Keele Research Repository

Most research, policy discussion and intervention is based on outsider-expert understandings that categorise divorces as well as parents enmeshed in ‘high-conflict’ disputes in polarised and individualised terms. Little, however, is known about parents’ experiences of these disputes, or how they fare in the longer term. This article draws on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 25 mothers and fathers in British Columbia, Canada, who experienced a high-conflict divorce and later came to see the experience as having been transformative despite the many difficulties they faced. Overall, the research found that positive change occurs over time when parents are supported with resources that address their particular needs and challenges. Parents change, make meaning and respond to their circumstances across the life course, thereby exercising agency. This process also occurs in a social, political and legal context that changes over time and across generations.