Co-Parenting After Divorce: How to Raise Healthy Children When the Marriage Has Ended

by | May 26, 2026 | Article, Family Therapy, Relationships

Co-Parenting After Divorce: How to Raise Healthy Children When the Marriage Has Ended

Divorce ends a marriage. It does not end a family. For parents, that distinction matters enormously, because the relationship between them does not conclude when the legal proceedings do. It transforms into something that must be navigated, often for the next decade or longer, in the most intimate possible domain: the raising of children you both love. Co-parenting after divorce is one of the most emotionally demanding relational tasks most people will ever face, because it asks two people who are often in genuine pain, who may carry significant anger or grief from the end of the marriage, to collaborate consistently and effectively for someone other than themselves. As a family therapist serving Calabasas, Hidden Hills, and Agoura Hills for over forty years, co-parenting dynamics are among the most frequent concerns that bring both individual clients and families into my office.

What Children Need Most During and After Divorce

The research on children and divorce is clear on one central finding: the quality of the co-parenting relationship is a stronger predictor of children’s long-term wellbeing than the fact of the divorce itself. Children who grow up watching their parents manage their differences with basic civility and who are explicitly freed from loyalty conflicts fare significantly better than children who grow up in households where the post-divorce conflict continues unabated, regardless of whether those households are intact or separated.

What children need after divorce is deceptively simple to describe: permission to love both parents without guilt, freedom from the parental conflicts that are not theirs to carry, consistent routines across households, and the reassurance, given through action rather than words, that they are safe and that the essential structure of their lives will hold even as the family changes shape.

The Most Common Co-Parenting Pitfalls

Even parents with the best intentions fall into patterns that harm their children’s experience of the post-divorce family. These patterns are not usually malicious. They are the natural expression of unresolved hurt and anger that has not yet found an appropriate outlet:

  • Using the child as a messenger between households, putting them in the position of carrier for information that parents should exchange directly
  • Speaking critically about the other parent in front of or within earshot of the child
  • Interrogating the child after time spent in the other household, which places the child in the position of informant
  • Using the child’s preferences or expressed emotions as ammunition in ongoing conflict with the other parent
  • Making major parenting decisions without communication, then presenting them as accomplished facts
  • Competing for the child’s loyalty or affection through permissiveness, gifts, or positioning oneself as the “fun” parent

Each of these behaviors, however understandable their emotional origins, places a burden on the child that is genuinely harmful. Children are not equipped to manage the emotional residue of their parents’ dissolved marriage. When they are asked to, they develop symptoms: anxiety, depression, behavioral changes, academic difficulties, or a troubled relationship with one or both parents that can persist into adulthood.

Building a Functional Co-Parenting Relationship

A functional co-parenting relationship does not require friendship between the former partners. It does not require resolving the grievances of the marriage. It requires something more modest and more specific: a shared commitment to the children’s wellbeing that is strong enough to govern behavior even when the personal feelings between the adults are painful. This is harder than it sounds, and most people need some support to build it.

The most effective co-parenting relationships I observe in my practice tend to share certain qualities. Communication between the parents is regular, businesslike, and focused on the children rather than on the former relationship. Significant decisions, about schooling, medical care, extracurricular activities, are made with input from both parents and are treated as shared responsibilities rather than unilateral authority. Both parents speak about the other parent to the children in a way that does not require the child to manage the speaker’s feelings. And both parents have an outlet, ideally including therapeutic support, for processing the emotions of the divorce that do not belong in the co-parenting relationship.

When Co-Parenting Counseling Helps

Co-parenting counseling is a specific form of family therapy in which a therapist works with both former partners, not as a couple, but as parents, to build more effective communication and decision-making processes. It is not mediation, and it is not an attempt to revisit or resolve the marriage. It is focused entirely on the shared project of parenting and on reducing the harm to children that ongoing co-parenting conflict produces.

Many families I work with find that even a relatively brief period of co-parenting counseling produces significant improvements in the daily experience of the post-divorce family: less conflict at transitions, more consistent expectations across households, and most importantly, children who seem lighter, less burdened, and more able to simply be children rather than managers of their parents’ unfinished emotional business.

Susie Cole Rome, MA, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist with over forty years of experience providing therapy for individuals, couples, and families in Hidden Hills, Calabasas, and across the Greater Los Angeles area, in person and via secure telehealth for California residents.

Ready to Begin?

Susie Cole Rome, MA, LMFT, offers compassionate therapy for individuals, couples, and families in Hidden Hills, Calabasas, Woodland Hills, Malibu, Agoura Hills, and throughout the Greater Los Angeles area, with secure telehealth available for all California residents.

📞 (818) 618-4762
✉️ Susie@susierome.com
📍 24933 Kit Carson Rd, Hidden Hills, CA 91302
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