Coparenting is challenging, but what truly matters for your child's well-being? In this video, we break down Dr. Emery’s adaptation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for children in two homes. We’ll discuss what matters more than simply having two parents and how you can create the best possible environment for your child—even after separation or divorce.
🔹 Learn why one good parent is more important than two conflicted ones 🔹 Understand the biggest risk factors for children in co-parenting situations 🔹 Discover how to minimize conflict and support your child's emotional health
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I firmly believe that it's important for children to have two parents, access to both parents, loving relationships with both, but that's not always possible. Today we're going to talk about what trumps having two parents. We're going to talk about the hierarchy of needs for children in two homes. I'm Ron Gore. I'm an attorney who serves as a guardian ad litem, a parenting coordinator and a mediator. I own Co-Parent Academy and I provide co-parenting education to attorneys and to parents.
Speaker 1:
The famous hierarchy of needs comes from Maslow and it talks about how you have to meet your basic needs. Before you can move on to the higher level needs. You have to start with safety you know food, housing, shelter before you can get to things like self-actualization. Now Maslow's Hierarchy of Neces come under criticism because it has a culturally never banned in terms of what it prioritizes and some other things. Not a lot of empirical evidence behind it, but it just makes sense. We know that before we're going to indulge our goals to become the best poet of all time, we're going to make sure that we have a place to sleep. We're going to have food. We're going to make sure that we have a place to sleep. We're going to have food. We're going to be safe from physical harm. Those are the first priorities. Dr Emery from the University of Virginia adapted Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to talk about the needs of children in two homes. So what we're going to do first in this video is we'll go through Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, just a quick refresher of it, and then we'll talk about the hierarchy of needs for children in two homes. So first let's talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 1:
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a psychological theory proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943, and it outlines a five-tiered model of human needs, often depicted as a pyramid. The idea is that people have to satisfy the lower-level needs before they can focus on higher-level growth and self-fulfillment. It starts at the bottom with the basic physiological and safety needs, then it gets more esoteric with love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization. If you're unable to secure the lower bases of this hierarchy, then you can't get to the upper levels and you're going to be willing to sacrifice the upper levels to achieve the lower bases of this hierarchy. Then you can't get to the upper levels and you're going to be willing to sacrifice the upper levels to achieve the lower. So you're going to be willing to sacrifice, for example, your self-esteem in order to have love and belonging. If you're starving, you're willing to sacrifice your safety in order to get food. So, as you come from the top to the bottom, discarding these higher level needs, it's because you have this first primal need to secure the lower rungs.
Speaker 1:
The physiological needs, are all the things that you need to be able to survive as a human and to reproduce and continue your genetic line. Things like air to breathe, food, water to drink, reproduction, clothing, sleep and shelter. These are the basic primal needs. If you don't have these, you can't go on to anything else because you're not going to be able to survive. Next are safety needs, and safety is just your basic, fundamental safety everything from your physical safety to your financial security, your health and well-being and your having a safe environment in which you can live. Next is love and belonging. This starts getting into the more esoteric needs, things like friendship, family, having romantic relationships and being part of a community, feeling loved and accepted by the people in your life. This is critical to enable you to reach the next step of this hierarchy of needs. The next step is to be able to have esteem. Esteem means that you can have self-respect, confidence that you get some recognition from others that you've gained status because of your achievements. Self-esteem is critical to reach the final level, which is self-actualization. This is reaching your full potential. This is having creativity, pursuing your passions, having personal development, setting and meeting meaningful goals. This is becoming the best version of yourself that you can be. These are Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 1:
Now Dr Emery created this hierarchy of needs for children in two homes. It's based on Maslow's, and the first two levels the safety and the physiological levels, are exactly the same for the most part. There is a difference in taking into consideration that many parents in the first year or so after separation or longer if things have gone poorly have a decrease in their parenting. They have an increase in their own mental health issues. You may have a parent who is turning to substances like alcohol or other drugs to help self-medicate. You have parents who are having difficulty with their own emotional regulation and so become less authoritative in their parenting. You have a parent who becomes potentially abusive physically, emotionally or psychologically. So having a parent who is going through a difficult time can sometimes increase the risk to the safety of the child from one of the parents. Now let's talk about one good parent in Emery's hierarchy of needs for kids in two homes. This is his third level, on top of physiological and safety, and what he means here is having one good, authoritative parent, a parent who's providing unconditional love with clear, firm and consistent discipline. These are boundaries that children will appreciate. It's boundaries with logic. It's boundaries that are put in place to help a child, and the child can understand that they're safer because of these boundaries and that their parent is putting them in place because they love them.
