Babies who spend nights with different parents after divorce have problems making secure attachment to either parent. This according to a recent study at Mills College in California. Here’s a story about it from Health24.com.
The infants who spent different nights with different parents didn’t develop reliable ways of signaling to their parents what their needs were, and they were less likely to trust their parents as a resource to deal with stress. There’s no indication that the study was adjusted to render out other factors that might cause problems for children, such as conflict between the parents and stress in the parents themselves arising from the conflict.