Healthier homes, one relationship at a time.

In custody cases, parents are often ordered, or strongly encouraged, to complete parenting or co-parenting classes. Florida requires one in every divorce with minor children. Many California courts can order them too.

Those classes are usually paid out of pocket, and fee waivers vary from county to county. The parents under the most strain, and the children living in the middle of it, are the least likely to get the help.

Archakova would close that gap: free relational health education, built on the research, for families in high-conflict divorce and custody cases, starting in the United States.

The CDC-Kaiser ACE Study found that adverse childhood experiences, such as abuse, neglect, household substance use, mental illness, incarceration and, in later versions, parental separation or divorce, add up. Adults with four or more faced 4 to 12 times the risk of alcoholism, drug abuse, depression and suicide attempts.

Harvard's Center on the Developing Child explains why: prolonged stress without supportive relationships becomes toxic stress, which can disrupt a developing brain. The buffer is a safe, stable, nurturing relationship, the same framing the American Academy of Pediatrics adopted in 2021.

The effect doesn't stop in childhood. In the 80-year Harvard Study of Adult Development, the people most satisfied in their relationships at 50 were the healthiest at 80.

Address communication, the home environment and the family, and the effect reaches well past one household. The same research ties childhood adversity to substance use, depression and suicide risk later in life.