Children's and Parents’ Well‐Being in Joint Physical Custody: A Literature Review

Abstract

Joint physical custody (JPC), a parental care arrangement in which a child lives with each parent for at least 25-50% of the time after separation or divorce, is increasingly common in many Western societies. This is a major shift from the standard of sole physical custody, with mostly mothers providing primary childcare after a parental separation or divorce. The increasing share of separated or divorced parents who practice JPC, which in some countries, US states, and regions reaches 30% and more, results from increasing gender equality due to mothers participating considerably in the labor force and fathers being actively involved in their children's daily lives. This review focuses on the effects of JPC on children's and parents' well-being, based on 40 studies from North America, Australia, and Europe published between 2007 and 2018. In sum, there is empirical evidence from different countries that suggests that JPC arrangements can have positive effects on the well-being of children and of parents. However, the existing studies are conceptually, methodologically, and contextually very heterogeneous. In addition, self-selected highly educated parents with a high socio-economic status, a low conflict level, and children between the ages of 6-15 practicing JPC dominate the samples. Thus, the risks and benefits of JPC are not clear yet and are heavily debated by advocates and academics. The review concludes with suggestions for future research.

Divorce, Repartnering, and Stepfamilies: A Decade in Review

“…Finally, a growing number of studies consider the relationship between postdivorce custody arrangements (e.g., joint vs. sole custody) and child well‐being. Although the results tend to vary across studies, some evidence points to modestly improved outcomes for children associated with joint custody arrangements (for recent reviews, see Baude, Pearson, & Drapeau, ; Steinbach, ). As shared custody arrangements are increasingly common for children after divorce (e.g., Cancian, Meyer, Brown, & Cook, ), this is an important area for future work.…”

Public Attitudes Toward Shared Custody: The Czech Republic

“…These selective mechanisms serve as important justifications for advocates of sole custody arrangements to dismiss the findings of better outcomes for children commuting between two homes. Original empirical research as well as extensive metanalytical and review studies show systematically that even if we control for the level of parental conflict and other circumstances, shared custody still produces the least negative effects, compared to other post-divorce custody arrangements (Nielsen 2017(Nielsen , 2018aSteinbach 2018).…”

“…Although the public discussion understands shared custody as a new phenomenon, a significant body of research has become available since its introduction in the later twentieth century, and recent studies have increasingly taken the form of meta-analysis (Bauserman 2012;Baude et al 2016;Nielsen 2014Nielsen , 2017Nielsen , 2018a or review studies (Steinbach 2018). The most common subjects of empirical studies are the determinants of the choice of shared custody (Fox and Kelly 1995;Wilcox et al 1998;Fransson et al 2016), its practice in various types of families (Birnbaum and Saini 2015), the legal and economic aspects of shared parenting, and the adaptation of adults and children to this arrangement (Bauserman 2002(Bauserman , 2012.…”

“…We do not define specifically its meaning, nor the ratio of the sharing, because we use this term in its phenomenological sense as an agenda of public discourse. Usually, a time division from 25% to 50% spent with one parent is used to define shared custody (cf Steinbach 2018)…”

Fathers’ Involvement with Their Children Before and After Separation

“…Despite strong policy endorsement for paternal involvement in their children's lives (Harris-Short 2010; Trinder 2014), evidence on the benefits of post-separation paternal contact remains at best equivocal (Adamsons and Johnson 2013;Amato and Gilbreth 1999;Bernardi et al 2013;Steinbach 2019;Kalmijn 2015Kalmijn , 2016Mooney et al 2009). This raises the question of how far there may be continuity in fathers' parenting.…”