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Key Words: attachment, custodial parents, family law, infants, parenting.
We welcome the chance to respond to Millar and Kruk's (2014) comment primarily because this gives us an opportunity to expand on an issue that we think deserves broader consideration: Where does the burden of proof lie when there is no neutral null hypothesis? Tests of statistical significance continue to rely on the null hypothesis testing premise. Scientists do not reject the null hypothesis unless statistically significant (p<.05) support is found for some alternative. But the null hypothesis is not empty substantively when one is addressing many questions of interest to social scientists. This includes the topic of our research: whether frequent overnights in bothmothers' and fathers' households are beneficial or harmful to very young children (Tornello et al., 2013). As a result, advocates of one position or the other often try to capture the null hypothesis, shifting the burden of proof on to the other side. Millar and Kruk do precisely this in their comment, as they have attempted to do elsewhere (e.g., Kruk, 2012; Millar, 2009). They say, "Thus, we should have the expectation that, absent evidence to the contrary, visitation and attachment to a father will, on average, be in children's best interests" (p. 234). We suggest that Millar and Kruk are free to advocate for this position on any ground they wish, except for one: theweight of scientific evidence. Before elaborating, we summarize our study and discuss several questionable and simply wrong assertions made in the Millar and Kruk commentary.
Vehement debates have erupted among child custody experts and advocates about whether it is potentially harmful or beneficial for very young children to spend frequent overnights away from the residential parent with their nonresident parent, typically overnights spent with a father away from a mother (e.g., Lamb & Kelly, 2001; Sroufe & McIntosh, 2011). To date, arguments have been based largely on interpretations of attachment theory or studies of attachment security in relation to other topics (e.g., child care). With only three, limited prior studies on the specific issue, we conducted a secondary analysis using the Fragile Families data set, which had the advantages of including (a) a representative sample (albeit only of 20 major U.S. cities with a population over...