Shared Parenting After Divorce: Implications for Child’s Wellbeing
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Shared- Parenting After Divorce: Implications for Child’s Wellbeing
Purpose Statement and Thesis
Do children in shared custody (joint custody) fare better than their peers in sole custody?
As shared parenting becomes common, there are concerns whether regulations requiring joint
custody could be beneficial to children after parental separation. The premise of the paper is that
children in shared parenting fare better, both socially, economically and psychologically relative
to their peers in sole custody, even after controlling for parental income, skills, and interparental
conflict.
Annotated Bibliography
Bastaits, K., & Pasteels, I. (2019). Is joint physical custody in the best interests of the child?
Parent–child relationships and custodial arrangements. Journal of Social and
Personal Relationships, 36(11-12), 3752-3772. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407519838071
In this article, the authors contend that joint custodial arrangements in most countries,
with some countries passing regulations prioritizing shared parenting over sole custodianship.
The authors contend that majority of the research generally consider the child-related outcomes,
without considering the implications of such arrangements on parental-child relationships. As
such, the studied cohort of 623 individuals, comprising parent-child dyads in either sole or joint
custodian arrangements. The main outcomes were parent-child outcomes, and parenting. They
found that join custodial arrangements positively affected parent-child relationships, leading to
better parental support, and parent-child communication, including problematic communication
between parents and their children, relative sole-custody arrangements. The main limitation of
the study is that the authors rely on cross-sectional data, which can only provide information for
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a specific period of time. Generally, the findings do support the role of shared-parenting in
improving the welfare of the child, as it allows the child to access both parents, allowing the
child to benefit from the support of both parents.
Bergstrom, M., Sarkadi, A., Hjern, A., & Fransson, E. (2019). "We also communicate
through a book in the diaper bag"- Separated parent's ways to coparent and
promote adaptation of their 1–4-year-olds in equal joint physical custody`. PLoS
One, 14(1), 1-20. doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214913
Divorce and separation affect the welfare of both children and their parents. However,
majority of contemporary research focuses on the welfare of children. The authors of the current
article examine how parents in joint custodial arrangements navigate communication and how
they practice joint custody. The authors interviewed 46 parents from different socio-economic
backgrounds. They found that most parent struggled parenting their children, as they had to
discuss parenting with their partners who they no longer had relationship with. They had to
improvise and adapt their parenting to ensure that their children had the support they needed.
One of the most interesting findings of the interviews was that majority of the parents were able
to adapt and were happy about the joint custody arrangements. The main drawback of the study
is that the researchers employed a qualitative approach. Qualitative studies are not generalizable
to all contexts. The authors, however, recruited a large number of parents from diverse
backgrounds, which could potentially eliminate potential limitations to the generalizability of the
findings.
Berman, R., & Daneback, K. (2020). Children in dual-residence arrangements: A literature
review. Journal of Family Studies, 1(1), 1-18. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1080/13229400.2020.1838317
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In this article, the authors reviewed a total of 111 studies on the outcomes of children in
joint custodial arrangements. They contend that there remains significant controversy about the
impact of joint custodial arrangements. According to the authors, conflict among parents in such
arrangements significantly affects the welfare of children. Constant conflict can severe impede
parenting, making joint custody arrangements a bad solution for some parents. However, joint
custodial arrangements benefit children as it allows them to retain contact with their parents.
Children in joint custodial arrangement report better communication outcom