TL;DR
A 2026 review found 589 publications about high-conflict divorce. Of 69 studies examined closely for children’s outcomes, only 23 directly collected children’s views.
In my 2011 mediation notes, I recorded that my sons wanted to stay out of the dispute between their parents.
Research can help explain why children need to be heard without being asked to choose a side. It can’t tell me everything my own sons experienced.
In 2011, I was preparing notes for mediation during my divorce. There were dates, missed calls, arguments about time with the boys and plenty of things I wanted someone to take seriously.
Among those pages, I wrote something about my sons that I keep coming back to. They had said they wanted to stay “out of the line of fire.”
I recorded those words as part of my concerns about what was happening to our family. At the time, I also wanted the boys brought into mediation so someone could hear from them.
Looking at that document now, I’m struck by the contradiction. They wanted to be out of the middle. I wanted the adults responsible for the decisions to understand what they were going through. Both things could be true, and I didn’t have an easy answer for how to accomplish the second without making the first harder.
A new study brought me back to those notes.
What the researchers found
In the October 2026 issue of Children and Youth Services Review, Julien Lahaye Cauchy and colleagues reviewed research on high-conflict divorce.
The researchers searched publications dating back to 1990. Their first review covered 589 documents, including 299 empirical studies, meaning studies that collected or analyzed data rather than relying only on theory. They then examined 69 studies specifically concerned with children’s outcomes, including their emotional well-being, behavior, school adjustment and relationships.
Only 23 of those 69 studies directly gathered the children’s own views.
We spend so much time talking about what divorce does to children. In this particular group of studies, most didn’t ask children to describe their experiences themselves.
There are limits to what that tells us. It doesn’t mean researchers ignored every child, or that only a third of children in custody cases ever get heard. The authors studied a defined body of research, mostly from Western countries. They also found that studies used different definitions of high-conflict divorce and often measured different things. They weren’t auditing courts or interviewing a representative sample of divorced families.
Still, I think the gap matters. When most of the information comes from adults, we can learn a lot about adult behavior while knowing less about how the children understood it.
Another 2025 review of 66 studies on interventions for high-conflict divorce found a related problem. A program might say it puts children’s needs first, or aim to help children by working with their parents, without giving the children much direct involvement. Some programs do involve children directly. The researchers argued that we need to understand those differences rather than assume a child-centered label tells us what actually happened.
What I worried about in 2011
In those same mediation notes, I wrote that I wanted any therapist involved with the boys to be acceptable to both parents and separate from either parent’s own treatment.
I had a specific concern. If the boys thought a therapist would repeat their private conversations to their mother or to me, they might tell us what they thought we wanted to hear.
I wrote that in April 2011, in the middle of the divorce, long before I knew about these reviews.
I was worried about their ability to speak without pressure. I was also worried about what I believed were attempts to interfere with our relationship. Those concerns were real to me, and I documented specific events because I didn’t want them reduced to competing memories.
But the notes are mine. They tell a reader what I observed, what I was worried about and what I tried to do. They aren’t a transcript of everything my sons experienced.
In a May 12 entry, I wrote that I’d received a mediator’s report through my attorney and had learned the boys had attended mediation. According to my entry, I hadn’t known beforehand that they’d been brought in.
I can establish what I recorded about that day. I can’t tell someone, from that entry alone, exactly what the boys felt able to say in the room or how their words were understood afterward.
That’s the part of the story the paperwork can’t fill in for me.
Being heard isn’t the same as being asked to decide
A separate June 2026 research review looked at 46 studies that included children’s own reports about taking part in divorce-related decisions at home, in court and during mediation.
Across those settings, children generally said they wanted to have a say in decisions affecting their lives. But the studies also showed a gap between wanting to participate and getting a meaningful chance to do it.
The findings weren’t as simple as “let children decide everything.” Some children were unsure about speaking directly to a judge. Others worried about conflict and the consequences of what they said. Children reported more positive experiences in mediation than in court, although the studies were mostly interviews and other research that couldn’t establish which process caused better outcomes.
