If I’m speaking with a group of parents and I want to elicit a lively debate, I only need to say the following:
“Kids shouldn’t be your highest priority”.
As a youngster, I remember my dad telling me that “your mom always comes first,” but I really didn’t understand what he meant. It wasn’t until I spent many years working with kids and families that I realized that focusing your life around the needs and wants of your children was a serious mistake.
I’ve gotten some passionate feedback on this position from many parents. My favorite comment was from a mom of an infant. “I’ll tell that to my six-month-old the next time she wakes up in the middle of the night screaming for food.” One reader’s comments were more personal. “You must not have kids. Having children means sacrificing what you want for what they need.”
As a parent of three children, I understand that there are many times when taking care of our kids must come before anything else. Parenting involves lots of compromise and sacrifice.
However, always putting your children first is bad for them, bad for you, and bad for your relationship with your spouse.
It’s … Read More... “Why Kids Shouldn’t be Your Highest Priority”
I confess that I am a bit of a junkie of surveys and studies. So I am always on the lookout for interesting ones that relate to family and/or divorce issues. Recently, I came across this 
The dissolution of their marriage offers the opportunity for each partner to stand up for themselves in a way they had not before. Bravo! Finding your voice and learning assertiveness skills can create better relationships with others while assisting you in getting what you need.
It often is said that children are the most affected by divorce. Now a Toronto study has found that men with divorced parents are significantly more likely to suffer a stroke than men from intact families, according to a recent study from the University of Toronto. The study, published in the International Journal of Stroke, shows that adult men who had experienced parental divorce before they turned 18 are three times more likely to suffer a 
Jeffrey Lee Chafin v. Lynne Hales Chafin
It is no longer a secret that attorneys that work in the domestic relations arena are mining social media networking sites, such as Facebook, for helpful evidence about the opposing party. A person’s Facebook page is often a very fertile source of embarrassing information that may help sway a judge’s opinion about which parent is best to be the primary caregiver for the children at issue. That is why it is extremely important for those engaged in a custody battle to be cognizant of what information about themselves (and their children) that they are choosing to share with the world on social media networking sites.
Mary Murphy is a licensed clinical social worker and a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology from Oregon. I learned about Mary’s research project and survey from reading an article about it posted by Connecticut psychotherapist Donna Ferber. I have enjoyed collaborating in the past with Donna on a number of diverse topics. In Donna’s words, “Ms. Murphy’s work is of great value as she is looking to gather data from an often overlooked population. The effects of divorce on adult children are often minimized and her research helps shed a light on this issue.”