engleski

“Irresponsible, incompetent, inadequate?” Narratives and Practices of Parenting in High-Conflict Divorces in Croatia

Approximately one-third of all the divorces (Turkat 1994, Whiteside 1998, Visser et al. 2017), the number of which is rising in most European countries, are defined as high-conflict divorces. Even though divorce conflicts are multidimensional, and several types should be distinguished (Johnston 1994), high-conflict divorces are generally characterized by prolonged lack of communication between partners, by child visitation interference and by different ways of emotional and psychological manipulation of children (Warshak 2008). According to the findings of several years’ long qualitative research of conflict divorces in Croatia, there is little institutional and political support for parents caught up in high-conflict divorces. Institution representatives too frequently claim that the parents themselves are to blame, because they are ‘irresponsible’, ‘incompetent’, or inadequate parents. On the other hand, the parents, who report being the victims of high-conflict divorces, feel disempowered, helpless, bitter, and betrayed. This paper analyses those juxtaposed and conflicted narratives and practices in high- conflict divorces in order to reveal their context and potential rationale and tackles the question whether and in what way the pandemic of COVID-19 influenced post-divorce child visitation practices.

high-conflict divorces, Croatia, ethnography of parenting

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