Ned Holstein Shared Parenting Research Lifetime Achievement Award

National Parents Organization is child focused and research based; we rely on the best scientific research available in our advocacy for children’s right to a full parent/child relationship with both fit and loving parents following parental separation. In pursuit of its mission, NPO highlights some of the most significant shared parenting research on its website. NPO organized and conducted the highly significant 2017 International Conference on Shared Parenting, which brought together leading experts from around the world to present the state of the science on child well-being when parents are living apart. And NPO has made the videos of presentations at that conference available for free.

In order to further highlight the best research on child well-being after parental separation, National Parents Organization has established two research awards, both named in honor of Ned Holstein, the founder of NPO who set the organization on its child focused, research based path.

Below, we announce the winners of the NPO Ned Holstein Shared Parenting Research Lifetime Achievement Award.

NPO Ned Holstein Shared Parenting Research Lifetime Achievements Awardees (in alphabetical order)

Professor Malin Bergström’s research over more than a decade has established her as one of the world’s foremost researchers on the well-being of children of divorced or separated parents and shared parenting.  In dozens of articles and book chapters published over the past 15 years, she has advanced our knowledge of the parenting arrangements that promote children’s best interests when parents live apart.

Because Sweden is leading the world in ensuring that parental separation doesn’t result in parental deprivation, it provides an important region in which to study the effects of different practices for separated parenting. Shared parenting arrangements are not as restricted to higher-income, better educated, less conflicted parents in Sweden as they are in many other countries. The work by her and your colleagues on the Elvis Project of the Karolinska Institute and Stockholm University has been truly groundbreaking.

Her research has provided strong evidence that, independently of other factors, shared physical custody benefits children in numerous ways. When compared to children raised primarily or exclusively with only one parent, children raised in shared physical custody arrangements experience fewer psychosomatic symptoms, fewer mental health problems, better sleep patterns and better relationships with both of their parents. Professor Bergström’s research also helps us understand more fully how these better outcomes for children are related to their parents’ life satisfaction.  

Professor Sanford Braver

Professor Sanford Braver’s research over more than three decades has established him as one of the world’s foremost researchers on the well-being of children of divorced or separated parents, shared parenting, and father involvement in the rearing of children. In more than 130 articles and book chapters published since the mid-1980s, he has advanced our knowledge of the parenting arrangements that promote children’s best interests when parents live apart. (Many of Professor Braver’s research articles are available on his pages at ResearchGate.net.)

The impressive body of research that Professor Braver produced explores a wide range of issues related to divorce, father involvement, and separated parenting. His work has increased our understanding of the factors affecting the well-being of children of divorce and the mechanisms that ameliorate the ill-effects of divorce on children.  His research has explored the economic and psychological effects of divorce on parents and parents’ perceptions of the procedures we use for determining child custody, and their differing perspectives on post-divorce parenting arrangements. Professor Sanford’s work has helped us better understand issues concerning child support noncompliance, parent education programs, and the effects of relocation of children away from one of their parents.  

Professor Braver was also awarded the 2021 NPO Ned Holstein Shared Parenting Research Award, which he shared with his co-author, Professor Ashley Votruba for their groundbreaking article, “Does Joint Physical Custody “Cause” Children’s Better Outcomes?”.

Professor William Fabricius

William Fabricius’s research over more than two decades has established him as one of the world’s foremost researchers on the well-being of children of divorced or separated parents, shared parenting, and father involvement in the rearing of children. In more than 35 published articles and book chapters he has authored or co-authored since 2000, he has advanced our knowledge of the parenting arrangements that promote children’s best interests when parents live apart. The impressive body of research explores a wide range of issues related to divorce, father involvement, and separated parenting. His work has increased our understanding of the importance of father involvement in child well-being, value of shared parenting for infants and toddlers, the effects of parental relocation after divorce or separation, and much more.  

It is well established that children of divorced parents who share physical custody do better on average than children raised in sole custody arrangements. For decades, there has remained controversy over the question of causation vs. correlation: are the better outcomes for children in shared parenting situations caused by shared parenting or just correlated with it because of common cause factors such as family income, parental education, and the level of parental conflict. Professor Fabricius’s very recent research provides strong evidence that the practice of shared parenting, itself, is a causal contributor to children’s better outcomes.

NPO recognizes that Professor Fabricius’s research, remarkable outreach efforts, and advocacy for children’s well-being as being the primary driving force in Arizona’s enactment of its shared parenting presumption in 2012 which required courts to “adopt a parenting plan that provides for both parents to share legal decision-making regarding their child and that maximizes their respective parenting time” (ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 25-403.02). And his subsequent research had indicated both that Arizona courts are treating this as a presumption of 50/50 parenting time and that the legal change he provoked is supported by the majority of conciliation court staff, judges and mental health professionals.

For more than 50 years now, Michael Lamb, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Cambridge,  has produced groundbreaking research that has advanced our understanding of fathers and their role in healthy child development. In hundreds of journal articles, scores of book chapters, dozens of conference papers, and numerous books, Professor Lamb reported  research that has changed the way we think of fathers and families, child well-being, the effects of divorce on children, the nature of parent/child attachments, child abuse, and more. He has conducted cutting-edge primary research as well as writing literature reviews that provide overviews of the current state of knowledge on crucial issues related to his primary research and book reviews. (Many of Professor Lamb’s articles are publicly available on his pages at ResearchGate.net.)


His work has been extraordinarily influential both in academic and non-academic circles. It has been cited by other researchers more than 80,000 times and metrics of research impact show truly remarkable impact of his research. He has served on the editorial boards of more than 20 academic journals and functioned as an editorial consultant on dozens more. Professor Lamb serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the highly-regarded Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. No other researcher has done more than Professor Lamb to shape the research on fathers, parenting, and child development.

Professor Linda Nielsen

Professor Nielsen’s research over more than three decades has established her as one of the world’s foremost researchers on the well-being of children of divorced or separated parents, shared parenting, and father-daughter relationships. In dozens of articles and multiple books, she has advanced our knowledge of the parenting arrangements that promote the best interest of children when parents live apart and our understanding of the relationships between fathers and their daughters.

Many of her publications are meta-analyses of research on these topics–providing an overview of the best current research available in a form that is accessible to those who are not familiar with the formal techniques of quantitative social science research. As such, her research provides an extraordinarily valuable contribution. It offers evidence of the robustness of her conclusions by grounding them on multiple studies, employing somewhat different methodologies and populations. 

National Parents Organization is focused on children’s well-being and ensuring that our practices for raising children when parents live apart change so that parental separation doesn’t result in parental deprivation. As a research-based advocacy organization, we work with legislators, divorce professionals, and those in the media to educate them about what parenting arrangements best promote children’s interests when parents are living separately. Professor Nielsen’s  research is some of the most frequently relied on in NPO’s pursuit of this end.