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B.A., M.S. University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
M.S.L., Yale School of Law
The unifying theme across Dr. Pruett’s research areas is family dynamics and development, both normative and non-normative, with the defining principle being concern for the promotion of healthy child and family development during life transitions, particularly those transitions related to adverse events or circumstances. She is currently focused on several areas of inquiry.
The first is the continued mining of data from the completed Collaborative Divorce Project (CDP). The CDP is an intervention and evaluation plan for a collaborative alternative to the current adversarial system of divorce for families with young children. Her pilot work helped identify empirically which complaints commonly decried in the popular and professional literature are most relevant and problematic for families. She published research about parents’ responses to the current system, as well as children’s understanding and wishes about the legal process in which their parents were engaged. In a randomized clinical follow-up to the pilot work, the CDP comprises both a basic research element and an evaluation of an intervention. For the basic research aspect, she investigated family relationships using structural equation modeling to understand pathways between family connections and young child well-being. Parents’ mental health and symptomatology, negative changes in parent-child relationships, marital conflict and cooperation, paternal involvement, and a new empirical measure on the concept of gatekeeping are factors used to examine the context of young children’s adaptation after divorce.
The CDP produced some of the only data in the country about young children (infants through six years) and overnights after divorce. While policy makers have always focused on the age at which infants and toddlers handle overnights, her data indicate the importance of child gender and schedule consistency, more than age. These findings are providing new connections of great interest to psychologists, lawyers, and policy makers at the edge of the psychology-law interface.
The second area is in increasing Father Involvement with their Children. The Supporting Father Involvement project aims to reduce child abuse and neglect, and enhance family well-being, through an intervention that encourages father involvement and couple co-parenting (among married and unmarried parents) in family resource centers. The Office of Child Abuse for the State of California has funded a seven-year study that examines the efficacy of father-only versus couples intervention groups against a third condition control group. The project is producing timely new data about how to involve men early in their children’s lives, and how to best work with parents to maintain the fathers’ involvement and promote the children’s development.
A smaller project involves evaluating the Connecticut Judiciary’s Support Services Division (CSSD) clinical Intake Screen. The screen is designed to rapidly and accurately recommend service levels for families in the court commensurate with their needs.
Finally, I am in the process of developing new research on move-aways to help the courts assess their options when one parent wishes to move far away from the other after divorce, when they have been sharing the raising of their children.
Students are involved in every aspect of research and writing. I am involved with several undergraduates in this reasearch, especially the STRIDE program which connects excellent Smith students with faculty research in their first and second years of college. The students have learned many research skills and published book chapters in their first year. SSW Master's students are also involved; one is co-writing a solicited book, two are coding parent-child videotapes, and one is developing curriculum. Two doctoral students are working with me in defining dissertations on their own areas of interest using court evaluation data, and another student is focusing on play therapy data. They also attend conferences and seminars with me or that I am doing in the community.
Pruett, M.K. (2006). Mental Notes: Reform as Metaphor and Reality. Commentary on
the Family Law Education Reform Project. Family Court Review, 44(4), 571-76.
Cowan, C.P., Cowan, P.A., Pruett, M.K., & Pruett, K.D. (2007). An approach to
preventing co-parenting conflict and divorce in low-income families:
Strengthening couple relationships and fostering fathers' involvement.
Family Process, 46(1), 109-121.
Pruett, M.K., Arthur L., & Ebling, R. (in press). The hand that rocks the cradle: Maternal gatekeeping after divorce. Pace University Law Review.
Cowan, P.A., Cowan, C.P., Cohen, N., Pruett, M.K., & Pruett, K.D. (in press). Supporting fathers' involvement with kids. In J.D. Berrick & N. Gilbert (Eds.), Raising children: Emerging needs, modern risks, and social responses. Oxford University Press.
Pruett, M.K. & Barker, C. (in press). Joint custody: A judicious choice for families - but how, when, and why? In R.M. Galatzer-Levy and L. Kraus (Eds.), The scientific basis of custody decisions (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.
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