Creator & Author of The Good Divorce

Connie with her beloved dog Maggie

Dr. Constance Ahrons was an acclaimed psychologist, international speaker, and pioneering champion of collaborative divorce.

In a September 2021 interview for an American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy podcast, Connie discussed her binuclear family model and her career, noting that her goal was to give divorcing families a positive role model to minimize harm to children.

Dr. Ahrons’ extensive clinical experience and her ground-breaking research made her a compelling advocate for a “good divorce.” Her landmark research, funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) and the University of Wisconsin, studied post-divorce families. She and her team interviewed these families (and later their adult children) four times over two decades.

She shared her knowledge and findings in her three books and dozens of professional articles. Her books have been translated into many languages and she has been cited countless times, nationally and internationally. She was regularly tapped for her expertise on radio and television shows, including The Today Show, NPR, Good Morning America and Oprah, and for personal interviews.

Even after her passing, Dr. Ahrons continues to be recognized for her groundbreaking work. In May 2022, the Family Mediation Institute posthumously awarded her the “Forrest ‘Woody’ Mosten Star Award for Innovation and Excellence in Family Mediation.”

Coined “Binuclear Family”

Dr. Ahrons coined the term “binuclear family” in the 1970s. As divorce became more commonplace, she fought to cast away pejoratives like “broken home” in hopes of minimizing upheaval to children. Today, “binuclear family” is widely accepted and commonly used to describe a family spanning two separate reorganized households, connected by co-parenting.

She was a staunch advocate for creating the best environment in which to co-parent children in the aftermath of divorce. For more than three decades, she worked as a coach, mediator and therapist with those navigating through divorce and its aftermath.

represnts the 'binuclear' family as coined by Dr. Ahrons

Dr. Ahrons earned her master’s in social work and her doctorate in counseling psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She went on to become a tenured professor in the UW School of Social Work and co-founded the Wisconsin Family Studies Institute where she worked as a therapist. In 1984, she began teaching sociology at the University of Southern California and became Director of the USC’s Marriage and Family Therapy Training Program. In 2001, she became Emeritus Professor.

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constance ahrons - lecture

For more information on her groundbreaking research, see Harvard Dataverse Network: Binuclear Family Study: Data Archive Information

For a more complete historical listing of Constance Ahrons’ background and publications, see her Curriculum Vitae.

See the tribute to her life in The New York Times obituary,  Constance Ahrons, Advocate of ‘Good Divorce,’ Dies at 84