Speaker 1:
Next is protection from conflict. When Emory discusses protection from conflict, he means having minimal parental conflict, or at least conflict that does involve the kids, and kids are not caught in the middle. There's all sorts of research that shows that is. What is most difficult for kids is not the divorce itself, it's not the separation itself, it is the conflict that can erupt. Having children remain in a two-parent home in which there's lots of conflict is worse for the children than having parents be separated, but to not have the conflict involve them. So it's not the separation that matters, it's the conflict. The conflict is what overcomes children, gives them stress that they can't unload, it overwhelms them and it causes them problems potentially throughout their lives.
Speaker 1:
The next level is having two good parents. Now Emory means two good, authoritative parents. So a second authoritative parent on top of the first, after you've had that first authoritative parent and then you've protected the children from conflict. Now, if you can add a second authoritative parent, that is going to be a fantastic advancement for the child and the well-being. So this means that you have a second authoritative parent who is working with and not against their co-parent. They are handling the business of their lives as well as possible with little conflict conflict that, when it occurs, is productive and is kept from the children, so they're not embroiled in the conflict. It's two parents who have put aside their differences to focus together on raising their child the best that they can, even though they're in separate households, ensuring that their decisions are in their child's best interest and not pursuing their own selfish agendas. Ultimately, if you're able to do that, what you have secured for your child is this top level, this apex level of the hierarchy of needs for children in two homes, and that's just a plain childhood, that's allowing your kid to just be a kid, to not be thinking of themselves as a child of divorce. I mean, it is the case that they're going to have their parents in two different homes, and that is going to be something that makes them different from some of their friends, but the same as a lot of other of their friends too. So ultimately, what occurs is you're giving your child the best opportunity to be themselves, to reach their full potential and to take away any impact, any negative impact that your separation may have had on them.
Speaker 1:
But too often parents aren't able to help their child get up through these levels of the hierarchy of needs and we start descending down through them instead, taking away layers of possible growth for a child. As we descend down through the hierarchy of needs, what we're really doing is we're sacrificing things that would be positive for a child's well-being and development, because the parents aren't able to provide those things. So would we rather have a child who could just be a kid? Yes, child's well-being and development, because the parents aren't able to provide those things. So would we rather have a child who could just be a kid? Yes, that is the pinnacle, that's what we want. Would we rather have two good parents, two good, authoritative, unconditionally loving, boundary-setting parents for kids? Absolutely, that's what we want. But we're going to sacrifice those things if they're not available because we have to make sure that what we have for a child is a home without ongoing conflict.
Speaker 1:
The first step is to make sure that the children are provided an environment as free from conflict as possible before we focus on having something like equal time with parents. Equal time with parents is a luxury right. If we can have that, that's fantastic. It's better for children to have equal time, substantially equal time with two good parents. That's wonderful that children feel loved. But first you have to have freedom from conflict and it makes sense. If you don't have freedom from conflict, you don't have two good parents, because at least one of the parents is engaging in conflict. That is unhealthy for the child, especially if that conflict is happening around the child or if the child's aware of it. By definition, you're not having two good parents. At that point, hopefully you have at least one. So as we come down from the top to the bottom, we're shedding things that would be better for the children if they're at all possible.
Speaker 1:
So in looking at this hierarchy of needs, I think it's each parent's ethical obligation to help their child ascend through these levels. So first, it's each parent's ethical obligation to provide things like shelter and food. I don't think that's in any way controversial. Probably everybody agrees with that. It's important to provide children safety. It's our ethical obligation as parents to do that as part of the contract we make when we have children.
Speaker 1:
Next is to have at least one good parent. If you think that your co-parent is not a good parent, well then it's on you to be the good parent, right? You have the ethical obligation to become the good parent. If you don't think there is one yet, if you think that there is something wrong with your co-parent, I think it's your ethical obligation to do everything you can to help that co-parent be a better parent.
Speaker 1:
One of the ways often that you can do that is to reduce conflict on your end. If you're constantly poking and prodding and kicking and making fun of or denigrating the other parent, then it's going to be harder for them to become a good co-parent parent. Then it's going to be harder for them to become a good co-parent. If you think they have trouble with their emotional regulation and you're constantly doing things that you know will dysregulate them, well, you're contributing to the problem and I would argue that you're not being a good parent.
Speaker 1:
So it's on you to be the best parent that you can be. It's on you to do your part to reduce conflict. Once you've done those things, then you've fulfilled your ethical obligation of being a good parent and you've given your child the best opportunity that they have to ascend through this hierarchy to reach that top level where kids can just be kids, kids free from sort of the conflict, the lingering cortisol spiking conflict of divorce or separation. If you recognize that you're not doing everything you can right now to help your child ascend through this hierarchy of needs, then I challenge you to do better, to do better to help your child, even if that means somehow you're helping your co-parent that you can't stand too. Thank you for watching. Goodbye.
