Yes! The research data (and parent feedback) demonstrate Bridging Parental Conflict significantly improves parents’ co-parenting in a variety of ways, including improved understanding of how to decrease co-parental conflict and lessen the chronic stress children often experience in conflicted families.

The data show men and women benefit in different ways from different parts of the program. Overall, there is significant improvement in understanding of co-parenting by parents who attend. In addition, the data show that nearly every parent who attends Bridging Parental Conflict gains a deeper awareness of the importance of decreasing conflict between parents and increasing cooperation.

While the data provide various important discoveries for researchers and providers of divorce education and co-parenting classes, participants reported learning about family systems and the impact on co-parenting and child development as the most important take-aways from Bridging Parental Conflict. The second most important take-away was gaining a deeper understanding of what children actually experience living in two homes and the impact of parental conflict on those experiences (Transition Challenges).

Bridging Parental Conflict is designed to help the attending parent discover ways to lessen the chronic stress children feel in conflicted families. Even if your co-parent makes no changes, you can have a significant positive (and important!) impact on your children’s development.

Yes. In additional to quantitative data, the researchers collected qualitative anecdotes from class participants. The qualitative anecdotes and the quantitative data say the same thing: Bridging Parental Conflict provides significant improvements for parents in conflict. Some of the qualitative anecdotes are available on the Bridging Parental Conflict website.

Research on Bridging Parental Conflict was conducted by the Divorce Education Assessment Collaborative at Kansas State University. The research tracked more than 400 parent participants who attended the class from January – December 2022. The research was approved by Kansas State University’s institutional review board (IRB).