There’s a difference between asking a child what life has been like and asking the child which parent should win.
The first gives an adult information they might otherwise miss. The second can leave a child carrying responsibility for an outcome adults and courts are supposed to handle.
I think about the boys wanting to stay out of the line of fire. What would it have taken for them to feel safe describing their lives without having to protect either parent, defend a choice or worry about the reaction afterward?
I don’t know their answer.
And I don’t want to put one in their mouths now.
A child’s refusal deserves more than one explanation
There’s a real danger in talking about children’s wishes this way. An estranged parent can hear “listen to the child” and worry that the child’s rejection will be treated as a complete account of how the relationship broke down. A child who has experienced abuse can hear “look for influence” and worry that adults will dismiss a justified refusal to see an unsafe parent.
Guidance from Cafcass, the organization that advises family courts in England and Wales, describes several possible reasons for a child refusing time with a parent. They include fear after abuse, anger about separation, pressure from ongoing conflict and harmful behavior by an adult intended to undermine the other parent-child relationship.
That guidance doesn’t govern California, where my divorce took place. I’m using it because it states a distinction clearly: a child’s refusal needs to be understood in context. It shouldn’t automatically be treated as proof of manipulation, and it shouldn’t automatically be dismissed as manipulation either.
I wrote more directly about deliberately turning a child against a parent in When a Child Is Turned Against a Parent. I still believe adults can do terrible damage when they pressure children to reject someone they love or make it feel unsafe to care about both parents.
But I don’t think that concern gives any parent the right to decide, on behalf of a child, what the child’s feelings must mean. That includes me.
I can believe particular behavior damaged our relationship. I can point readers toward the records I have. I can also recognize that my sons’ accounts of their own experiences belong to them.
What I wish had been easier
One detail in the 2026 review stays with me. Studies defined high-conflict divorce in different ways, and very few followed the same children over time.
A snapshot can record what a child says during an awful stretch of family life. It doesn’t necessarily show how the child got there, what they felt able to say, or how their understanding may change as they grow older.
I think that’s why records matter to me. I have dates, emails, phone messages and my own notes from 2011. They can help me check what I remember and show some of the circumstances surrounding our family. I discussed the limits of a professional hearing only one account in What Therapy Can Know About the Parent Who Isn’t There.
Yet I can’t turn an archive into my sons’ complete childhood.
And if either of them reads this someday, I wouldn’t want a research paper or my version of the divorce to replace his own thinking. I’d want him to feel free to examine what happened, ask difficult questions of everybody involved and make up his own mind. That includes looking at my choices.
Back in 2011, I was trying to protect a relationship I was afraid of losing. My sons were children living inside the dispute. I had my fears. They had their own experience of it, and some of that is still unknown to me.
I still have the page where I wrote that they wanted out of the line of fire.
I wish they’d never had to find words for that.
Author’s Note
This is a personal account based on my contemporaneous notes and published research. Descriptions of what my children said reflect what I recorded at the time, not a complete or independently verified account of their thoughts. I don’t claim to know their private motives or the motives of anyone else in my family. The cited studies describe specific research samples and should not be taken as findings about my family’s divorce. This is not legal or clinical advice.
Resources
Lahaye Cauchy and colleagues, A scoping review of high conflict divorce: From general mapping to a focus on children’s experiences, Children and Youth Services Review, volume 189 (October 2026). Review of 589 publications, with 69 studies analyzed for child outcomes and 23 directly collecting children’s views.
Rautio, Nikupeteri and Laitinen, Interventions in High-Conflict Divorces/Separations from Children’s Perspective: A Scoping Review, Family Transitions (2025). Review of 66 published studies of divorce interventions.
A Systematic Review of Children’s Views and Experiences Regarding Their Participation in Divorce-Related Decision-Making at Home, in Court, and During Mediation, Family Transitions (June 2026). Synthesis of 46 studies using children’s reports.
Cafcass, Alienating behaviours and child welfare assessment guidance. Professional guidance for England and Wales, not U.S. custody law.