My general research interests focus on children and families, especially family conflicts that affect children and involve legal/policy issues. More specific interests include the consequences of divorce for children, child custody disputes, divorce mediation, how children are affected by marital conflict, triadic (systemic) processes, child abuse, and grieving relationship loss. I also have general interests in alternative family structures (divorce, nonmarital childbearing, cohabitation), family dysfunction, and abnormal behavior among children, as well as the interface between psychology and family law/mental health law. A recent and exciting interest is conducting genetically-informed studies of the presumed effects of major changes in family life. Family environments do not occur at random (behavior geneticists call this the gene-environment correlation), so traditional studies of the family environment are confounded. This research (in collaboration with Eric Turkheimer) seeks to disentangle the gene-environment correlation. Think about identical (MZ) twins, one who gets pregnant and one who does not, as a way to better disentangle selection effects from the true consequences of teen pregnancy. We've done this study, and are doing several more like it.
Selected Publications
Emery, R.E. (2004). The Truth About Children and Divorce: Dealing with the Emotions So You and Your Children Can Thrive. New York: Viking/Penguin.
Emery, R.E., Otto, R.K., & O’Donohue, W. (In press). A Critical Assessment of Child Custody Evaluations: Weak Science in a Flawed System. Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
D’Onofrio, B., Turkheimer,E., Emery, R., Slutske, W., Heath, A., Madden, P., & Martin, N. (In press). A genetically informed study of marital instability and its association with offspring psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
Emery, R.E., Laumann-Billings, L., Waldron, M., Sbarra, D.A., and Dillon, P. (2001). Child custody mediation and litigation: Custody, contact, and co-parenting 12 years after initial dispute resolution. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69, 323-332.
Sbarra, D.S. & Emery, R.E. (2005). The emotional sequelae of non-marital relationship dissolution: Descriptive evidence from a 28-day prospective study. Personal Relationships, 12, 213-232.
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