Sharing roles, sharing custody? Couples’ characteristics and children's living arrangements at separation

This article examines children's living arrangements when parents separate, during a period of rapid increase in shared physical custody in the 1990s. With prospective data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (N = 758 families) and a sample of families experiencing parental separation between successive survey cycles, we use multinomial logistic regression techniques to explore how characteristics of parents in intact families (mother's employment, income, and so on) influence physical custody outcomes at separation. Findings indicate that although the way couples share roles while living together has a strong influence on how they divide responsibilities when they separate, other factors also have important roles to play. Key Words: Canada, divorce, separation, shared custody, sole father custody. In Canada, as in the United States, growing proportions of children are experiencing their parents' separation at an increasingly early age (Bumpass & Lu, 2000; Marcil-Gratton, Le Bourdais, & Lapierre-Adamcyk, 2000). With most children remaining in their mother's physical custody after separation, the relationship with their father is no longer assured by the daily contact of coresidence, but has to be "reinvented" within an emotional climate that is often far from propitious. Although much research on the effect of nonresident fathers' involvement with their children is inconclusive, one association stands out: The more contact fathers have with their children, the greater their financial contribution to their upkeep (Bartfeld, 2000; Jacobsen & Edmondson, 1993; McLanahan, Seltzer, Hanson, & Thompson, 1994; Seltzer, 1991). Contact and child support appear to go hand in hand, and fathers' continued involvement with their children after separation helps protect them from the poverty so often associated with lone-mother families. Understanding the circumstances that encourage or deter fathers' continued involvement in their children's daily lives after separation is therefore essential for designing policies appropriate to the new realities of family life. Until recently, most research into the determinants of parents' involvement with children after separation focused on nonresident fathers, a justifiable approach given that the overwhelming majority of children remained in their mother's care after separation. A number of elements, however, call for a broader perspective on father involvement. First, after a period of relative stability, the 1990s brought a dramatic rise in joint custody in Canada. In the year 2000, it was granted for 37% of children whose custody was part of the final divorce decree, up from 14% in 1990. Although this figure includes both physical and legal shared custody, other findings leave no doubt that actual shared living arrangements are also on the rise (Juby, Marcil-Gratton, & Le Bourdais, forthcoming). Though not necessarily a durable arrangement, sharing physical custody appears to lay the basis for a committed and long-term relationship between separated parents and their children (Juby, Le Bourdais, & Marcil-Gratton, 2003). This may partly account for recent analyses showing that children in joint physical or legal custody are better adjusted than those in sole custody (Bauserman, 2002). Restricting studies of separated fathers' involvement with children to nonresident fathers therefore excludes not only a growing proportion of cases, but also those cases in which the relationship is the closest. Second, research into father involvement needs to be extended not only to all fathers, but also to all separations rather than just those involving a legal separation or divorce. Although we do not have precise estimates, the available data indicate that close to half of separations involving minor children are settled without recourse to legal services, at least during the period soon after separation, when children's living arrangements tend to be settled (Marcil-Gratton & Le Bourdais, 1999). …