been directed to the early promotion of stable and well-functioning marital relationships.

The Institute, in partnership with the Centre for Research in Education, Equity and Work at the University of South Australia is currently conducting research that will yield a typology of pre-marriage education programs. Construction of the typology and the creation of a national database of relationship education services has been funded by the Department of Family and Community Services as part of the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy.

The general aim of the project is to facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of just what relationship education services are available across the country. This project represents a partial mapping/stocktake of relationship education programs across the country, identifying, among other things, who the providers and clients are, what they do and how they do it, how much it costs, and how/whether they evaluate what they do. An inventory or directory of the programs offered by those providers who participate is being compiled.

In conjunction with the development of the directory, a system for classifying programs according to a small number of key dimensions will also be constructed, yielding a typology of relationship education programs that will allow for meaningful comparisons across programs for the purposes of research and evaluation. It will also provide a key to program characteristics that will allow relationship professionals, marriage celebrants and the public to make informed choices about the program that would best suit their clients' or their own needs.

The project commenced in June 2001 and will be completed in February 2002 with a final report to the Department of Family and Community Services.

The projects undertaken in this strand of the program have focused on how the break-up of families can best be managed in the event of parental separation and/or divorce.

The Australian Divorce Transitions Project (ADTP) examined the process of divorce and its consequences for parents and children. The central purpose of this project was to improve understanding of how divorce can be made a functional transition for families in Australia.

The dissemination phase of the Australian Divorce Transitions Project is now close to completion. Over the past year the findings have continued to play a significant role in informing family law policy and law reform debates in a number of areas. These areas include: legal pathways and processes, matrimonial property division, superannuation, pre-nuptial agreements, post-divorce financial living standards, repartnering after divorce, child support for young adult children, and patterns of parenting after divorce. The general findings from the project have also attracted international interest, as evidenced by the ADTP team being invited to present several papers on the project at the 12th Socio-Legal Association Conference in Bristol, UK.

The dataset for the ADTP has now been lodged with Social Science Data Archives (SSDA). All identifying information has been removed from the data set.

Marriage and relationship breakdowns are events characterised by considerable upheaval and stress for many families. Providing appropriate and timely services for family members helps ensure a functional transition for them.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies was commissioned in September 2000 by the Family Law Pathways Advisory Group to explore consumer perspectives on the family law system. The Advisory Group comprises part of the Federal Government's Stronger Families and Communities Strategy.

The Family Law Pathways and Processes Project sought to assist the Advisory Group by providing an indication of clients' perceptions on a range of specific issues. These issues included (a) key motivating factors influencing the choice of pathways and processes, (b) the role of informal networks, (c) perceived accessibility and usefulness of services, (d) client perceptions of the consistency and quality of the services and information provided, (e) child involvement in the family law system, (f) pathways and processes that tend to reduce or increase conflict, (g) interrelationships between property division, child support, and child contact and residence arrangements, (h) matching client services and needs, and (i) factors related to extent of involvement with the family law system.

Twenty individuals from 16 families from different backgrounds and circumstances were interviewed on a range of issues related to the family law pathways and processes they had experienced. The report of findings, plus 400 pages of transcripts with case summaries, was submitted to the Advisory Group in October 2000.

The final report of the Advisory Group titled Out of the maze: pathways to the future for families experiencing separation was released in August 2001, and is available in PDF.

There is scant information available to the Family Court on how to make decisions in the best interests of the child, particularly when decisions can affect children from the same family differently, as in the case of 'split residence' arrangements. This project aims to explore the function of the sibling relationship for children during and following the divorce of their parents, with a view to assisting the Family Court in making decisions relating to residential and contact arrangements.

This non-core funded project is being undertaken in conjunction with the Family Court of Australia and the University of Queensland Family Centre. The final wave of data collection as well as data analysis is now complete. Dissemination of the findings is ongoing.

In recent years, increasing concerns have been expressed regarding jurisdictional overlaps in the area of child protection and consequent 'systems abuse' - a term used in this context to refer to emotional harm suffered by children due to duplication of processes within state and federal legal systems. As the first empirical analysis on the topic, the central aim of this study is to consider a sample of cases involving jurisdictional overlaps between the Family Court of Australia and the Melbourne Children's Court. The objective is to provide a systematic analysis of the problem, on which discussion about jurisdictional overlaps and possible reform can proceed. The project is due for completion at the end of 2001.

Children's contact services facilitate post-separation contact in situations of high parental conflict and/or risk to children. The Institute in collaboration with Griffith University, the Commonwealth Attorney General's Department and the University of Melbourne was awarded $375,692 under the Australian Research Council's Strategic Partnerships with Industry and Research Training (SPIRT) Support Scheme 2001, to evaluate the operation of children's contact services in Australia. This study is investigating the way in which these services are used and perceived by participants and key stake holders, and the extent to which the use of these services results in positive outcomes, especially for children. The study is due for completion in December 2003.

Publications, 2001

Batrouney, T. and Soriano, G. (2001) 'Parenting in the Torres Strait Islands.' Family Matters no.59 Winter: 48-53.

Smyth, B., Sheehan, G. and Fehlberg, B. (2001) 'Patterns of parenting after divorce: a pre-Reform Act benchmark study.' Australian Journal of Family Law v.15 no.2 Jul: 114-128.

Smyth, B., Sheehan, G. and Fehlberg, B. (2001) 'Post-divorce parenting patterns: a summary of findings from the Institute's Australian Divorce Transitions Project.' Family Matters no.59 Winter: 61-63.

Soriano, G., Weston, R. and Kolar, V. (2001) 'Meeting the challenges of parenting: factors that enhance and hinder the role of parents.' Family Matters no.58 Autumn: 38-45.

Weston, R. and Qu, L. (2001) 'Men's and women's reasons for not having children.' Family Matters no.58 Autumn: 10-15.

Weston, R. and Qu, L. (2001) 'Changing patterns of relationship formation: implications for fertility'. Paper presented at the Australia - New Zealand Population Workshop, Canberra, 28-30 November 2001.
Paper (HTML) / Paper (PDF 678K)

Weston, R. and Smyth, B. (2001) 'The role of the Australian Institute of Family studies in family law reform, presented to the Family Court of Australia Conference, Sydney, July 2001'.
Paper

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