in the 1980s and 1990s turned Farrell's writing toward two issues: the poverty of couples' communication and children's loss of their father in child custody cases. In Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, Farrell asserts that couples often fail to use couples' communication outside of counseling if the person receiving criticism does not know how to make her or himself feel safe. Farrell develops a method called "Cinematic Immersion" to create that safety and overcome what he posits is humans' biological propensity to respond defensively to personal criticism. To address children's loss of their father in child custody cases, Farrell wrote Father and Child Reunion, a meta-analysis of research about what is the optimal family arrangement for children of divorce. Father and Child Reunion's findings include some 26 ways in which children of divorce do better when three conditions prevail: equally-shared parenting (or joint custody); close parental proximity; and no bad-mouthing. His research for Father and Child Reunion provided the basis for his frequently appearing in the first decade of the 21st Century as an expert witness in child custody cases on the balance between mothers' and fathers' rights needed to create the optimal family arrangement for children of divorce. Why Men Earn More By the start of the 21st century, Farrell felt he had re-examined every substantial adult male-female issue except the pay gap (i.e., that men as a group tend to earn more money than women as a group). In Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap—and What Women Can Do About It, he documents 25 differences in men and women's work-life choices which, he argues, account for most or all of the pay gap more accurately than did claims of widespread discrimination against women. Farrell writes that men chose to earn more money, while each of women's choices prioritized having a more balanced life. These 25 differences allowed Farrell to offer women 25 ways to higher pay—and accompany each with their possible trade-offs. The trade-offs include working more hours and for more years; taking technical or more hazardous jobs; relocating overseas or traveling overnight. This led to considerable praise for Why Men Earn More as a career book for women. Some of Farrell's findings in Why Men Earn More include his analysis of census bureau data that never-married women without children earn 13% more than their male counterparts, and that the gender