ABSTRACT
A child custody plan "in the best interests of the child" makes available to the child the most powerful array of skills and resources each parent is capable of offering, optimizing the child's ability to: (1) feel safe in the world; (2) develop effective and comfortable interpersonal skills, and (3) master gradually unfolding age-appropriate developmental tasks and other skills of competency. The plan may have to be implemented in the midst of significant levels of interparental conflict. Traditional approaches to creating such plans based on standard clinical methods and/or the findings of postdivorce research frequently omit the most important data needed: those that reveal the degree to which a specific parent's interpersonal responses lead to emotionally comfortable and effective behaviors for a particular child within various family systems. As the context or system within which a child and caretaker interact changes—for example, the child alone with each, with both together, within other actual (or psychologically internal) family groupings—the value of each parent to a child can shift, sometimes radically. For example, a parent who has little value for a child as a day-to-day manager of daily routines may have great value as the more ardent proponent of postdivorce family unity (Bricklin and Elliot, 2002a, b). An empirically assisted way to detect unique systemic values will be offered.
